Open Beta Version 3.6.0

peter

After some very busy months I am finally able to kick off the public beta testing phase for version 3.6.0. This is one of the biggest feature updates so far regarding the number of changes that made it into this release and also the complexity of the features added.

Due to the large number of changes and heavy work on the audio engine I plan to keep the public beta running for at least 6 weeks. So the final version 3.6.0 will most likely be released around the same time that iOS16 will be released.

How to take part in testing

Anyone can participate in the beta. The beta version is installed as a separate app so that you can use the stable version in parallel. If you already participated in previous beta tests, you will get a notification about the new version in Testflight. New testers can use this link on an iOS device or a Mac to participate:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/pq4xbzSq

In app purchases will not bill your account. They are only test purchases, so don't be shy activating the full version.

The user manual is not adapted to the new version yet, so please feel free to ask here if you have any questions regarding the new features. I will explain some of the most important ones in this posting.

Most important new features

Loopable audio regions

This is by far the biggest new addition. Each song can contain up to 6 audio regions. Each region can have a name and color assigned and will be displayed in the waveform display in the player. You can use regions to help you see where exactly you are in a song or to rearrange songs during playback. Each region can be looped and it is possible to jump between regions.

Creating and editing audio regions

To setup your regions, there is a new item Edit Audio Regions in the Playback & Trim section of the song details. This will open the following audio region editor:

Tapping on + will create a new region at the current playback position. You can also select one of the existing regions by tapping on it. This will mark the region yellow and now you can drag the left or right region marker. You first drag the region marker roughly to the position you want to set and keep steady while still holding down your finger or the mouse butten. After 1 second the view will then automatically zoom in so that you can make fine adjustments.

The table on the lower portion of the screen can be used to set a name and color for the region and define whether this region will loop by default or not.

You can preview your loops by dragging the song position into the region and starting playback. Please note that you you can change the region markers during playback, but it will only affect the loop on the next cycle. So what I usually do is to set the loop marker, then start playback to check the loop, then make corrections and drag the song pointer again into the audio region. Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied with a seamless loop.

Playback and audio regions

During playback you will see your regions within the waveform view. The title might not be displayed if the region is too small to fit it. Therefore it makes sense to always use the same colors for different song parts.

A tap on a region will toggle the loop on and off. If a region is looping you need to turn the loop off to continue playback for the rest of the song.

Keeping a region pressed for 1 second will mark it white which means that the white region will be played next once playback reaches the start or end of another region. Another long press will turn it off and playback will continue linear. This makes it possible completely rearrange a song during playback.

You can also map these actions to remote pedals or MIDI. There is one command to toggle the loop status of the currently playing region (will do nothing outside of a region). Another command will cycle the next active region to rearrange the song.

Keyboard Shortcuts in lyrics editor

When using a physical keyboard, you can use the following shortcut commands in the editor:

CMD + SHIFT + SPACE to start/stop playback
CMD + SHIFT + t to set a timecode
CMD + SHIFT + m to open the midi learn dialog
CMD + SHIFT + b to insert brackets

Of course all other standard commands like CMD + c to copy or CMD + b for bold text also work.

Sharing songs with another device

A new file format allows sharing selected songs in the songlist with all attached audio and pdf files with another device. Just select all songs you want in edit mode and tap on the share button.

You can also share a whole playlist with all songs in that playlist. Just tap on the share button within a playlist.

Repeating songs

The slide left menu (or context menu on a Mac) now contains a Repeat playback mode which is similar to autoplay but keeps on repeating the selected song until you turn that mode off or crossfade into another song. Please not that crossfades during the repeat don't work. You can only crossfade into another song but not into the same song.

