Open Beta Version 3.6.0

peter What I can do is to place all the buttons below the waveform

FANTASTIC! Thats the best anyway as the waveform needs to be in clear view.
And i did mention earlier i would preffer all controls below the waveform as it makes more sense when using small devices.

I have just created a song with perfect 11 loops in reasonable time considering there are plenty more little issues but the basic idea works even if i couldnt zoom in all the way i could create unoticable loops, this is great news.

I have come across lots of little problems but i wont mention them untill we get the layout perfect, this is most important.

Regarding BPM and choosing a selected bar count i wont bother testing it yet because i dont believe it will save time , but i will try it once everything is settled, its not very important to me because a lot of my songs run free , so creating my own loops manually works the best and it looks as though its going to be very easy.

PROBLEM and Feedback re loop BAR selection system

I have found an issue when creating a new loop too close to another loop or an end of song where i cant create a loop unless i shift away from this nearby loop or i decrease the bar selection to 1 bar, now i believe this new system is more of a nuecance then a help as you need to stuff around just to get a loop which probably wont work for you anyway if your song has got slight varying tempo within it which most older songs do the new robotic stuff out now will probably work as its been precisely recorded , so my view is this unnecessary selection of 1 to 8 bars is pretty useless and forces me to do more work than i need.
I might need 9 bars or perhaps 12 where does it stop.

I would like to see a smarter auto option instead where if i need a loop between two loops if i place my playhead there it automatically creates a perfect loop in that gap because if those other two loops are perfect than this newly created loop should be automatically perfect and i would still be able to quickly shorten this loop if needed, this speeds up the creative process it does not slow it down like it is now, if you have a 3 bar gap between two loops and you just want to fill that gap to be a loop choosing a 4 bar or 8 bar option will not work as you are talking in bars and the timeline is talking in time you have a guessing contest to which you need to choose otherwise you are just wasting unnecessary time to figure out which bar sellection you need, there are other reasons not to have this time wasting option which i wont go in to now , the only thing you benefit from this is a posability it might give you a moving window that roughly fits on screen which will probably need tweaking anyway and does not cater for 12 bar blues so its more of a pain than a gain.

I would rather have a move to a position hit plus get a loop that starts at the begining of the pointer and gives me a rough 4 bar space that i can then manipulate as i please because its really easy now and if i happen to be in a tight squeeze between two loops it auto selects the end of one loop and begining of the other creating a perfect connection that still allows me to tweak. If im at the ending it attaches itself to the end of the nearby loop to the end and allows me to tweak , this is more important than guessing which bar selection i need.
SIMPLE AND QUICK
i dont want to have unnecessary choices when creating loops i dont want to spend time working out 300 songs BPM which most dont have perfect time anyway and it wont work for me accurately to create perfect loops , i just want a quick perfect loop without computer genius knowledge, dont forget we are musicians first computer geniuses second.

Always focus on the important things first.

Whats important is for us to see the screen we are working on at all times.
How fast can you create 12 loops in a fearly complicated song that varies it tempo.
How can i test all the loops with each other to see if they all work as expected.
How quickly can i make 1 perfect loop.

I gave it a 2 out of 10 , now its getting to a 5 we still need to focus on a number of things before we get to 10.

peter It was a direct request to have more options for the bar length.

Thanks for adding this; I think you should make these options post-creation and not be shy to include them. I'm writing this reply in response to the comments against doing this. What do you think about simply having a + - button to add or subtract one bar from region length per click? Then you could then start with just the 4-bar option and go from there. I'd even advocate for having the main BPM setting on this page and showing transparent bar lines on the waveform, but I think you have so many other ideas to go with for now.

@Damir Have you tried setting the correct tempo for a track and then creating a region based off that tempo to see how well this works? What do you mean that your tracks "run free"—are they recorded LIVE? Yes, with live recordings BPM isn't going to help you. I create my tracks in Logic Pro and still prefer to rehearse guitar parts (in Logic Pro and not ST3) by selecting cycle regions on the timeline because they are aligned to the bars of the song. Anyone else using bought-acktracks from karaoke-version.com etc. could also benefit from BPM options.

peter Added

Ruler above the waveform

Errors aside, this works very well for testing the loop point, along with the pinch zoom.

peter Giving me loop option sizes just creates another unnecessary step as the bar count choice will never be accurate anyway

That's not true. If your bpm setting is correct, the loop length will be perfect and you just need to slide it into position (with the lock enabled to keep the length constant).

