The thing I love: Hail Fxsound💋🙌, got some tea and some thought for UX

[coreywillei]

Hi, I’m sry this post is long af but my brain he left for the milk and cigarettes I’m just letting the voices out before I go do bad things… (Mr. dev if you don’t like torturing yourself just pls check at the end for some of mine feature requests/thoughts and hopefully you’d take a look whenever).

Hi, first of all, love Fxsound (muaaah), it’s chef kissed quality to me​, but if you’re interested you’d wanna boil some water cuz I got some tea. So I decided to do a little funsie cuz why not testing Fxsound against the big-fabled and famously beloved Equalizer APO and Peace APO. Well, let me tell you how much pain and tears (inside ) I went through trying damn hard to speak love to PEACE, but hell to the nawr she’s just the meanest suka (russian) of all, man it felt so good to hit delete on that app like I was running free from an abusive relationship.

I walked into PEACE and Equalizer APO exactly how I go to that one famous Asian cuisine for the first time. You get handled out a 300 pages ancient menu () but in a foreign language you can’t read, but sometimes you’d see some random shits like chicken strips or french fries on there and I’d run script in my head “bby wtf this ain’t the place, why are these here, is this Asian-safe place orrr we’re starting a cult cuz i might gotta go”. This kind of bomb-ass restaurant is where you’d expect they’d treat you like a bastard child and get annoyed at how needy and yappy you are with the questions…but, buuuut the food is always bomb, that’s the rule that’s how you know it..

Until ms.Peace APO tossed me up and down like a ragged doll and that “GUI” should be put away in jail, the kitchen is dirty (it’s rough), and I went for a damn fried rice (EQ) yet they’d keep trying to pushing these 50 “authentic” meal courses up your way and the thing is they all feel the same just above mediocre cuz they’re just too many damn things to look into. I cried again and again when that suka PEACE freeze or jumping or you ask font 10 too small? no worries go 12 and words now get mushed in together voila… but at least I’m here for the infamous EQ right? well adjusting it with the knob or the graphs mode… that felt like it was Russian Roulette time bc wtf did I do wrong I didn’t even touch it and I listen 40% volume, how my Sennheiser M4 start popping Tears ran dried love faded, brain rotted I read through the whooooole help book and frankly I would take a bullet to have read that much ever again in one go… just to find out the one thing I wanna try—EQ, works almost just the same as other software, and Imma call out the low latency, immediate change registed as you go (bitch how the graph the knobs the everything were breaking their bones and blood from trying to move, (if I move 1 band, I gotta let it resolves before I dare touch another one). And I when I thought I’ve made it all, great set let’s go then I press the wrong “save” button which make that one built in preset override my setting cuz why not the auto-save as default preset then I remembered seeing it in their “bible” and panic clicking a few trying to stop it initializing, then Ms.Peace crashed out with her 200 knobs and buttons. Well I thought that was time to peace out, but ofc not I’d have to have to try it i’m in too deep phuuuuuckkk. Then after a few more beers I tried the final results, sounds was fine all I get to experience is the 1900 vintage graphical interface, that thing went through wars and back and had a family with great grand children and I would still haven’t been born. Normally I’m a horror fan, but I feel like stabbing more plugins and buttons Frankenstein style into ms.Peace is just ¯\\\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)\_/¯. I would set it on fire if they’d give me the honor, honestly I didn’t have beef with Equalizer APO at all, from the start I could just edit the config file and use EAPO stand alone in 20 mins altogether to mess around –> preset, yet I went hard and deep and now I’m left with lost hope and just a little left of brain. I also found out the autorun or whatever they call it was also not playing nice with EAPO configurator (right click on the preset would make + appear, click onto the odd human symbol butt on would also activate it and more they have 4 different types of automatic settings for you to feasts on!) but I’m glad that was a final stick to break and I couldn’t convict that app out of my pc any faster. Bottom line is I think the auto save features were impressive though I was over with that mean suka through and through.

Now I’m back to the sweet home, I feet like I could kiss everyone in the team on the cheeks so damn rough rn cuz you are those who have made Fxsound so much more pleasant to enjoy. Mother Catherine O’hara can be my witness and she probably could never imagine how I lost my mind over ms.Peace APO… and I am scared of myself for how long this post is now.

Anywaayy, I hope the tea was teazing, I have a few thoughts about the new feature design where you set preset for each audio devices. I think there’s a little issue about the app will still remember old headphones even if I have already removed it out of bluetooth devices (forget device), I did reset physical device and in the companion mobile app as well, but umm now I still see like 8 variants of the same device (I also use the 3.5mm to usb-c and the usb-c cable so my sennheiser momentum 4 headphones would come as 3 variants already, but FXsounds still keeping the old ones (before resetting the headphones and such) and it adds on the new ones including the handsfree profile as well though I disabled the HFP and its services already). To put it shorter, now I have 8 Momentum 4 profiles showing in Fxsound preference setting (I get around fine with naming my headphones device based on connection type so just wanna point that now but no big problemo). Also would it be alright to keep it simpler UI I like the idea of “elevator” (sorry i gotta name it) style to setup the preferences, but it is quite too small to fit in that little space and in my case it could get rough because you know damn right that I will click the wrong triangle Thanks again, cheers!

[james]

Haha thanks for the love friend! @bvijay any ideas as to why there would be disabled devices showing in the device list in FxSound?

