BYOD Public Beta

chowdsp

Hi All,

I've been working a new plugin called Build-Your-Own Distortion (or BYOD for short). It's basically a guitar distortion plugin where you can mix and match different drive and tone stages from different guitar pedals, along with a few other useful effects. Another new thing, is that the plugin has a preset "server" which helps keep presets synchronized between devices, and allows people to create "public" presets, which eventually will be available for anyone to search and download.

Anyway, there's still a few things to be finished up and improved upon, but I wanted to do a little beta release for anyone who wants to test things early!

• TestFlight link
• GitHub page
• Nightly builds (for desktop)

Feedback is always appreciated! I'm very excited about the plugin and can't wait to get it released .

Thanks,
Jatin

audiblevideo

@chowdsp there are OTHER modules than just distortion? That was a pleasant surprise . Any chance for a noise gate. Looking forward to testing.

rs2000

Very nice, great choice of modules!
And indeed, a downward expander would be useful. Even better than a noise gate.

Fingolfinzz

Wow, what a haul for effects. Looking forward to testing this out and luckily I’m off work all day today. This looks awesome!

bobbyj8866

Wow, this is awesome.

JoyceRoadStudios

Umm…. Wow. I’m kind of speechless. This rules. Amazing selection of modules. As others have said, something like a Gate Expander would be a nice addition.

Really looking forward to playing with this. I have two things to say right off the bat…

1) it took me a really long time to locate the + button, for adding modules. I thought I was going crazy. Or maybe you were just offering presets. Turns out, the upper notch on my iPhone 13 is blocking the + button, when the phone is in landscape mode and the notch is on the right. When I flipped the phone around I found the +, so I recommend you relocate that button to another part of the screen. Looks like you have many places you could place it.

2) Be careful about naming things what they actually are because of licensing issues, regardless of this being a free or paid app. I was surprised to see actual brand names and pedal names…

Love the layout, the implementation, and your choices. Can’t wait to take for a spin. Cheers!

Tones4Christ

Totally awesome effects app!
Also on my iPhone 6s plus, although it is super awesome to be able to zoom in and out of modules or the entire effects chain, the connecting section to create the virtual cable is a bit finicky as far as detecting is concerned. It would be nice for it to be a bit bigger perhaps? Or at least provide some kind of visual feedback that a connection is being stablished?

Thanks!

@JoyceRoadStudios said:
Umm…. Wow. I’m kind of speechless. This rules. Amazing selection of modules. As others have said, something like a Gate Expander would be a nice addition.

Really looking forward to playing with this. I have two things to say right off the bat…

1) it took me a really long time to locate the + button, for adding modules. I thought I was going crazy. Or maybe you were just offering presets. Turns out, the upper notch on my iPhone 13 is blocking the + button, when the phone is in landscape mode and the notch is on the right. When I flipped the phone around I found the +, so I recommend you relocate that button to another part of the screen. Looks like you have many places you could place it.

2) Be careful about naming things what they actually are because of licensing issues, regardless of this being a free or paid app. I was surprised to see actual brand names and pedal names…

Love the layout and implementation. Can’t wait to to take for a spin. Cheers!

Ailerom

This is totally cool. Really appeals to my desire to build pedals despite a complete lack of electronics knowledge.

NeuM

You continue to do great things in the music and audio production app arena!

Any interest in taking on the challenge of creating a new kind of synthesizer or virtual instrument?

cuscolima

That’s a very very good app!

waka_x

it is super duper good!
playing with it now. sounds ACE!
thank you.

ExAsperis99

Holy cow you had me at the J. Mascis preset.

chowdsp

Thanks all! Glad to hear that people are interested!

There is actually a "Gate" effect under the "Other" section. I was thinking about adding a "Floor" parameter to make it more of an expander, but haven't decided what to do about that just yet.

@JoyceRoadStudios said:
1) it took me a really long time to locate the + button, for adding modules. I thought I was going crazy. Or maybe you were just offering presets. Turns out, the upper notch on my iPhone 13 is blocking the + button, when the phone is in landscape mode and the notch is on the right. When I flipped the phone around I found the +, so I recommend you relocate that button to another part of the screen. Looks like you have many places you could place it.