Complete Changelog

Added

Up to 6 loopable audio regions within songs
Support for new file format to transfer specific songs including file attachments between devices
2 page PDF view mode
Increased number of seperate outputs for multichannel songs to 4
Songs can now be repeated
MIDI learn buttons now available on all MIDI input fields
New 6-band parametric equalizer mode for master equalizer
New crossfade options
Song filter option to filter by bpm value range
Playlists can now be automatically sorted
MIDI ports can be disabled
New keyboard shortcut commands in lyrics editor
Separate remote commands to start and stop playback in addition to the existing start/stop command
Remote commands to mute individual track in multitrack songs
Assignable actions and remote commands to rewind and forward by 10 seconds
Automatic latency compensation when using bluetooth or airplay speakers

Changed

Songs can be deleted with or without appended files
Seeking to end of a song will progress to the next song
Edit mode in playlists will show number and length of selected songs
Sharing a playlist in plain text format will now create a text file and open the share dialog instead of sending out an email
Multiple taps on playlist tab will alternate between playlists overview and current playllist
Stage Traxx will restore the last opened tab after a restart
Holding down assignable buttons will repeatedly trigger the selected action
Added artist and duration info for shared plain text playlists
Done marker is disabled by default for new users
Waveform is now generated from all audio channels in a file
Current playlist will restart if last song has autoplay enabled
Timed MIDI messages are sent during playback in lyrics editor
Seeking during crossfade or when next track has been armed is now disabled

Fixed

MIDI message timing issues (accuracy is now roughly 3ms)
Song list no longer automatically scrolling to next song when user is manually scrolling while the current song ends
Chord only transpose settings not sent to network clients
Current song not centered when opening a playlist
PDF autoscrolling only working on first playback in some cases

Damir

peter Hi Peter, i was so excited to try this beta after reading all the new features to my great disappointment in APPLE, apparently my iMac 27 inch is just a fraction too old to run the new OS , so i had to rush out today to buy another one that looks exactly the same with a worse keyboard and found out i was lucky to get it as it was one of the last 27 inch models, from now on you can only buy 24 inch ones , so people beware go and grab one now if you want a big 27 inch screen, i just don't get apple its like its been run by &)$#%=;,#@ , anyway now i have an old 24 inch iMac great little machine to use as a mirror, a fantastic 27 inch iMac to give my little grandchildren to play with in their cubby house , and another identical twin that i can hopefully get ST3 on to try out the new features. THANKS APPLE you selfish little 'jh@93 .
Anyway after all that shopping i ran out of time to test ST3 which i am dying to try out later tonight.
Sorry for the rant but i thought id warn users if they have older machines with big screens to update ASP while there are still shops that stock them otherwise you will end up with a 24 inch screen.

paulrivers

peter hi I only have big sur on macbook pro can you help

theVAMband

peter Separate remote commands to start and stop playback in addition to the existing start/stop command

wow I haven't tried the new beta yet, but looking forward to its formal release, and thank you Peter for including the above update. its a simple solution for MIDI commands so that stopping a track doesn't re-trigger the start/stop mechanism

the majority of this thread is about the new looping feature, which honestly I really have no use for, as I manipulate song arrangements in my DAW as needed, which is perfectly aligned to the grid, even for older songs that were recorded without a metronome. for a song that could have extended solo sections, I just create multiple versions of the song in my DAW & ST3 (with time coded lyrics reflecting the extensions in the arrangement), then each has a unique MIDI code, and it all works perfectly.

Thanks Peter for your dedication in upgrading the app, its features, and being so open to user feedback in this forum.

MasterAnt

Not sure if I read the above correctly or if I have done something wrong, but I'm getting an error, ""Stage Traxx 3 Beta” can only be tested on an macOS device." while trying this on my iPad.

peter

iOS version is still in review. The Mac version is already available. I have no idea why it takes so much longer to review the iOS version at Apple.

NachoChez

peter Very excited about the looping functionality!
How can I get on the beta list and get an iOS TestFlight invite?

peter

The iOS version is now available in Testflight

NachoChez The first post contains a link to participate.

