Open Beta Version 3.4.0

Damir

@"Damir"#p4755Hi Peter, I have just joined my iphone to my host ipad and noticed that the actual slave operates exactly how i expect with first line highlight, when the song gets loaded the iphone slave does not highlight the first line untill i hit play , yet the host ipad does, thats interesting.

peter

Damir I understand what you do but I truly think that the current way is correct. If you have lyrics highlighted at 00:10.00 you want them to be displayed when the playback position is at 00:10.00 or later. And you want this when playback is stopped or playback is running because it makes seeking very easy if you see the highlights changing while you move your finger over the waveform. And this is what changed in the current version. Before the highlighting just stayed static whenever you pressed stop. Even if you moved the playback position to somewhere else, which is purely wrong. So version 3.4 corrected this. And I don't understand why there should be an exception to this rule for timestamp 00:00.00. The solution is simply to change this timestamp to 00:00.01. You won't notice the 10ms delay in highlighting, but the logic will stay sane.

Now, I understand if you say that you would need to make lots of changes to your songs. So I can offer you to make this change for you. I have tools that allow me to do that in 1 or 2 minutes for all your songs. Just send me a database only backup file.

The only possible solution for this would be a setting that would only apply highlighting during playback and never when playback is stopped. Not even during seek.

Damir I have just joined my iphone to my host ipad and noticed that the actual slave operates exactly how i expect with first line highlight, when the song gets loaded the iphone slave does not highlight the first line untill i hit play , yet the host ipad does, thats interesting.

This is a bug in my opinion. It should behave the same as the host. I will fix this.

Damir The way i would have it is if you tweak the host text size the slaves also react immediately, but if you resize the slaves text size it maintains that relationship with the host, that way you set it once and everything just works with no more tweaking required.

The host only sends information about the current song when you select it. Text changes are also not sent. And in your case send text size changes would break the custom text size on the connected clients. So no, I don't want to do that. Just use iPads as slaves, iPhone displays are too small anyway.

Damir cant destinguish between the two identical messages, if i dont select anything and press the two different buttons the messages i get makes me think both of those function buttons do the same thing.

That's definitely the wrong message for the keyword button. Will fix it.

Damir

USING HOSTS Feedback
I love this feature as my daughter is a singer and i have a number of singer friends that sometimes appear at the venue i might be performing in, its easy for them to join their iphones to my ipad and presto can join in.
But i have some issues with the way the slaves being a smaller screen dont seem to work well.
The Text size on the ipad becomes too big for iphones and yet there is no compensation for this my average text size on ipad is 40 to 50 but his size does not transfer well to iphones, i wish there was a control on the client settings to be able to compensate for that.
Now what happens is you shrink the lyrics on the iphone manually for each song that plays because the size reduction of now playing song gets reset by the next song, I wish that this command to reset the font was never there that way whatever size font you choose on the slave it stays that way so you can tweake it once and from then on it just stays in that setting relationship for all other songs from the ipad.
I also find it irritating that tweaking the font size on the ipad does nothingto the slave unless you leave the song and come back.
The way i would have it is if you tweak the host text size the slaves also react immediately, but if you resize the slaves text size it maintains that relationship with the host, that way you set it once and everything just works with no more tweaking required.

Damir

I might have found another one.
I cant destinguish between the two identical messages, if i dont select anything and press the two different buttons the messages i get makes me think both of those function buttons do the same thing.

SoloGuy

What format should the multitrack audio files be? My DAW is Digital Performer 9.5.2 (unsure of the actual version number).

peter

SoloGuy What format should the multitrack audio files be? My DAW is Digital Performer 9.5.2 (unsure of the actual version number).

You can use all audio formats that Stage Traxx can load. I would recommend to create stereo stems of your instruments. Just make sure they all have the same sample rate. Whether you use wav, mp3, aif or maybe even flac is up to you.

Damir What if you could do this,
The key is Waveform seek during playback switch is what determines of how the first line highlighting performs.

I don't think this fits together with this setting. But I will create a separate setting and then you can decide for yourself how it should behave. Maybe a setting named "Highlight lyrics when stopped" is the correct way to do it.

Damir The needs are endless, but the compatability of the two devices are not great from text size compatibility point of view.

OK, I do already have a text size modifier for external screen support. I can add a new modifier for the network clients. If you have an iPhone you can set it to 0.5x for example and all text sizes sent by the host will be displayed with half size.

Damir SHOW LOCAL LYRICS? What is it and what does it do for me?

Only needed if clients have different lyrics for a song. Say a drummer does not need lyrics but only couple of notes. So he has his own lyrics containing only his notes. If he enables this setting, the network client will not display lyrics from the host but the custom notes of the drummer.

