The Road to Vector 3.1

Contrary to what you might think we don’t sit idle, count money and play WoW all day long! No, we’re actively working on the next update to Vector. This update (3.1) will be free for all current users and in this post you can learn what we’re planning on adding to the next version of Vector…

There’s two categories we’re working on. Features and Bugfixes. Features enhance the app with new functions. Bugfixes correct errors and annoyances that are in the current version.

Planned Features:

• Some users who have more pro-grade audio hardware with more than two in/out channels experience difficulties with selecting the correct channels for recording and playback. The solution to this is to create a virtual audio device in OS X with the correct channel mappings and use that. But that’s complicated and a little too much work for our taste - and it’s not obivous to many people. Even to pro users. So we’re going to add in/out channel selection to the in/out device dropdown. (That speaker icon in Vector’s main window).

• “Export Selection” is making a comeback. In Vector 2 it was possible to export the current selection to an audio file. In Vector 3 this option disappeared because we simply forgot to add it after the UI overhaul. Shame on us! So this option is going to return. But much better! You will now be able to right click the selection you want to export - and there will be selection support in the general export dialog. Bam! That’s how much we care! (And how bad our memory is).

• A “green on black” color scheme. This is a special user request from a user who doesn’t like “Sound Studio” anymore and switched to Vector. Yet can’t get used to our cybertronic blue color scheme. So we’re going to add a plain green on black color scheme.

• A “don’t do anything” startup option. Currently when you open Vector there’s either a welcome window shown or a new document. Some people don’t want anything to be displayed on startup so we’re going to add an option to do exactly that: nothing.

• The effects menu will be re-organized. A very observant user (because we suffer from developer blindness) hinted at us that it might be smart to order the effects in the effects menu alphabetically. Seriously - how did we not think of this earlier? I menan: head -> table kind of situation here. So we’re going to organize the effects alphabetically. Also the AU submenu will get moved to the top. Because if you make use of the AU menu then chances are that you’re doing it pretty regurarly. And if you don’t you won’t care if you have to skip one item more on your way down to “ADD DISTORTION”.

Bug Fixes:

• Temp file metadata will now be saved after each editing step. This is only a few kilobytes (wich get deleted when you quit Vector anyways) but will allow for file recovery if a crash should occur. “What Vector crashing?! No way!” you might think. But recently we started testing more 3rd party AU plugins with Vector 3 and discovered that many plugins still don’t work properly in the Sandbox environment. Which can lead to crashes. So here’s us fixing other developer’s plugins for you. ;)

• The Mp3 Export label will be changed to something the average user will recognize as MP3 right off the bat. The current “MPEG-2 Audio Layer III (.mp3)” label might be technically correct but we get quiet a lot support mails asking us how to export MP3 files.

• Currently Vector 3 won’t open an audio file if there’s no file extension attached to it. We’re going to fix this and add better file type detection to Vector 3.

• The speaker icon which you click to select your input and output device. It’s going to get changed to a more obious symbol because many people never click it as they think “duh, volume adjustment”. Now we never thought of that because “developer blidnness”. But recently we got a great video review of Vector 3 by a user who accidently clicked on the icon and was all “omg that’s so cool and useful”. So expect something more obvious here.

This is mostly it. If nothing comes inbetween we’re going to release this update in late September. Also we might add some more fixes and features to that list but for that we need your feedback! Have an idea for a great feature? Are you fighting with a bug that seemingly never gets fixed? Grab your email program and write us a mail to: support@fluxforge.com!

Vector is an audio editor for OS X that is designed to fit into the space between simple audio apps and full blown studio production tools. (Kinda like Cool Edit Pro for the Mac - if you are that old school).