Open Beta Version 4.0.0

AnthonyB

Change in Assign Actions (i.e. Remote Actions) behaviour.

I have remote actions setup so that my drummer can use his Roland SPD trigger pads to 'drive' ST, leaving me to just be the safety net.

In ST3, we had the following actions setup with MIDI triggers:

Start/Stop Playback
Next Song
Previous Song
Initiate Crossfade

Those first 3 were key in that they let him:

Start a song
Stop a song (we have Rewind on Stop enabled, so if we have to bail out of a song during count in, he can just hit the Start/Stop trigger to Stop, then hit it again when everyone is ready to go)
If we decide to skip a song in our playlist he can trigger next song (used at least 1-2 times per gig)
If we decide to repeat a song in our playlist, he can go back to it (only used during rehearsals)
The behaviour which we have in ST3 is that he can hit "next Song" trigger to advance to next song in the Playlist and then hit "Start/Stop" trigger to start playback.

What I've noticed in ST4 is that the behaviour of 'Next Song' and 'Previous Song' has changed.
It no longer 'selects' the next/previous song. It is as though you are just moving a 'cursor' up/down, but then you have to use an additional new trigger 'Trigger Selected Song' to 'select' the song?
Have I got that correct? Or does Trigger also Start the song (sorry, I didn't get a chance to test this)?

If that is correct, I'm curious why the behaviour has changed and the additional 'step' introduced? Was there a scenario that the ST3 behaviour didn't cater for that drove this change?

Lishy

AnthonyB Hi Anthony, I noticed this early on too. I think if you literally want to select and load up the next song in your list then the assigned action needs to go in ‘next song in queue.’
The previous song and next song actions seem to apply to being able to scroll through your set without loading the song up so to speak.
I’m not sure if the action names need to be swapped or if the wording needs to be changed to highlight or scroll next song so it’s a little clearer.

Damir

royandreno i am allowed my opinion just like you are yours , we managed to get ST 2 to a point where people were happy , same with ST3 , now people want to to make ST4 like On song , complicated with no purpose, there was a lot of thought put in to ST3 for people that need lyrics/Chords and some backing now everyone wants unlimited tracks lighting control , midi control it might as well play your instruments for you so you can stay home and pod cast your show from a pre recorded video.
I think its unfair for you to criticise me as i had my fair input on ST3 , now we have a lot of things that need fixing first before anything else you can have your multitrack mixer if it does not function reliably its worth nothing , if the interface is not precisely designed to work for us on stage then all the functions under the sun don't matter , stop knocking negative feedback people have the right to comment on what they see is going pair shape.
Perhaps you can come up with better suggestions instead of knocking people that have spent a lot of time on developing this software.
I am more than happy to say no more regarding ST4 but i will comment at the end when its too late.

royandreno

Damir now people want to to make ST4 like On song , complicated with no purpose, there was a lot of thought put in to ST3 for people that need lyrics/Chords and some backing now everyone wants unlimited tracks lighting control , midi control it might as well play your instruments for you so you can stay home and pod cast your show from a pre recorded video.
I think its unfair for you to criticise me as i had my fair input on ST3 , now we have a lot of things that need fixing first before anything else you can have your multitrack mixer if it does not function reliably its worth nothing , if the interface is not precisely designed to work for us on stage then all the functions under the sun don't matter , stop knocking negative feedback people have the right to comment on what they see is going pair shape.

I agree with all this. Just don’t get hung up in that some of us want the waveform back. It is in fact something that is performance related.
I couldn’t care less about midi, mixer, plug ins and a few other niceties either. I did that for 20 years with a Canadian windows program called OnStage Performer. I was a heavy Beta tester for them, and it became great. However, with Vista, they gave up, and for all those 20 years I used an XP laptop with midi controlling harmony and lights. Never again.
I gig every weekend all year, and then some. Not all ST3, but with a couple of bands as well. The ST3 is just amazingly reliable. And all I need is already in ST3. Let’s see what magic Peter the Genius comes up with, I hope he brings back an optional waveform solution like in the ST3.