Damir

I understand what you do but I truly think that the current way is correct. If you have lyrics highlighted at 00:10.00 you want them to be displayed when the playback position is at 00:10.00 or later. And you want this when playback is stopped or playback is running because it makes seeking very easy if you see the highlights changing while you move your finger over the waveform.

I dont disagree with you i just dont want my first line auto highlighted when i am performing on stage.

I can see where you are coming from, its the seeking you are focusing on while preping your show and because it is a new addition its your main focus right now while i am focused on the on stage need.

I think i have just come up with a great solution for both!

What if you could do this,
The key is Waveform seek during playback switch is what determines of how the first line highlighting performs.

If you have this on it means you are editing and you have it perform the way you think is important,
If you turn it off to be safe on stage you have it perform the way ST2 had it where it does not highlight the first line untill start gets hit,
plus there is a bonus free feature acheved here,
and that is if you forget to turn off the waveform seek while you are performing you would be warned by the fact your first lines of songs would allwas be highlighted prompting you to then turn off the dangerous waveform seek while performing.
What do you think, is it doable?
As i said i do like the seek feature and i use it now a lot, but i would hate to forget to turn it off while performing then accidentaly touching the end of the song while trying to enter song properties as it is dangerously close.

And this is what changed in the current version. Before the highlighting just stayed static whenever you pressed stop.
Even if you moved the playback position to somewhere else, which is purely wrong. So version 3.4 corrected this.
Yes i do like this.

And I don't understand why there should be an exception to this rule for timestamp 00:00.00. The solution is simply to change this timestamp to 00:00.01. You won't notice the 10ms delay in highlighting, but the logic will stay sane.

No thats not a solution its a work around i foud which i never use to have to do.
And am not happy about but its so important to me on srage that i am unhapilly willing to do it to make ST3 behave on stage the way ST2 did.

Damir

As i pointed out a lot of people will use a combination of devices on stage to suit their needs, a drummer has enough crap around him so he might prefer a small iphone instead so he can easily position it,as he might be singing backing lyrics he needs to see or he might want to know the next song chosen as he is the star in the intro, ipad would end up with a cracked screen in the first 5 minutes of performance.
The needs are endless, but the compatability of the two devices are not great from text size compatibility point of view.

At least can there be a choice to switch the sizeing reminder to the slave disabled in the host allowing the slave user to permanently set the size of text on the device, that would avoid oversized text on smaller devices and make the combination of devices more compatible.
Or any other solution that works.

I personally have a mirrror image of ST3 on my iphone for a number of reasons.
1
a full backup in case my ipad shits itself or dissapears
2
Ipone is with me at all times i can perform whenever, wherever.
3
Surprise guests want to perform with me i got it covered i just set up my god help me trusty iphone 11 max which cost me $2500 has 512gig twice the ipad capacity and tripple the money i expect to get some use out of this succer.

Damir

SHOW LOCAL LYRICS? What is it and what does it do for me?

Show your own lyrics

It is possible to show your own lyrics while connected as a client to a network session. To do so, make sure to enable the setting Show Local Lyrics. If your library contains a song the host has selected, your own lyrics will be displayed. Song matching is done by searching for the song by title and artist in your library. So please make sure that both tags match those of the host.

You can also use this feature to send your custom MIDI messages when the song is playing.

Well i still dont know how to test this cause i dont know what it does and how it does it.
I do know it has something to do with my lyrics, but i already have my lyrics and they are showing so i turn it off but my lyrics are still showing, i turn it back on and my lyrics are still showing with no change to anything , does it have to do anything with midi, i am confused and i hope i am not missing out on a great feature that Im not aware of.
Help needed!

Damir

peter OK, I do already have a text size modifier for external screen support. I can add a new modifier for the network clients. If you have an iPhone you can set it to 0.5x for example and all text sizes sent by the host will be displayed with half size.

Great, whatever is simpler just so there is a method to not have to keep readjusting text size every song, so whatever is shown in host screen fits in the iphone screen at all times without any retweaking.
Cheers Damir

SoloGuy

peter I see. So essentially, the audio tracks would be individual files. Makes me think that a “container file” that would include all of the individual tracks might come in handy here just to keep the songs organized but I don’t know if there is a standard for that already in existence. Would one just load a folder named with the song’s name containing all the tracks?