Boris

You are the best and more best

Damir

Hi Peter, the new Xfade feature is brilliant it really makes it less painful to crash out from one song to another by having 0 fade in time specially if all your songs are immediate start.
Well done

Damir

Playlist automatically sorted.
Ok that’s fine that you can sort them in alphabetical order but that was already working that way, the fact you can sort it out by date created is cool but unless you can manually rearrange the order of the playlists these other two features don’t help greatly.
These new features would be useful if you messed up all your playlists then wanted to rearrange them but you can’t mess them up much anyway as they a fixed in alphabetical order A to Z or Z to A and by date is handy if you just wanted to see latest few playlists, so it’s ok but not flexible to suit all users as there might be users that like to have full control of order of their playlists.

What still really baffles me is why is there a filter option there as it has no use in this page except make all your playlists disappear if used
You can not set a filter for playlists so why have this it’s just confusing. I know we talked about this before but I still don’t understand it, all I know if I use it I loose all my playlists and can’t get them back unless I clear the filter, I believe this is more of a nuisance then a feature it is either in the wrong spot or it doesn’t work.
If it has to be explained again it means it ain’t workin.

Cheers Damir

peter

Damir You need to assign keywords to your playlists, then the filters make sense. Without keywords, the filter is useless.

Damir

peter I have assigned key words in SONG mode and the filter works fine there, it just doesn’t seem to do anything in playlists I have about 20 playlists and about 20,000 songs but I don’t se a purpose for this filter in playlists it just makes all the playlists disappear and I don’t know why, it should not interfere with my main play list I should always be able to see my list to choose one then if I am in a playlist this filter should be used to filter through my playlists songs that exist . I don’t see any purpose with this filter in main playlist area.
Is anyone using this , if so how do they make it work to be a benefit?
Cheers Damir

DickyDutch

Hi Peter - at the moment I’m not finding it very easy to define the start and end of a loop - guess I need more practice. Also I’m finding that there is an annoying crackle or spitting noise at the restart of the loop which I can’t seem to get rid of. How do you delete a loop - can’t seem to find that anywhere. Will continue to test.

MasterAnt

DickyDutch I'm also struggling to set start and end points.

I'm not much of a loop user, but can see the value in keeping solos going for longer.

It's always baffled me why you never get a loop preview (in other apps I've tried, such as Anytune which I use for learning a song.) Why not have something like a 2-second preview graphic window with the end of the loop being shown on the left, and the beginning of the loop being shown on the right. Then just having a play button to preview the loop transition. Obviously, some fine controls over moving the loop points would be important too. I'm just unable to get the exact points I need with a low resolution editor. Maybe it's easier on MacOS, but it isn't on iOS with a finger. Crossfading at the loop point would probably fix the clicks, or really fine control with visual/manual waveform matching would also sort that out, or just do it by ear, but you'd need a finer resolution. Also, maybe a nudge +- button next to the in and out points would make it easier. I'd also like to see the playhead position while zoomed in.

@DickyDutch There's a Delete Region option under the Begin and End times. You may need to scroll up.

I love the new crossfade options!!! I had a malfunction ONCE, but I've tried to replicate it and can't. Currently I have mine on 2.2s fade-out and 0s fade-in and it works well for my music. Apply to continuous playback is off. (I think it should be off by default.)

I love the display in playlists of the total time. Just one thing, and not a big deal, I see that changing tempo doesn't change song time; it just shows the same time and plays the song quicker or slower (seconds count faster or slower.) It would mean an inaccurate total length. But, as I'm only adjusting by up to 2% on some songs, it's not a big deal.

Nice work @peter!

peter

DickyDutch If you get crackles it means your loop points or not set correctly. And to delete a region highlight it and tap on the delete button in the details table below the waveform view.

Damir You can assign keywords to song or playlists. Just assign a keyword to a playlist and the filter will work as expected.

Damir Let’s say end of loop is 1min I increase to 1.30 I hear the first minute then nothing for 30 sec then audio comes back at beginning I hear it till the one minute mark again, if I stop play and start again it plays through correctly right through 1.30 min.

That's what I meant with: you need to restart playback when changing loop points. The playback schedules the currently defined audio region for playback. But I think I know why you hear 30 seconds of silence. Part of the player thinks the loop is longer than what has been scheduled. I guess that's a bug that I will take care of. An automated stop/start after a region change should do the trick.

