Open Beta Version 3.6.0
- Edited
Damir The highlighting of loop sections is not working on my ipad the song jumps to the loop point but it doesn't visually show the highlight and by the way the now selected region is not stand out enough for on stage use you need it to kick you in the face 
.
You mean when playback is not running? That's right in that case because the playhead is moved to the beginning of that region. So you are already at the start of that region so nothing needs to be highlighted. It works actually the same during playback, once playback reaches the highlighted region, the highlight is removed.
Regarding highlighting: I guess a flashing highlight might be usefull (just like the flashing song ending indicator).
No you didnt understand, there are two issues one i believe is a bug and the other feedback.
Bug,in stop mode when you touch a loop the song starts from the begining of loop as expected but it should also be highlighted to indicate it has been chosen at the moment it does not also highlight, but in play mode it does highlight this is inconsistant, and visually not helpful , you want a loop section selected to highlight in all modes no matter what playing condition.
I might want to start on a verse or i might pause in the middle of the song addlib than choose solo to get back in to backing so i expect SOLO to be highlighted and ready from begining of loop to assure me it is the next selection for when i trigger start again.
Here is my ideal situation.
Whichever loop is playing should have a bright colour box surround it and a nice big bright playhead playing through it, a newly selected loop to be obviously highlighted in both Play/Stop mode once a newly selected highlighted box is started to play it gets the standard bright box around it allowing you to look for another loop section.
At the moment you can hardly see where your playhead is and when a loop point is playing you have no idea which part is playing, the only good thing is a newly selected loop does highligh reasonably but it s still not good enough for on stage.
The other feedback is i rather have really sharp full colour loops sections without a waveform behind them thats white and destroys the contrast of all loop colours, when all we need is a STAND OUT PLAYHEAD, so we can clearly see where we are in the song and in which loop point were in, waveform elswhere where there are no loops is fine but loops its more important to recognize your loops and where you are in a song at a distance.
Thats why i was suggesting different colours , the two reds are too close to see a diference the orange/yellow is similar the two blues are close, especially when you have a white waveform in the background washing all the colours out, my point is to try to make the loop point pop out on the screen to be able to be easily seen on stage at a meter or two distance from the device
At the moment it all looks good at home with a screen right in your face.
Not sure I would prefer that. Does anyone else have an opinion about this? Should a running playback be stopped the moment you start moving a region border and be replaced by the scrubbing preview?
Why would you not want this after all you are creating a loop so once you have chosen a side bar it means you are looking for the new loop point why would you not want to hear the scrubbing as you are searching, you definitely dont need to hear the middle of the loop playing you a interested in finding the start and stop of loop points at the moment you are dragging the sides without any idea where you are and just guessing to where you need to stop than having to manually select the last portion of that point to check if youare anywhere near, this is VERY BAD , time saver is you grab the sides the end of loop becomes your playhead position and scrubs the audio for you to hear your new loop point once you drop this then zoom in you should also be in scrub mode to fine tune the edit but whats most important is to hear a preroll of the end of loop through to the begining of loop this has to be long enough so you can hear a couple of bars before and after the loop point so you can feel the beat and easily hear if the loop works.
At the moment this is very bad there is no easy way to get to a rough loop and the fine tune section is useless as its pre roll is so tight you cant use it its an actual nuecance .
We need a loop system that plays through the edit point and a fine tune means to adjust the in and out point.
Your existing system generally is fine it just needs to be made to do those basic things.
The other issue i have with it when in zoom and moving through the waveform you have a very narrow movement then you hit a brick wall, the waveform should keep on moving to allow you to choose all the acessable waveform not just the immediate area.
So you want the text field to always clear automatically when you tap on it?
Yes if i select rename section it should highlight the NEW REGION and immediately write over it, if you dont change anything selecting another loop leaves that as was.
In other words dont bother us with things that you know have to happen, if we have chosen rename it means we want to rename, if we have chosen another loop it means save my renamed section and let me get on with my next renaming.
Mouse Click of finger gesture on portable devices
1 loop selected as next
...
4 loop deselected
Interesting approach. I will try out how that feels. Not sure how to map that to pedal buttons though. The loop button should not only work on the selected region, it should primarily work on the current region.
This was only meant for devices, the foot pedal is fine as it is, as its different in its performance.
Actually this is already in use when in play mode, but what i was referring to is when you are in stop mode, and now i know what was my issue the selected loop did not highlight, and thats the point, perhaps this is something that has to be closely looked at once everything more important is working
The idea is to be able to easily chose a new loop point and then to be able to cancle it easily if needed, this gives more operational freedom, perhaps as you cancle the loop point the playhead position gets restored to the previous position if start hasnt been activated.