Damir

Ok lets see if i got this, the client creates a lyrics song that has the same name tag but different lyrics or notes in his song folder, so when this setings switch is enabled in the host and the host plays this song the lyrics that get shown on the client are replaced by the clients same named song. I assume the auto scroll that might have been in the host song no longer operates the clients screen anymore.
Wow its a very speciffic operation , i will try and give it a go just to see if i can find anything that might not be working, but i dont see myself using this, but you never know its amazing how you can come up with different ways of using this software.
One thing i will say it really needs a better description in the manual so it clearly exposes its purpose and the way to set it up especially midi was mentioned and that needs clarification cause it really did confuse me even more.
I was a full on midi user years ago but have simplified everything to an ipad, Amazing!

peter

Damir Ok lets see if i got this, the client creates a lyrics song that has the same name tag but different lyrics or notes in his song folder, so when this setings switch is enabled in the host and the host plays this song the lyrics that get shown on the client are replaced by the clients same named song. I assume the auto scroll that might have been in the host song no longer operates the clients screen anymore.

No, not on the host. That does not make any sense. You need to enable it on the client. Each client can choose whether to show lyrics from the host or their own. And that means that they would also use their own scrolling settings.

peter

Damir Great, whatever is simpler just so there is a method to not have to keep readjusting text size every song, so whatever is shown in host screen fits in the iphone screen at all times without any retweaking.

I don't think a logic like that would work. If the client sizes all lyrics down so that they fit on the screen without scrolling, the text would be too small to read.

Damir

I thought my idea was perfect as no extra switches were needed, its the state of the existing waveform switch that determines which logic is used so if its off it means you are not using the sweep function and the first line is not highlighted, but if you turn on waveform scroll the logic goes back to acomodate that and it just works without anyone needing to do anything.Plus as i said before it acts as a warning that if you get on stage and you cue your first song if the first line is immediately highlighted you will know you have forgotten to turn off the waveform scroll, a win, win, win with nothing extra to tweak.
Now how to achieve this i have no clue.
Or perhaps someone else has a better solution.

Damir

@"peter"#p4774Ok i didnt explain properly again,
Ok say i have a 10.5 inch ipad host an iphone and a 12.5 inch ipad pro.
Say all my lyrics are set to 40 , a method to offset this setting so if i hook up to a 12.5 inch ipad i can change the offset say to 50 as it has more screen realestate, or if i have an iphone i can set the offset to 30 so it fits the lyrics to suit the smaller realestate, i might change the client devices to landscape or potrait but by having this offset adjustment it would allow a once off tweak and all is perfect for ever more for that session.
Perhaps this adjustment is needed to be done on the clients so each client can suit themselves depending on the device they have.
At the momemt there is no control, what you get is what you get, and you dont want to tweak your host to suit the client because the clients screens are different.
So perhaps a scroll wheel where 0 is normal and going up by -ve ? Amount it shrinks the lyrics by that set amount for all lyrics and by going + ve ? Amount it Increases the offset size.

This then would work in any combination, say you had the iphone as the host , you just increase the offset text to suit on the client Ipads 9.5 10.5 12.5.
I believe It makes a lot of sense and is something the more people that start using ST3 will want to do as they realise the softwares huge user potential like i have.

peter

Damir OK, I will think about something but not for version 3.4.0.

Damir

Hi Peter, here in Adelaide we are in a Covid lockdown for 7 days so watchout, you might get bombarded with problems hopefully tiny ones.

I might have reported this already but jus in case here it is again

peter

Yes you mentioned that a couple of pages up. On my devices it only happens on the "Songs" tab. Queue, History and Playlists are fine. It seems to be related to the alphabetical section headers. In any case it will be fixed in the next beta version on sunday.

Sharonzaz

Ok I found some issues on my version I’ll try explain them and if I fail to explain I’ll make a vid

1- not all tracks seem to be playing “exactly” on time.
While it may not be too noticeable with musical tracks I have both a click track and an count in track and they are way out of sync, in the app, not in the daw.
And when I say way I mean you could hear it easy. Enough to annoy me 🤪

2- while you may not have intended the app to work this way, I tried it like that and it “somehow” works, but not great. I’ll explain:

I wanted to first experiment a little before i go spend some good money on the camera kit (lighting to USB- I have the UI24R mixer) and thought I’ll try using a lightning to headphones adapter that would free up my headphones to be the AUX output.
It doesn’t work with every dock I have (3 of them) but eventually after plugging the one in then the other, unplugged the one and plug back I got it to identify both as working outputs! Great stuff!
However when the app is running (not when I minimize to background) there’s something like an earth buzz similar to those when you plug a laptop into a mixer and it needs to be earthed, not exactly but similar. I can record that and upload so you can hear.
Quite annoying and I’ve tried different cabling etc etc.
It might be an inherent issue with the iPad itself however I’d think that the lightning output “should” be regarded as a digital out, so when I click the combine outputs it does see both and use both nicely besides the annoying sound.

