Musik Hack Sam

Awesome @Mike Martin! Great vibe! About that update: we just released it a few days ago. There are some changes related to discussion here with Craig, but not all of them! For example, switching presets keeps whatever you have currently set for input, loud, output, and unity, but I don't have a bunch more presets or quick buttons for blasting through them yet. The major overhaul is a reworked oversampling engine that allows you to select what you get, and was the highest quality I could accomplish without a brain graft. The previous version was not as finely tuned. I had to do an insane technical deep dive into the area, so I've got two resources on that topic that I put together. One is educational, the other more entertaining: Sampling, Aliasing, and Oversampling - A paper I wrote on the topic, hopefully for the betterment of all! White Sea Oversampling Interview - Wytse from White Sea Studios has some controversial takes, but he talks a lot about this topic so I went in headfirst for an interview about it. It was great fun geeking out with him. I have a couple more avenues to get this information out and help both devs and engineers get the most out of their plugins, but I'll have to keep that under wraps for now 😉 -Sam

@marino thanks for your detailed rundown and comments! Very happy to hear Master Plan is doing right by you; Stan spent so many years working with so much different material at Larrabee and after, that there really is an unbelievable amount of care in the algorithms and parameters. I made it my job to get as close as possible to anything he described or sent to me without compromise, and I think software developers and audio legends being able to work so closely together for so long is a rarity. Master Plan is the fruit of that kind of labor. I can appreciate and respect the control-freak mindset 100%. When I'm building tools like this, I make interfaces that have a positively insane number of dials so that I can listen to what works and doesn't. In the end, Stan and I decided we wanted Musik Hack to be the kind of company that makes products that ask people to focus on their expression and creativity rather than flex their analytical muscle, so making expressive, musical controls and removing technical decisions became the priority. I'm working on some kind of catch phrase for this thought, but it's something like: "We'll be technical. You be creative."

So glad to hear it Dave!

It’s a static EQ. We wanted to make sure clarity and preserving a good mix were paramount, so there are no frequency-dependent dynamic processes unless you engage the multipressor.

@Anderton Nah, just voicing your opinion and sharing your experience, I appreciate the enthusiasm! It's a compliment when anybody feels attached enough to Master Plan to share potential improvements or praise. A bit of philosophy: I like to get behind the "why" for each improvement suggestion. Many suggestions that look different on the outside tend to glom together and expose a much smaller amount of weaknesses in the product. When we make a change, the idea is to fix as many of those weaknesses as we can with the least complicated solutions, so that we don't create new weaknesses or make the product more confusing. That takes time, but I think it's the best way to make something great. In other words, we're always always listening, but our exact changes might differ from the suggestions we get, and I don't want anybody thinking they're talking into the void EDIT: I mean complexity and confusion from a usability perspective, regardless of how easy or hard it is to develop a change. I'd hate to refuse to improve a product solely because it's hard to code up!

@Anderton aha! Now I understand the full picture you're trying to paint with presets, thanks for clarifying! Hm.... doing that with a "parameter lock" on unity, input, output, and loud would be a really interesting way to scroll through presets. Even for more experienced users frustrated with a troublesome mix, that could dislodge creative blocks. EDIT: Legibility updates, all understood. I wouldn't say you're harping! Knowing what exactly about the interface gets in your way is the most helpful possible thing to know in order to fix it. These issues can take a bit of time to address because they involve the graphic artist as well, but we're actively looking at it, so the timing is good.

@Dr Mike Metlay thanks for your deep dive and the recommendation! The legibility issues, especially with the darker faceplate, have been noted, and we're working on what to do about those. I appreciate your comments on the user manual: I spent a few years in my early career as a (very) technical writer, and my mother before me was a (very) technical writer. I owe my thanks to her for the mindset and ability!

Practical stuff out of the way: there are some presets at the bottom to cycle through, right next to the size control! Thanks for asking questions about who this is for. We have major label records being mastered with this every day, and testimonials from people like Mark Parfitt and Damien Lewis right on our site! People at that level use it both for the quality, and as a streamlining tool: instead of having to deal with a stack of 10 plugins, they can focus on using their ears to make adjustments with a tool that already has them in the right lanes at the right quality. Making a tool is about ergonomics in every sense. If it's hard to know what to change to get the result you want, everything takes more time. If instead, the right decisions are made ahead of time, you can focus on just the changes that you want, without having to know all details about sound manipulation, and you get a much more musical, listening-based experience instead of getting tangled in the technicals. I'm getting wordy here, but I normally see these products in one of two lanes, neither which I love: A one-knob or AI-based approach. No control, full trust in the machine, made exclusively for beginners or people who want "that sound" An airplane cockpit that requires users to focus on getting technical about audio, rather than getting good at listening and adjusting to taste Master plan is splitting the difference here: the vast majority of mastering decisions have evolved into a similar workflow across most genres. By focusing on that workflow and labeling the controls by what they do to the sound, rather than how they do it: professionals get a more musical experience beginners require less technical bring-up and can use their ears everybody gets control to bend the sound to their taste quality stays very high by picking the right decisions: beginners get help without boxing in experts too hard By creating a one knob, we're not helping people develop their own taste or ears. By making a cockpit, we're not helping professionals get a musical or efficient experience. So this is where we land!

Hi everyone, this is Sam, the developer from Musik Hack, thanks for doing a deep dive on Master Plan! If you have any specific questions, let me know! I hear you on the contrast issues, we'll look into that in our next art round. A couple things: In the settings screen, there's a button for a user manual if you'd like to read it. There are some tips there! To reset a control, alt+click or option+click should work. While I'm talking mouse here, to fine-adjust a control, hold shift (the exception is output, which moves in decibel increments when shift is held) To change the size of the interface, use the XS, S, M, L, XL drop down just to the left of the settings gear I'll take note about the discoverability of these and think about a way to make them easier to find, thanks for digging in!