This means if you were in a non loop spot and you select a loop it cues up the begining of loop and highlights it but if you press the loop again is deselects the loop and restores the old playhead point.
Just a thought , something to think about after more tests as a player.
Damir Oh my god please please please use the Quote button when quoting something. It is not possible to distinguish what you are quoting and what you write yourself. Just mark the text and tap on the quote button:
Damir Bug,in stop mode when you touch a loop the song starts from the begining of loop as expected but it should also be highlighted to indicate it has been chosen at the moment it does not also highlight, but in play mode it does highlight this is inconsistant, and visually not helpful , you want a loop section selected to highlight in all modes no matter what playing condition.
The play playhead is already at the beginning of the region. That's the same behavior as during playback. The highlight is only visible as long as the playhead did not reach the beginning of the region. Or would you rather like to see that the highlight is removed once you press play?
MasterAnt So if I want 16 measures, do I have to do the math on the times myself?
You mean you would rather like to create 16 measure long audio regions by default? In most cases you have to adjust start and beginning afterwards anyway. So 4 measures seemed like a sensible default length for me.
Damir Yes if i select rename section it should highlight the NEW REGION and immediately write over it, if you dont change anything selecting another loop leaves that as was.
But then it would delete your custom defined names any time you tap on that field.
peter No you don’t get it,as you select rename it just highlights the old name but if you don’t change anything it remains as was as soon as you enter a letter it selects the old name and allows you to write a new name and as soon as you exit to the interface it saves this change. In other words you don’t need to erase the old to enter the new it’s automatic and also you don’t need to hit enter to save its automatic.
This just creates a faster workflow.
peter You mean you would rather like to create 16 measure long audio regions by default? In most cases you have to adjust start and beginning afterwards anyway. So 4 measures seemed like a sensible default length for me.
No, the default can be anything; maybe your 4-measures is best. (I'm yet to test actually creating a region based on bpm, but will test that later today.)
Just wondering if I were to go setting regions with bpm and beats versus selecting a region by ear and waveform spikes as I do now, would it then make sense to have some controls over the number of beats? (Such as a quick way to double/halve region length, etc.)
Peter after some playing around , i have realized some things that i never considered and ithink its well worth bashing out as it is most important we get the logic of operation perfect for on stage use everything else will fall in to place.
I know i suggested a single tap to enable a loop and another single tap on that loop while its playing enables the permanent loop option, and yes this seems good but it also creates a limitation to other important ways of operation.
Perhaps if i mention them you might reconsider a long press for activating/deactivating a permanent loop.
As you select a loop you should be able to deselect a loop just as easy,once you have selected a loop and a new play point is created a deselection of that loop should alwas go back to the last playhead position as you have changed your mind , at the moment you have it so you are locked in to that first selection, this is BAD , when i load a song it is cued up from start if i press a loop point i want to start from i have no choice now i am stuck on that starting point, but if i deselect that loop i should be able to start from the begining of song .
By keeping to a simple consistant logic you can give us a lot of freedom yet keep things very easy, by introducing, perhaps we can still keep the single touch on the now playing loop but we need to think of outside the loop freedom as well.
So the question is, can we make it so while i am playing or not playingthe a song we have full freedom to easily choose what we want?
I think we can we just have to think in different ways untill we cant push the system anymore.
Some logic thoughts.
I load my song the first loop starts 3 seconds in as that was the best looping point as it has intro instrument part that does not make a good loop or perhaps it has a count in i have left out of the loop, the point is if i select that loop it will leave out this front area but if i now change my mind and deselect this loop it wont go back to my beginning now this logic needs to change, this applies to all other loops especially when in stop mode as you could be paused in the middle of a non looped section and then you choose a loop then you change your mind and deselect it you would expect to return back to the old non looped play point, this should apply to any amount of loops you engage the bottom line is if no loops are engaged you allways return to the last non looped song position, this gives you freedom to selelect and deselect loop points but still keep your paused position if you end up not choosing to use loops at all and just continue.
Going back to single selecting logic, what i think would work better.