Have a nice day.

AnthonyB

peter I will see, if I can disable compression (does not make any sense with audiofiles anyway)

That does depend on what audio file format you are using.
MP3s I would agree. You'll probably only get ₅% compression on average.
WAV files will comfortably give you ₂₀% compression on average and can vary wildly depending on the content.

As someone who was using all WAV files (_9GB) I'd happily take a 20% size reduction on the backup files! 🙂
I can appreciate that any compression library is going to need close to the same amount of free space as the content (give or take) in working space to do it's thing and that could get very unweildy on iPads where space can often be at a premium.

Dare I say it, an optional toggle (off by default) in Backup dialog to enable compression? 😛
But seriously, I have seen similar in other apps. There could be a label with the toggle that says something along the lines of "use compression for potentially smaller backup file, but more free space needed to create backup. It if fails, turn compression off".

If not inappropriate to ask, which zip library are you using? Have you looked at https://7-zip.org/sdk.html (public domain)?

AnthonyB

Lishy Hi Anthony, I noticed this early on too. I think if you literally want to select and load up the next song in your list then the assigned action needs to go in ‘next song in queue.’
The previous song and next song actions seem to apply to being able to scroll through your set without loading the song up so to speak.
I’m not sure if the action names need to be swapped or if the wording needs to be changed to highlight or scroll next song so it’s a little clearer.

Right.
So depending on whether Peter confirms that the behaviour we are seeing is intentional (and possibly some background on why the change was made so we understand that as well), then maybe the ask is 2 new actions "select next song" and "select previous song" (or trigger rather than select if that is the more appropriate term to use) to restore the capability we had in ST3.

Damir

peter Are you possibly confusing track muting with bus muting? There is a track mute bug that will be fixed in the next update. But bus routing works reliably for me.

No, i was testing the bus mutes to see if they do their job on all other multitrack songs, but i managed to end up with the muted track 2&3 still outputting audio even though the mute buttons were showing they were muted , if i unmuted them then muted them again i got them to work , but initially as i went from one song to another it was not working as expected .
Also the tracks VU metering disappears on occasions i haven't managed to work out how to fail them.
And the audio is still not rock solid , there are still dropouts and delayed nothing as you hit start.
I will report back when i find out more.
I was in a multi track song and went to edit audio segments , the software would not open the editor, whats the logic behind multitrack audio segments creation, is it a choice of which track you use for audio segmenting? I haven't done much multitrack stuff.

Damir

Damir Are you possibly confusing track muting with bus muting? There is a track mute bug that will be fixed in the next update. But bus routing works reliably for me.

Ive just sent you a support email regarding this unusual behaviour, i simply used xfade to another song and back to te multitrack song. Lost tracks metering and bus 2 was in mute but it was not muting.
I am on ipad 9th gen 26.0.1

Lishy

AnthonyB looking the ST3 wording ‘next song’ was literal and the ‘jump to next song in queue’ was the action used for scrolling. Perhaps it needs to be changed to that so it’s universal.

peter

Lishy looking the ST3 wording ‘next song’ was literal and the ‘jump to next song in queue’ was the action used for scrolling. Perhaps it needs to be changed to that so it’s universal.

I already acknowledged that this was a bug in one of my last postings. I think the forum might not be the right place to track all the issues and requests for version 4. I think I will try to setup a dedicated customer feedback tool so that everyone sees a good overview of what has already been reported and what I am already in the process of fixing.

Damir Ive just sent you a support email regarding this unusual behaviour, i simply used xfade to another song and back to te multitrack song. Lost tracks metering and bus 2 was in mute but it was not muting.
I am on ipad 9th gen 26.0.1

Again, I already acknowledged this bug. Please read my postings.