[bvijay]

Thanks @coreywillei for the delightful read!

I agree that the device preference UI needs improvement and to be made more user friendly. I will think through it make the changes.

Only active/inactive (connected/disconnected) audio playback devices are supposed to be in the list. I will fix the issue of disabled device getting added in the list of preferred output devices. Inactive (disconnected) devices in the list will be used to calculate the priority when they are connected back. But, disabled devices shouldn’t be in the list. I will get this fixed.

[coreywillei]

lol hi thank you for enduring through that personally I couldn’t read through my embarrassing yapping again, but regarding the issue, I mean it could be confused by my momentum 4 since disabling—resetting—reconnecting was done pretty much in the same moment, so it probably just “hey well the headphones here still same guy” lol, but I’m not expert or anything, I think if we could limit how many profiles can be set as preferred maybe 5 (cuz idk it would be kinda nutty for someone who switch more devices in one go)… and something like a timer (lol I steal this idea from bookmark extension) they have like a “delete-timer” where if a named link— named device’s profile isn’t used for certain days, it will get deleted for sufficient space. but again it’s really not a big deal for me at least.

I just think the UI probably would be more efficient to go list-style like how you set the presets per device. I honestly feels like automatic isn’t always that good and we could just go back to how it was, some people might come at me for this lol but I think we’ll live with a few clicks and typing (how do they 100% sure their preset always sound good for a pair of headphones each time cuz I play with mine constantly due to different apps/video acts different way and ambient 1+ definitely sounds nutty for crime podcast). So I’m just saying my 2 cent, maybe it can be simplify down to some preset-on/off button for one specific preset only, once turned on then it will be on always until switch off, kinda like the power button we have currently…(limit 2/3 buttons, they can have more presets but will have to PREEEE-assign the PREEE-set they want in those limited slots cuz get a damn speaker if you gonna switch and listen 4 headsets or more on 1 computer…sry). my suggestion is to cut down the action to 1 click instead of fully-automate​ instead of click in in the list and select a preset and a device, now you need to do customizing work first, and you get your little switch for the specific pair of preset-headset you like. And maybe idk if it possible but if people can’t remember to switch preset when they switch device​ then a flyout to ask them yo you have 2 active speakers, you wanna turn on or off preset 1- 2 -3 now? tbh that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

sorry lol I might’ve accidentally given you more XY problems here i’m not expert at all, but I just wanna confirm as a user, and kinda just hollering to people who might hate my opposition: GUI means to do the clicking yourself and for me I’ll live lol, that means I have controls. Automate should be advanced things you need to learn from coding idk go python?(￣_￣|||) make yourself a batch or schedule tasks or something CLI, why ask a simple app to be your new imaginary Alexa lol… Oh and could we have a some consideration for flyout like volume mixer but instead you get sliders for effects, master gain, balance etc…? I think that is a better suited feature than being able to switch presets and devices, and if anyone throwing tantrum over a few clicks to switching preset, I’ll hold them lazy ass hands and tell them they’ll live .

[bvijay]

Thank you for your ideas and inputs.

I have found the reason for the multiple entries of the same device in the profile. I used the device id which is unique to store the profiles, but the device id is volatile and changes on system reset. This could be the reason for the same device getting added in the profile list. I will get this fixed.

The automatic preset per device is a long pending request from multiple users. Now that it is implemented, it may make several people unhappy if any major change is done in the way preset is set for the device.

I will see how best I can improve the user interface for device profiles.

[bvijay]

Hi @coreywillei

I have fixed the bug which caused repetition of device names in the preference list. The fix is in beta version 1.2.8.0.

Removing the bluetooth device from the preference list after removing the device from OS control panel is a bit complex. I am working on the fix for this.

[coreywillei]

oh work! Thank you, lmk if you need another pair of eyes to observe any glitch, I do like messing around till I find out more often than I should LOL.

Also this is just my totally uncooked uneducated guess, it seems like Fxsound watches the name change closely to “Audio Input and Output device” friendly name while I was being a living chaos as usual and I gotta fuck around the registry to see the changes lol… Anyway, I realized “Audio Input and Output” (i’d call it AIO for short) has a harder time to adapt a new name change because while I could see the “sound, video, and game controllers” (SVG) pick up the new name real fast and maintain that name consistenly. “AIO” will take much longer to pick on ^[1] and AIO name will still be reset if bluetooth switched off or “remove device”. ^[2]
Sooo I was just thinking what-if ^[3] Fxsound instead “watch out” for the SVG’s^[4] friendly name instead since it seems consistent in my pov and also will get rid of the long device name “ABC (manufacture’s set name)” ^[5]༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Anyway, hopefully it makes sense and be at any help to you, but also sorry if that just create another case of “XY problems”

---

1. could be a few refreshes to actually hours, here’s the link to the method I used to mess with the name change imgur ↩︎

2. as far as all possibilities I could tested out, the only way to make it persistent from resetting when you switch bluetooth off/on is changing the AIO’s friendly name in the registry, I could also cut short the name in registry so it doesn’t look ridiculously long (noted: removing/forgetting devices will still reset the device’s saved names) ↩︎

3. non-educated either very cooking or very cooked idea ↩︎

4. sound,video, and game controllers ↩︎

5. for example “FXsound speakers (Fxsound audio enhancer)” ↩︎