MasterAnt Did you use the zoom functionality like seen in the short clip in my posting? I find setting loop points works quite well in the zoomed view. Granted, it does not work well on an iPhone but the iPad in landscape mode works fine.

Damir how can i activate and deactivate audio mute on the software itself without a foot pedal , is there a way to do this on the software ?

You can set the assignable buttons to mute/unmute or reassign your pedal button or quite and restart the app.

Damir Single touch selects the loop to be next.
Single touch again on this section cancels this request in case you changed your mind.
Long press on a section puts it in permanent loop.
Long press again on the same section cancels this request.

Any other opinions on this? My take is that if you want to exit a looping region you need to deactivate the loop and I don't want to have to keep my finger pressed on the screen to trigger this action during a performance. Therefore I made it the other way around (short tap for loop and long tap for selection). Another reason: loop triggering will be needed more often then selecting the next region.

Damir The other observation is if i long press a section to highlight it then i long press it to cancel this request the audio jumps to my finger position which is very bad as you didn't want a sudden song position change you just wanted to cancel the loop selection.

You probably wiggled your finger a bit. Disable waveform seek during playback to prevent it.

Damir A double click on a loop section immediately pays this section.

I can't use a double tap gesture because that would delay all single taps. Else it would not be possible to distinguish between a single and a double tap. And I tried it and it feels completely wrong when you single tap and the action is triggered half a second later.

MasterAnt

Damir

Playlist keywords are like stickers you attach to a whole list, not to a single song.

You access this list by clicking the blue tag icon on the playlist screen, not via the (i) button which takes you to SONG tags nor from song mode.

To add a sticker to a playlist, you need to pay attention to TICKING the tag, not using the + to add a new tag name.

Then, filtering works. This filters PLAYLISTS, not SONGS, which means you either see a complete playlist or you don't. It's not about individual songs.

You could tag multiple sets into one event by tagging them with the name of the event. It only has value if you have loads of playlists with similar names probably.

Damir

Creating a loop, I found I loose sound if I increase the length of the loop.
Let’s say end of loop is 1min I increase to 1.30 I hear the first minute then nothing for 30 sec then audio comes back at beginning I hear it till the one minute mark again, if I stop play and start again it plays through correctly right through 1.30 min.
This I noticed while trying to create first few loops it seems to be a regular occurrence if you do it a certain way.
I will write back once I establish its exact trigger.

Damir

MasterAnt thanks for the thorough explanation Ant , I don’t really use a lot of playlists to justify this function so I will ignore it, my playlists are actually gig lists, and I reuse a lot of them with slight tweaks to save time, all of my 333 songs reside in all my playlists, I just recreate the first 50 song order to suit the gig and have different function gigs in different playlists, whenever I do a new song I just add it to all my playlists.
The idea is I don’t have to change to another playlist or song mode to find a song and up/down on foot pedal does the rest but most of the time my song order of 50 songs does fine.
Occasionally I need a song in the playlist quickly, found using my hands on the iPad to go to Song and search tap on the song and I’m away again, the only issue I had was when I go back to playlist this selected song did not appear in the middle of list but I believe Peter got it working again the way it use to be so I’m a happy Chappy. I can’t wait to start using the looping features, I could have used it last gig just as a song was finishing everybody got on the dance floor I wished I could have gone back to first verse again but no the song finished and of course the next song was not as appropriate 😩 hopefully that problem will go away soon.
Thanks again Damir

Damir

Hi Peter, i have stumbled on a problem, i tried to setup my stomp six foot control to operate the loop features, my foot pedal switch 5 is used for audio mute, so i thought i would program this switch to scroll through the loops, as audio mute was active i changed this switch to the looping function and so far this function seems to scroll through the loops ok but i was stuck on hearing any audio and now my audio mute is activated but i cant deactivate it as my pedal 5 is no longer that option, my question is , how can i activate and deactivate audio mute on the software itself without a foot pedal , is there a way to do this on the software ?