Damir

royandreno I actually agree with you, that this area is not as nice as ST3 and it’s because Peter has introduced a more usable on stage Audio segment manipulation, which is what makes ST great, the fact you can rearrange your song is its main power otherwise you can use any old playback player .
I would hang on a bit till things work a bit more reliably and perhaps we all can help Peter to arrange the interface a bit better
With ST3 a lot of good ideas could not be technically implemented, let’s hope now that can.
Cheers

Lishy

peter I must’ve missed it, apologies.

peter

OK, I decided against another hosted solution for tracking beta feedback. Instead I have enabled all users to create new threads in the Beta forum. I have also enabled upvoting of threads in the Beta forum. I think with these changes, the forum has all we need for good feedback tracking and no need to register at a new website.

So for future feedback, please check first, if there is already a thread describing the issue or request you have. If yes, upvote that thread and if you want add a comment. If there is no existing thread, please create a new one.

I will prioritise my work on the number of upvotes a certain issue gets.

MarkGuitar

peter Hi Peter. Is the new way of working just for feature requests/changes or for suspected bugs as well?

AnthonyB

peter OK, I decided against another hosted solution for tracking beta feedback. Instead I have enabled all users to create new threads in the Beta forum. I have also enabled upvoting of threads in the Beta forum. I think with these changes, the forum has all we need for good feedback tracking and no need to register at a new website.

So for future feedback, please check first, if there is already a thread describing the issue or request you have. If yes, upvote that thread and if you want add a comment. If there is no existing thread, please create a new one.

I will prioritise my work on the number of upvotes a certain issue gets.

Did you want us to start new threads based on things previously mentioned above that we believe are still in progress even if you have acknowledged them? My thinking there is so that it is clear what some of the known issues are and trying to prevent re-raising of them? Or did you want to create a bunch of posts based on your own list (sorry, I know that is more work up front)?

musicadi

peter Great idea 👍💪Maybe we could also get rid of the whining and dramas somehow 😂 I personally just stopped reading replies longer than 2-3 sentences 😀

MarkGuitar

Sharonzaz I like the new buttons and the visuals on it as the region moves.

I am sure lots of folks here will like the buttons. Just asking for an option to hide them, not remove altogether. We all work differently eh? 😁

Sharonzaz

MarkGuitar sure. Being able to move the assignable buttons would also be nice

MarkGuitar

peter Make the title view a bit taller and show a small waveform instead of the solid bar
Add an option to select what to show in the space currently occupied by audio regions: off, regions, waveform

Oh yes!
Either is great for me. But whichever it is can we have the option to hide the buttons pls?
Thanks @peter

MarkGuitar

peter I would consider 11gb rather big.

Hey @peter
A wee bit worrying that you think my ST data collection is big at 11gb. I currently have about 300 songs loaded, 200 or so are lyrics only. Of the remaining 100, most have only a single stereo file which I am using as a placeholder for duration and a guide whilst practicing. I probably have only about 10 that have multi-tracks. They have typically 8-10 tracks per song. So roughly about 200 audio files and probably about 200 PDFs.
Given that I will be aiming to add multi-tracks to at least another 100 songs (probably more), with on average 10 tracks per song, that data size is going to grow substantially.
My audio files are uncompressed WAV files at 48khz. Each stem is typically about 75Mb.

Maybe the answer is just to do a catalog backup and I will keep my audio files backed up separately. I guess that would make moving from device to device a bit more cumbersome though.

Is there anything I can do for you to work on/check this out without having to clutter up the forum threads?
Thanks 🙏

jaytrax

MarkGuitar

17.6GB here with 727 songs
95% multitracked at MP3 320

peter

Both, features and bugs.

AnthonyB

jaytrax 17.6GB here with 727 songs
95% multitracked at MP3 320

Woah! OK, I think you're "winning" (creating & saving off backups on iPad must take a while!) 🙂

On the compression topic, given you're using MP3, you'd see almost no benefit from compression, then again, 5% of 17.6GB is still 880MB... so that would be down to the individual whether the extra time compressing the backup (as opposed to just packing it into a container file) AND the extra working space potentially needed on the device was worth it to reduce 17.6GB of raw data down to 16.7GB compressed backup file.

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