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.
