I finally got a chance to work a bit more on the FuzzMeasure product page. As you can see, there have been a lot of changes. First of all, you may notice that every page is .py rather than .html. That is because I finally moved the content over to my new Python layout engine that I wrote.

The move allows me to make changes to the content more easily, and ensure consistency across all the pages. Also, it pushed me to update the content to include some information about getting started and how to get support. I also added actual email address links this time around, too.

If you notice anything broken, email website@supermegaultragroovy.com and let me know what’s up.

Soon I will be overhauling the entire support process so that I can do a better job of managing customer issues. I’m convinced that hardly anyone is contacting me because it’s obviously not obvious enough to do.

Just recently, I had an email forwarded to me by one of my original testers which originated from another user who had some legitimate questions about how to get started with FuzzMeasure. Aside from the fact that I have to get my butt into gear and develop a better informational page about how to get started, I was concerned that this person did not know how to contact me directly.

This user stated that they did not find any clear links on my page to contact me. All along, I’ve been relying on the “chris at supermegaultragroovy dot com” text plastered at the bottom of every product page. Clearly, that was not a very smart decision on my part. Contact information should be displayed much higher on my product pages.

So, let’s say I open the flood gates to manage all this customer contact. I’m sure I can probably handle about 10 or so emails a week, but I am not the most organized person in the world if all I have is a copy of Mail.app and an OmniOutliner document. This is where I hope that my latest purchase will give me a leg up.

I finally grabbed a copy of FogBugz this morning in hopes of simplifying the support process. Once FogBugz 4.0 is released for UNIX hosts, I plan to remove the current forum software and replace it with the forum software that ships with FogBugz. The feature that really sealed the deal for me was email-generated issues, but that forum software will also link into my issue tracker and allow me to easily manage and respond to all the FuzzMeasure issues that come about.

Up to now, I have not had the bug system really fully utilized. Not a single registered user of the software has filed a request, and a few that I’ve set up accounts for have never even logged in. I’m sure that if they get a simple email address to fire issues to, they’ll be much more inclined to spout about everything that’s missing.

Right now, all of these issues show up in my mailbox, and I am unable to keep up with manually managing all the issues that pop out of these emails. Once I get FogBugz set up, all emails to this account will be instantly logged as issues (which I must respond to!). I can then respond to the issues as messages, flag them as feature requests, and they become a part of my todo list right away. Also, it will allow me to easily correlate similar requests together and generate actual feature requests and such.

There is a lot of work that I have to do in the next little while to ensure that my support structure for FuzzMeasure 1.2 is up to the task of supporting new and current users much better than what I’m doing right now. I’m hoping that FogBugz helps me simplify this a little more easily. Also, I will have to go back and modify my FuzzMeasure 1.1 pages to improve the information I’m providing right now.

It’s a wonder how I sleep at night with all this junk floating around in my head all the time… :P

I believe I may have found my dream device for loudspeaker measurements and testing. It’s the recently-announced (in January) FA-66 by Edirol. It’s firewire, has multiple channels, and can support full-duplex recording at 24bit/192kHz! That would provide FuzzMeasure with a resolution of 96kHz — well beyond any human’s hearing!

Buying one of these will eat up the rest of my proceeds from FuzzMeasure, and then some. Upon getting one, I should be able to add full support for multi-channel interfaces. The RCA jacks (which I’d use for impedance) are on inputs 5 and 6, which is currently not supported by my audio device handling code.

Doing some further impedance testing this past weekend, I’m not happy at all with the performance of my M-Audio MobilePre USB. I think I will have to sell that device off, and move on with my life. :)

You know, it’s really tough to manage this extra money I make from FuzzMeasure and invest it directly back into development. It’s so tempting to say, “Hey, I have an extra few hundred bucks — I should buy a PS2!” Instead, I get all excited about audio interfaces that I’m able to stretch FuzzMeasure’s feature set with. :)

I finally coded up the impulse zooming feature in FuzzMeasure once again. This was the most daunting task on the TODO list for FuzzMeasure 1.2 that needed to be addressed. There are a few little snags in the drawing code right now, but I may have some ideas about how I can correct it. For the most part, the feature works, and FuzzMeasure’s windowing feature is a whole lot more usable now.

There are still a few more features that I’d like to add to FuzzMeasure for 1.2, just to complete the package. I think that FuzzMeasure beta is usable enough right now that people can start switching over if they wish.

So, the next steps for FuzzMeasure 1.2 are as follows. I will release a “feature complete” version (which will be either 1.2b3 or 1.2b4, depending on how things work out). After this release, I will fix all the reported issues with the features. No new features will be added during this period. Once I’m satisfied that all the issues are sorted out, I will throw out a release candidate. If no issues are reported with that version, it will simply be re-tagged, and officially launched.

I’m already starting to think about 1.3’s feature list, so I really want to push to get 1.2 out the door as soon as I can. Of course, life doesn’t always work out so easily, so we’ll see what happens.

While capturing some test data to validate the impedance measurement feature, I noticed that the three devices I currently test with weren’t performing equally. As a result, I decided to create a user story to illustrate the differences between my testing devices.

Here’s a quick summary — Don’t buy an iMic for use with FuzzMeasure. If you’re looking for a low-cost device to use with FuzzMeasure for both acoustical and electrical measurements, go pick up an M-Audio MobilePre USB.

Of course, for those of you with built-in audio (PowerBook/PowerMac/iMac users), you’ll only need a preamp and microphone for your acoustical measurements. The built-in audio (although not shown in the article), performs quite well. Apple appears to not have skimped on that aspect of their hardware at all.