Permanent looping feature is not really the bees nees way of looping as i dont see the point of permanently looping a point you have to get off it eventually, but what i find usefull is perhaps singly repeating a section to either repeat it cause the crowd loves it or extend it so you can show off with your solos, so a better way of doing this is just selecting the same part again this creates a single loop and does not make you do another foot switch to turn off permanent loop, which could be dangerous because you are so engrosed in your solo you forget to turn it off, so my idea os a single tap to choose a loop and another tap not to choose it works much better because you dont get a permanent loop point option poping up to confuse the flow, a permanent loop on foot switches is still available for eveyone to choose but it also allows others to just use the select switch to choose the same loop your on and they end up with a single repeat , because its so easy to do this they can do this a few more times but knowing if we do nothing at the end of the loop it will get of the loop automatically , i think this gives freedom to everyone whichever way they might preffer.
But the operation on the interfaces is much better as you single tap to choose the same loop area it repeats once and moves on but if you select it again but change your mind you can undo it at the moment you would create a permanent loop instead but this is not really that hard to do with a long press if you really need a permanent loop, its almost better to make it a bit harder because you dont want accidental permanent loop to happen as it could be embarrasing, so i would rather have really easy single selection/deselection than permanent loop popping up when you dont want it.
I hope i have described things clearly , the idea is to make ST3 simple , powerful and easy to use and to please the majority of users.
Permanent loop is not something a lot of users would need but a single repeat function is very usefull, both functions are perfectly available on the foot pedals but i feel as though on the interfaces the operational logic is not perfect.it could be easier.
Damir Does anyone else have an opinion about this? Should a running playback be stopped the moment you start moving a region border and be replaced by the scrubbing preview?
I really like the scrubbing preview. The purpose of this screen is to find the region borders and as it is it is focused on doing that. It plays the loop when you leave it alone. Maybe there should be other buttons in-line with the play button to enable/disable loop preview mode, then play can just play without being interrupted with preview mode off. Also play then wouldn't need to start when you move the markers with playback is off unless you turned preview on.
Damir Permanent loop is not something a lot of users would need but a single repeat function is very usefull, both functions are perfectly available on the foot pedals but i feel as though on the interfaces the operational logic is not perfect.it could be easier.
As a singer/guitarist, the initial way I see myself using loops is to extend a guitar solo IF I feel the need to at the time. I realise this is a very simple use for loops. The two default options I could use are NO LOOP or INFINITE LOOP, and a pedal would have to be assigned to toggle. I have tested this and it works very well. I can't see myself favouring a single loop. If that were the case, I'd edit my backing track. For people who buy backing tracks and would like to lengthen sections, they'd probably want to enter a fixed number to the loops. As music performance is very creative, there is no best way to do this.
MasterAnt as i said the foot pedal control is really good it gives users operational flexability, my point was only talking about the interface control of the single select function that gets tangled up with permanent loop function, a single tap to select all loop sections and the ability to single tap to deselect is most important especially in stop mode.
To me a long press to activivate/deactivate permanent loops is safe and reasonably easy it also is not in my face because i rather use the select method to create a loop this gives me confidence the loop will end and i can move on without further interaction but it also gives me that instentanious freedom to loop again or not to loop again, meaning i dont have to plan i can just create on the run with one button push not two button pushes or two pedal control, i can achieve all i want with one thing and one push, this is freedom.
This is what i think would work better on stage, please ignore the exact colour choice or text size or colour this is just a simple alternative example.
The idea is to make everything as much in your face as possible so it can be easily seen at a distance or on an Iphone.
In loop mode we are not really interested in the waveform its all about jumping around the song with ease, flexability, speed.
Any other views? I just want a big smile on our faces everytime we get on stage.
Cheers Damir
MasterAnt that’s how I think a lot of singer guitarist would use it me included and the foot pedal is setup perfect for this , I am talking about the interface finger\mouse control on the devices even though it’s good now it still feels like it’s not perfect when you look at it from many different ways of operation.
This might have to be ironed out later when people start using it and finding out the frustrations so I’m trying to minimise these issues before hand but it’s hard with minimal use to fully test.
I think making a loop is most important issue at the moment this needs to be simple quick and accurate.
Cheers Damir
Hi Peter, how do you highlight peoples responses then respond again, i thought you only had the power to do this, but ive noticed others are doing it, how is that done?
Thanks Damir
Regarding the toggling of the loop feature. The way it is now is actually working quite well in my opinion: A tap on the currently playing region toggles the loop setting for that region. So while you are playing you can decide whether you want to loop the current section up until the end of that region. The pedal action works the same. It will toggle the loop of the currently playing region.
A tap on any other region will select or deselect it.
peter sorry Pete dont forget i just discovered the undo function in lyrics edit after a lot of years of pain, so if its not in my face i dont know about it, also i havent used forums before, i dont wast time easily but believe ST3 justifies it, if something is worth doing its worth doing well.
Thanks il give it a shot next time.