Feedback on GW for Android

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Fractalien
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:42 pm

Feedback on GW for Android

Post by Fractalien »

Hi, please tell me if there is a better place to provide feedback on the beta version.

Generally, thanks for the app, especially for keeping a lot of features and options instead of sacrificing them to contemporary UI dogmas.

Here's my feedback:
  1. Whenever I open the app, I get a spoken message: "Sorry, accessibility is not available in the Mobile version of GoldWave, yet." This is strange as I did not request/configure anything to that effect. Also, the app apparently uses the device's voice output without checking the language, and as I currently have my phone set to German, the English sentence is pronounced with a heavy German accent.
  2. When I move the slider modifying output speed at the bottom right, after a short distance the whole app/screen moves. Could be because I set my phone to use gestures instead of displaying the three navigation icons at the bottom. When this happens and I tap into the waveform to set the playback position, the playback speed is set to the lowest possible setting, as if the system-level effect had interrupted the speed setting in a way that left it 'hanging on', only to react to the next available tap into the app.
  3. The manual takes some getting used to: When opened, it appears as a record-breaking document without navigation except a lot of scrolling. This appears better after scrolling up exposes the table of contents. Still, at least in horizontal orientation, it would be nice to permanently see the nav tree next to the document, collapsed to the top levels by default.
  4. Instead of pressing the three-dot-diamond repeatedly, I'd suggest varying the UI configuration by dragging it (or the whole bar with the time) up or down.
  5. I'm used to be able to swipe apps out of my switching list (or whatever it is called) without losing any data, as they usually keep track of their state, e.g. Docs always saves instantly, Chrome remembers its tabs etc. – When I do this with GW, the content gets killed along with the app, which is not so nice.
  6. Once, when tapping into the waveform to set the playback position, I was shown one of those errors that name a memory address, but the app kept running.
  7. Another time, when I tried changing the speed, the app just exited – but it could be that this was a late effect of the previous error.
GoldWave Inc.
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Re: Feedback on GW for Android

Post by GoldWave Inc. »

All feedback is welcome. You can use the email address listed on the app's page or use the contact form as well.

1. The message about accessibility should be heard only if you have an accessibility setting turned on in Android (Settings, Accessibility, TalkBack). The app only supports English text right now. Technically the app is checking AccessibilityManager.isEnabled. For some reason your device gives "true".

2. It's possible that a change to the screen size/orientation while in the middle of dragging could cause a problem. I'll check into it. Does it happen when the control area is expanded so that the speed fader is not at the bottom?

3. The manual has a menu button at the top left. You can click on that to get an index and search for things (such as "Table of contents"). Perhaps a "table of contents" button or link should be added as well.

4. I agree, but dragging the control area to resize it sometimes causes other OS configuration screens to be dragged into view, especially on iOS when the control area is a single row at the bottom. Might experiment with that some more.

5. Swiping apps out does not work well with audio editing software. Other document files tend to be very small compared to audio files and audio compression takes much longer. There is no way to "instantly" save an audio file. Some changes could be saved "on-the-fly", but that would slow down the app significantly and require far more storage.

6. & 7. If you can find a sequence of steps that reliably cause theses problems, please let me know so I can track then down. Stability is essential for this kind of app.

Thanks for the feedback!
Fractalien
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:42 pm

Re: Feedback on GW for Android

Post by Fractalien »

Thanks for the contact info and your various other comments!

About the individual issues:
  1. I checked my accessibility settings, but TalkBack is inactive. There is an additional voice-output config, but that's apparently just to change the voice, not to set whether to use it.
  2. The problem occurred although I refrained from turning the screen. But expanding the control area indeed avoided the problem of the suddenly low speed. Sometimes, though, moving the slider left is interpreted as the "back" gesture, but I guess that is some ambiguity to be expected when having a slider so close to the edge of the screen.
  3. I had indeed missed the menu button in the manual – probably intuitively assumed it to be the app's main menu.
  4. At least on Android 10 despite gestures enabled, dragging the upper border of the control area upwards would have no side effects, i.e. be less problematic than having the volume and speed sliders near the sides as is already the case.
  5. I acknowledge that audio data is more voluminous. Could there be some on-exit trigger that saves the audio so as to avoid any performance hit during normal usage? Even uncompressed, having the data on permanent storage can't be so bad, considering that immediately prior it was even in memory. Sure, there would have to be upper bounds and an on-demand option, but still appears better than losing a recording just like that...
  6. I'll try to see a pattern to the crashes when I experience any.
By the way, today I ended up trying to stop recording using the blue playback stopper, after which my false assumption of this having worked let me press one of the play buttons and got me an error message about the impossibility of playing back while recording. I guess it would make sense to grey out all the play buttons (and ignore and taps on them) while recording.
GoldWave Inc.
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Re: Feedback on GW for Android

Post by GoldWave Inc. »

1. I'll check into it. None of the devices I've tested have that problem. Hopefully other users can report on other devices that are affected.
2. I think that the faders may need to be removed, perhaps to a pop-up window instead.
3. & 4. I will look into these issues to see what changes can be made.
5. The Android API explicitly mentions not to store large amounts of data when the app is terminated, so using slower permanent storage for all editing may be the only option. Or an "autosave" option could be added in the background that saves the uncompressed file after every change. That will still slow down the app, but may not be as noticeable and there is still the problem of the app being terminated in the middle of saving. I'm not sure what the expectation of user is. When I swipe out an app with unsaved data, I don't expect the changes to be saved. If you are in the middle of editing an event in the Calendar app, for example, then swipe it out, no change are saved and all editing is discarded. Anything that requires an explicit save is lost when an app is swiped out.
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