Ooh, that's definitely good to know! Moving it should be easy enough... I was also considering getting rid of that button, and just having people right-click/long-press on the background to create new modules.

@JoyceRoadStudios said:
2) Be careful about naming things what they actually are because of licensing issues, regardless of this being a free or paid app. I was surprised to see actual brand names and pedal names…

That's a good point as well. I hadn't thought about it too much, but now that it's getting closer to release time, I should probably rename some things. Might break a few patches, but that's why it's in beta after all.

@Tones4Christ said:
Also on my iPhone 6s plus, although it is super awesome to be able to zoom in and out of modules or the entire effects chain, the connecting section to create the virtual cable is a bit finicky as far as detecting is concerned. It would be nice for it to be a bit bigger perhaps? Or at least provide some kind of visual feedback that a connection is being stablished?

Yeah, I was getting a little annoyed with the virtual cables myself. There's a sort of "glow" around a port when you're about to "drop" a cable, I'll see about adding something similar for starting a cable, along with making the click region larger.

@NeuM said:
Any interest in taking on the challenge of creating a new kind of synthesizer or virtual instrument?

I tend to use effects more than synthesizers in my own music, so I think my development preferences reflect that to some degree... that said I would love to make a soft-synth someday, just need to find the right thing.

Poppadocrock

Thanks. Awesome @chowdsp i really enjoy the apps you create, just joined beta and will give it a go soon. Cheers!

Gravitas

@chowdsp

I’ve yet to try playing my guitar through it though I did drop it in
onto some rhodes on a track I’m writing to see what it sounded like.

It sounds good.

Looking forward to running my guitar through it for sure.

HotStrange

A distortion effect from one of the best Devs out there? Sign me up! Can’t wait to give it a spin, thanks for this!

HotStrange

@Ailerom said:
This is totally cool. Really appeals to my desire to build pedals despite a complete lack of electronics knowledge.

Right there with ya haha

NeuM

It's very cool. My first observation is there is not enough room in the available window for complex effects chains. I know a person can resize the elements to make them fit better, but that should be a rare thing. Maybe consider a scrolling window to accommodate complex configurations? (But not too much of a scrolling window... It could otherwise be easy to lose invisible elements just sitting out there someone on the "field".)

If you haven't already, see how 4Pockets handles things in their NuRack app for comparison.

I don't necessarily mind that as you add more elements they don't snap to a grid or something, but that could be one way to keep things more organized. Maybe a "magnetic baseline" for arranging things left-to-right, but then you can add things in a more freeform layout above and below the baseline?

lukesleepwalker

Will you marry me, @chowdsp ?

Someone needs to take care of you so you can continue making magic happen on our glowing screens.

Fingolfinzz

@chowdsp I've been playing around with it today a bit have think I may have found a couple bugs. When I use the mixer, I’ll hook something up to channel 1 but any time I hook something up to the remaining channels, it seems to route the last thing plugged in into channel 1. Also with the amp ir, if I select the custom option then it seems to freeze up the whole interface and I can only get it back by existing my host and reloading. I’ve tested on the latest version of iOS on an iPhone 11 and then on iOS 12 on an iPad Air

espiegel123

@chowdsp : I am loving BYOD. It would be great if double-tapping (or long pressing?) in a patch cord inserted a module in the signal path.

[Deleted User]

@lukesleepwalker said:
Will you marry me, @chowdsp ?

Someone needs to take care of you so you can continue making magic happen on our glowing screens.

Favorite comment of the year right here

chowdsp

Thanks all! Already caught a couple bugs based on everyone's feedback, so that's super helpful .

@NeuM said:
It's very cool. My first observation is there is not enough room in the available window for complex effects chains. I know a person can resize the elements to make them fit better, but that should be a rare thing. Maybe consider a scrolling window to accommodate complex configurations? (But not too much of a scrolling window... It could otherwise be easy to lose invisible elements just sitting out there someone on the "field".)

