Is there a way to “refresh” the waveform display?

Midimannz

The options have gone for some multitracks …………………

peter

You can only generate the waveform from the longest track. So if you don't see the option on some tracks, they are shorter than another track in the song.

AnthonyB

peter You can only generate the waveform from the longest track. So if you don't see the option on some tracks, they are shorter than another track in the song.

I've just been 'caught out' by this feature and it had me scratching my head as I was seeing inconsistent behaviour as I added a mono stem to a few of my existing multitrack songs.
I had always seen the generate waveform option on all wave files in my multitrack songs, so I was scratching my head as to why it was disappearing from my existing tracks and only showing on the just added track, and only for 1-2 of the songs I was working on.

My first thought was that while I understand the logic behind the decision, it was still quite frustrating.
Then I found an upside! It had inadvertently alerted me to the fact that I had screwed up the track export from my DAW, resulting in a wave file of different length to my main backing/click/cues, and was also going to be out of time!

peter

Version 4 will create a composite waveform by summing up all tracks. So no more limitations in that regard.

AnthonyB

peter Would it be too much to ask for BOTH options? I.e. the current method of having it generate from any selected audio file OR a Composite one?

I've just had the missing "Generate Waveform" yet again alert me to one of my stem exports not being the same length as the others. I know this is not the intended purpose (maybe there could be some warning in Song when using multitrack if audio files are not same length?) but it is really useful!

peter

I want to get away from too many options. Version 3 has way too many options which leads to a lot of user questions. So my goal is to tone down the amount of options a bit in version 4. I‘m not too keen on adding this as an option.

Damir

peter I totally agree , good software is the one that knows who it’s trying to serve and what its goal is , you can’t please everyone that’s trying to use it for slightly different purposes or for people stuck in the old ways , it needs to have a definite purpose with simplicity in mind .
I wish Apple would stop bloating its phone software to a point even their help service has no clue how things work 😂

AnthonyB

peter Completely understand, and don't disagree 🙂

So to my alternate suggestion - some sort of warning in a Multitrack Song (which I know will just be 'a Song' in ST4) if audio files are not same length?
Now that of course is predicated on my assumption that when doing multitrack backing tracks:

Is it considered a 'best practice' to make sure all your audio files/stems are of the same length/duration?
If not, does it evern really matter if you mix and match audio files of different length/duration? I have to suspect there are people doing this, intentioanally or otherwise, and it works just fine for them?

peter

People are indeed doing this intentionally. Just recently I have fixed a bug that only happened because a user had only count in click tracks which have been just a couple of seconds long. For Stage Traxx it does not matter if some of the tracks are shorter. The only important thing is that all tracks start at the same time.