Feature and hobbyist questions…

[EA Support]

EA Support

28 November 2024 at 6:47 am #953

I’m a DIY hobbyist that doesn’t seem to suit your licensing and feature combo very well. I have no need for DTP functionality, filter brand conversions, SMART integration, etc. It would just be nice to have the additional filter outputs for Storm Audio so I don’t have to write a conversion script myself.

Finally, as what I hope is constructive feedback, you may want to consider some sort of different offering for us DIY hobbyists as it seems professional sound folks are the primary audience. For the price and no need for the DTP and other “pro” features, having the ability to design multi-way crossovers found in Designer M would be great. And of course a DIY person is not someone that is well suited to a subscription model. Basically Designer M stripped of DTP/pro features and a perpetual license for the current cost would seem to be appropriate. Hope that helps and thanks in advance for your consideration.

StormAudio is already in your version 4.3 perpetual. Go to the IIR Filters tab and open the “Mode” list.

Regarding your other questions. We hear you and we do get these kinds of questions occasionally. We’re a small company and have made a conscious decision not to make the full feature set available at a discount for DIY, since we have no way of accurately confirming this use case versus business use, and we need to make a living.

FIR Creator EX is our lower cost offering which DIY’ers frequently buy. We slowly roll some features from FIR Designer into FIR Creator over time, and StormAudio will eventually find it’s way to FIR Creator EX. It’s is possible to do multi-way designs with FIR Creator and FIR Designer by having a project for each channel, and the acoustic sum can be verified with measurements.

We are considering offering a perpetual FIR Designer M, but its one-time cost will be significantly higher than the annual subscription. Regarding subscription versus perpetual, since we are constantly implementing new features, subscription is the preferred way to be current.

Good to know I’ve already got all applicable Storm output formats, that helps.

On a hobby edition, I very much appreciate and understand the small business perspective as I grew up in a small family business. My thought was perhaps having a dedicated hobbyist version that intentionally removes “pro” features such as DTP, IIR filter conversions and the like. It seems to me the pros would need those features and continue to purchase subscriptions and not have interest in the stripped down version. But I don’t know your customer base so the suggestion could be well off target. All I know is that for a hobbyist Designer is already priced above market for competitive products and lacking some key features. I certainly hope you understand this is well intentioned constructive feedback, that is certainly the reason for sharing.

Finally – is there a way to examine the summed output of for example a LP/HP crossover filter set in Designer? I don’t think so as I’ve tried creating and exporting the LP, import to a new design, and then creating the complimentary HP. What I get is the combined transfer function instead of the summed transfer function. Not surprising since I think what I’m trying goes against the intended design flow, but thought I’d ask in case there’s a technique I’m not aware of.

No, not with the current feature set. We have been asked for the ability to export plots, and if we get to this, this would enable summing in Excel or similar. (For example two freq|mag|phase exports could be converted into real|imag, summed, then converted back to mag|phase.)

At the moment, I’d suggest making low and high processing, playing them through your speaker, then measuring the combined output to confirm, or iterate until it matches what you would like. Granted this is challenging if the processing is created from multiple measurements (spatial averaging) but it’s always good to verify and cabinet’s behaviour anyway.

and lacking some key features.

We’re always keen to receive feature requests.

Regards,
EA Support