3- the app on my side does not remember routing and volume changes i make while working/playing back a song. As soon as I close the app completely the iPad still plays all the tracks back in default vol and pan even if i just use the one stereo output and also when I combine them (tried both).

5- the app crashes a lot when I try changing the output assignment in the routing option (off/main/aux). It may not crash immediately but every time I tried changing the assignments for any of the track while a song is playing it either hangs (nothing works anymore I can only terminate the app by minimizing) or it just crashes completely.

6- the visual wave generator doesn’t always show progress at all or shows the wrong place (like I’m at the end of the song but the progress is in the the first part of the song?) or it doesn’t show progress at all, like I haven’t pressed play at all.

7- one time (not sure what I did) the track sounded like every file played from a different place completely (like the piano was three bars forward/drums two bars behind etc - very badly out of timing).

I think that’s all for now I wasn’t busy with it too long.

I have to note:
The iPad is rather recent, I think it’s the 6 or 7 gen
But I am running iOS12 point something so to be fair I’m busy updating it and will revert back if anything has changed.

I have a few other iPads but they are older, will try them too just to make sure.

I have to commend you for this huge effort you are making!!!
Not only you have the (only) best app in the world for our kind of work on mobile devices, you are now competing with apps that were only available on mac/pc before, this is unheard of progress and I’m sure you will polish all the kinks out of it and when it’s done you will have desktop quality app on iPad. It’s remarkable!

Let me know if you want me to try anything a little differently on my side to help you out.
🙏

peter

Thanks @Sharonzaz for the great feedback. This is exactly what we need to focus on in this beta version 🙂

Sharonzaz not all tracks seem to be playing “exactly” on time.
While it may not be too noticeable with musical tracks I have both a click track and an count in track and they are way out of sync, in the app, not in the daw.

Does this happen when all tracks are routed to the same audio interface or only when tracks are playing through different interfaces? In the latter case, this is something I don't think I can fix. In iOS I have no control over the individual output latency when using different interfaces.

Is it maybe related to aux and main routing? If yes, do you have the master eq or any other master effect active? This could introduce some latency between main and aux tracks.

Can you maybe post a screenshot of your routing screen?

Also some questions about your tracks: which file format are you using? mono/stereo? samplerate? all the same or different formats?

Sharonzaz However when the app is running (not when I minimize to background) there’s something like an earth buzz similar to those when you plug a laptop into a mixer and it needs to be earthed, not exactly but similar. I can record that and upload so you can hear.

Yes please, that would help. When you move the app to the background, the audio engine is stopped. That would explain why the buzz stops. But I can't reproduce that. For me the output is absolutely clear. Do you maybe have a plugin active on the master effect? I know that some plugins like for example tape simulations create a buzz sound even when no audio is playing.

Sharonzaz he app on my side does not remember routing and volume changes i make while working/playing back a song. As soon as I close the app completely the iPad still plays all the tracks back in default vol and pan

These settings are stored to the database when you close the multitrack window or when you quit the app. I couldn't reproduce it in any way. Maybe you could explain with step by step instructions how to reproduce this.

Sharonzaz the app crashes a lot when I try changing the output assignment in the routing option (off/main/aux).

I managed to make the app hang while changing the outputs on iOS12 with a connected interface. Without an interface everything is stable. On iOS14 everything seems stable even with an interface connected. I will try to debug this.

Sharonzaz the visual wave generator doesn’t always show progress at all or shows the wrong place (like I’m at the end of the song but the progress is in the the first part of the song?) or it doesn’t show progress at all, like I haven’t pressed play at all.

This was a problem in the first beta. Please make sure you are running build 6893.

Sharonzaz one time (not sure what I did) the track sounded like every file played from a different place completely (like the piano was three bars forward/drums two bars behind etc - very badly out of timing)

If you find a way to reproduce this, it would be very helpful.

Sharonzaz I found something small but a little annoying, when playing the song I click on multitrack setup.
Moving the volume or pan sliders/faders sometimes revels a delete something option and if I work fast enough it deletes the audio track

Yes, that's the swipe delete action. I have disabled file selection in the player view but forgot to disable the delete action. Will fix that.

Sharonzaz

Ok so after updating that iPad I can so far report that besides the app not crashing when I play around with the routings everything else stayed the same.

One thing i did notice because the app didn’t crash is that there’s a latency between the two outputs and that’s maybe why not everything sounds perfectly in sync 🤷‍♂️?

I also noticed that the EQ changes i make for each of the audio files is not saving, although visually for instance my drums track was boosted the bass frequency and it still showing that it’s boosted I have to physically touch the fader again and only then I can hear the EQ being boosted.

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