Perhaps i should have elaborated with my comment, yes your idea will work and speed up workflow if all your songs have been created using a click track and you dont have tempo changes in other words you have a very robotic song, also your timeline also shows bars and beats yes this could work, but as we know most good songs are from the past and have not been recorded in that way they vary slightly in speed and tempo to create feel which is something a lot of new stuff lacks, to make this work ST3 needs to be able to recognize bars and in a song no matter what then this idea might work, you still have a problem where some loops need to be 7 bars or perhaps 12 or 32 or anywhere in between otherwise you have not achieved a time saving option.
This gets very involved yet returns gained are very little.
The path you are on now is going to make loop creation very eazy and fast so why complicate things, when more effort is needed in other areas like the logical behaviour between the playhead and the pinch zoom and the swipe, method of testing already created loops etc.

MasterAnt Thanks for adding this; I think you should make these options post-creation and not be shy to include them. I'm writing this reply in response to the comments against doing this

Thanks Ant, if you look at a few years history I’m the least shy person in the forum and have always encouraged users to put their ideas forward, that said all I want is a simple and quick precise way to create loops the playback function is virtually ready , the problem is the loop system was an unknown till now so input was not possible now we have some idea what is possible we can suggest things and I have done more than expected but my vision seems to be too advanced for what can be delivered so we have to make do with what we have , which is not too bad I love things that work well but I absolutely hate things that waste my time.
I am more than happy to have a system that helps those that need loop help but as long as it doesn’t effect the simple fast way I like to operate , yes before we had a very awkward system so any other help ideas like locked bars was possibly a help, but with this new way of accurately being able to create loops I believe my way will be much faster specially when all the bugs are ironed out , mixing bars and time way of operating is not good unless you do it properly, what we have now is only geared up for time way of doing things to introduce bars would need a lot more than a window that moves around , the songs have to be broken down to bars and then beats the bars to be numbered and then you have a way of operating , but this is not the case , not everyone has used logic and a click track that is perfectly timed so then it can be manipulated in ST3 easily, so why stress out when you can just slide a fader hear the end result a use it, this applies to any song which ever way it was recorded.
Let’s wait and see what Peter can come up with before we get to excited but I have a feeling he is slowly heading in the right direction and we will end up with something that will be very usable.
Cheers Damir

peter I don't have beat detection so I can not show bars on the waveform but I could draw some markers on the active region that would indicate beats at the given bpm value. Maybe even activate a snap functionality although I think that that might be too invasive.

For the purpose of snapping, seeing the beat markers within the region might be useful.

Improvement ideas
How can we get to the loop editor easier and faster? To tweak it.
Is there a gesture left we can use to get us there quicker? like a long press on the waveform,
i know this section uses a lot of gestures already but surely theres a better way than what we have now its something that is going to be continually used a lot as people might rearange their loops or just tweak them a bit, at the moment you have a touch to enter a menu that does not show anything so you need to scroll down then look very carefully to spot tha loop feature that is labeled poorely and sits in a very unusual spot.
Surely the loop system deserves a much quicker access method.

As i mentioned earlier shifting it next to Edit Lyrics and renaming it to something more relatable like LOOP EDITOR , LOOP CREATOR, or whatever as long as there is a LOOP word in it so we can relate to it.
But eaven that is still two push buttons away, can we make it a one something away as it deserves to be very accessable as it is THE MAIN ATTRACTION of the show in this software followed by LYRICS EDITOR, than MULTI TRACK EDITOR, these three features are what makes this software so uneque at the moment for on stage.use and should be easily available.

Suggestion
To avoid having to hunt down your basic needs, the three features should be next to eachother and labeled consinstantly.

Just below PLAYLISTS

LOOP EDITOR
LYRICS EDITOR
MULTITRACK EDITOR

This keeps the naming of features consistant and in one area so no hunting is required and its very logical, if its not a multitrack song then that label is removed.

At the moment everything is all ove the place and is labeled poorely.
It takes work to get to these features.

Loops Feedback
I am absolutely loving the loop playback when all the loops are perfect, you can not tell where the loop points are yet you can mess around the order of song till the cows come home.
This should work really well on stage.
Suggestion
The name of the loops to be central to the loop segment and to be bright white so the names stand out more.

peter Regarding the bug report: I suspect this happens when you select the next region to jump to just a fraction before the current ends

No that’s not the case, I said when you are in STOP mode then select a loop , then hit play , some loops replay twice before they move on.
This should not happen they should all always play through once only.
This seems to happen in some loop selections but not in others.
It has nothing to do with close to end of loop last second selections, so far I haven’t had those issues even though I have tested for that.