If you haven't already, see how 4Pockets handles things in their NuRack app for comparison.

I don't necessarily mind that as you add more elements they don't snap to a grid or something, but that could be one way to keep things more organized. Maybe a "magnetic baseline" for arranging things left-to-right, but then you can add things in a more freeform layout above and below the baseline?

Hmm... I had a scrolling UI early on, but ended up abandoning it once I added more complex routing options. The magnetic baseline idea does sound interesting. I'll have to investigate NuRack as well.

@espiegel123 said:
@chowdsp : I am loving BYOD. It would be great if double-tapping (or long pressing?) in a patch cord inserted a module in the signal path.

This is something I've been wanting to add, but haven't quite figured out the how to get the UI interaction to work. I'll keep chipping away at it.

NeuM

🤙🤙🤙🤙

tahiche

This is insanely good!. What a surprise. 🙌🙌🙌🙌🤟🤟🤟 Chow DSP, you’re the GOD of dirt, your tape effect is amazing and now this. Just WOW.
Few comments to try make myself useful:

• I agree with the “+” being too little, took me a while to find it.
• I had a crash when editing a preset.
• When I’m on a preset I expected the “Save Preset” to work as a sort of update or override, which I guess is what “Edit preset” is?. Sort of confusing. I’d do a “Save” and maybe “Save as..” that refer to the current preset.
• Id be very useful to be able to substitute an effect, instead of having to delete it and add a new one. Keep the connections and have a “replace” so you can quickly try different modules.

Did I say I’m f**ing impressed?.

Edit: of course there’s a “replace” when long pressing a module 🤦🏻. I’m fuzzy.

tahiche

I think I encountered a pretty big bug.
When using the Amp IR module, if I choose “custom” the plugin freezes, completely unresponsive. Can’t even select presets. I have to close and open AUM as unloading/loading the plugin doesn’t fix it.

Poppadocrock

The Players Presets are really cool, and a good idea. Would love to see some more on there… Jimi, Johnny greenwood, Dan Auerbach, jimmy page, Pete Townsend, just to throw a few idea out..

Poppadocrock

@ExAsperis99 said:
Holy cow you had me at the J. Mascis preset.

Def, I liked all the player presets.

tahiche

Couple of thingies, mostly related to UI,

• Am I the only one that’s having a hard time making cable connections?. Many times I press on the connection circle and nothing happens, I’m just dragging air… The “hot zone” seems to be very small, specially at lower zoom. Hard to hit.
• Also the visual indicator, the little orange dot is covered by your finger so you can’t see it. Maybe the whole module/pedal should change color, glow, border when you you’re on “connect mode”. As it is, specially when zoomed out, I just press and drag hoping the cable shows up, many times in vain.

• I have a similar problem with the long-press menu, it’s covered by the finger/hand and thus hard to read and operate.
• I’d personally prefer it if there was a fixed, global place where the current selected module stuff would appear. Info, replace, reset…
• In line with the above, and maybe as a solution for the lack of screen space… What if the pedals where just little boxes with color/name and the actual controls appeared when selecting them?. Sort of like the Helix editor (below). Only the selected module displays the controls. I do see that it can be useful to see all the module’s settings at once as to know what’s going on. Maybe make it an option so that you can expand/contract the modules globally?. There’s many ways and options but I do find that making modules smaller/bigger, contract/expand would make it more usable and fix the mentioned “small touch area” issues.

Ailerom

I always wanted to stack fuzz on fuzz. I finally got my chance. Such fuzziness. Love it! Just flicking around between bridge and neck, trying to show a few tones, chugging, power chords, lead etc. Squire Strat with HB's.

NeuM

@Ailerom said:
I always wanted to stack fuzz on fuzz. I finally got my chance. Such fuzziness. Love it! Just flicking around between bridge and neck, trying to show a few tones, chugging, power chords, lead etc. Squire Strat with HB's.

More fuzz than a steel wool sweater.