Damir

Hi Peter, after using my stomp 6 with looping, i think it is usable on stage it seems to work well when choosing next loop point it obviously has a no selection of loop then goes through the loops and highlights the one that will activate next, this is usable on stage but the actual software interface is bad, as i said earlier a single touch of a loop section should select it to be the next playing section not to be an activation for permanent loop, this does not make sense, a long press should activate permanent loop option , in other words its back to front.

Again keeping it simple,
Single touch selects the loop to be next.
Single touch again on this section cancels this request in case you changed your mind.
Long press on a section puts it in permanent loop.
Long press again on the same section cancels this request.
A double click on a loop section immediately pays this section.

If you choose a song that contains looping , and single touch or foot pedal to a section and hit start the song should start from there.

At the moment if you choose a song with looping and scroll to a section you highlight because this is where you want to start from the song still starts from beginning.
A single touch of any loop point should start play from that loop point.

Damir

Using iPad looping feature by finger control, i am finding that the highlighted loop point does not stand out enough to be easily distinguishable from the other coloured loops, this is very important to be able to be seen at a distance.
The other observation is if i long press a section to highlight it then i long press it to cancel this request the audio jumps to my finger position which is very bad as you didn't want a sudden song position change you just wanted to cancel the loop selection.

As i said before a long press to choose a next loop is a wrong choice of command, this command takes time to do and it should be a quicker single touch command , a long press is more suited for functions less required like continual loop. After experiencing an audio jump i think perhaps a quick double tap might be more suitable to use as a permanent loop command then the long press as this can cause the song to jump by mistake to a point that was not requested.
Once you experience what I'm talking about you will all agree with me just play around a bit more and experiment.

Suggestion for better highlighting, perhaps a bright framed box around the selected loop point.
And perhaps a very bright song position line so you can easily see where is the current song position.

Damir

Creating a loop , as already pointed out is very hard if not impossible to create an accurate loop.
Other Logic suggestions.
Once you create a loop as it pops up it should be highlighted in the first colour of the chart and should play from beginning to end and loop again without any interaction from user.

The loop switch in each loop point should have no affect how the editor player functions, the editor player should always play in a loop so you can select your loop points.

There is a fault where if you select new loop points the player doesn't update till you stop and start the player again this is very important.

Zooming in when long pressing is nowhere near accurate enough for accurate loop creation,
The audio scrubbing replay and visual display is too coarse and inaccurate to be useful, its a great idea and I've used it on other software but its too rough in ST3, i like the concept but it needs tweaking.
My suggestion if possible is similar to Ants, the grab and drag to get a rough loop is fine but instead of a long press and zoom, i would tap on the loop and it opens up a more accurate editor that looks at the in and out points only zoomed in enough so you can precisely shift these points and the loop point would concentrate on the first and last 10 seconds of the loop point so when you open this window you immediately hear the last 10 seconds of the loop then it plays the first 10 seconds of the loop and it keeps playing this in a loop of its own so you can accurately shift the two zoomed in points for precise editing once you are happy with it hit stop exits to the normal edit window choose a new loop hit play touch the same loop opens the precise zoomed it editor again.

At the moment you would spend hours to create usable loops and still not be possibly happy.

Some other feedback
Next + loop creation chooses the next colour and so on.
The colours should be visible in the editor.
The colours should be more different from each other.

At the moment if you enter the audio editor that contains loops all you get is the whole song without any loop selection and a play button, this seems pointless, at least the first loop should be already selected for you so you can see your other options and that then encourages you to touch another loop point and so on, you entered this section to edit loops not to play the whole song. Your loop points should be all highlighted in the colour you chose.
If you have engaged the loop switch on a loop making this as a default the editor loop section should have the same loop icon appear on all loops that have been engaged for this just like in play mode, this than makes it obvious what selections you have chosen for default looping without having to highlight every loop in the editor.

Ok for now i will give it a rest i have managed to crash the software a number of times and have sent the report back to Peter.

I think once this looping feature is ironed out it will work well on stage, could i use it now?
No unfortunately its biggest problem is its loop creation speed and accuracy.