Feature/enhancement requests

[mblais]

Updated manual.
There's apparently a lot of out-of-date stuff in there... like holding down SHIFT to move the UI components. And it appears "Delay Mode" has been implemented. When there's a discrepancy I can't tell if it's a bug or just out-of-date. And it makes me wonder how many new or changed features there are which aren't covered in the manual.


More sampling rates.
It took me forever to figure out that the reason why things weren't working properly was because my audio interface was set to 48KHz. An error message would have been nice. Support for additional rates/depths even better.
Another helpful error message would be "can't save file XXX (no write permission?)".


Windows default OK/Cancel keys in dialog boxes (ENTER and ESC).
It's pain to always have to reach for the mouse to close the dialogs.
Also nice would be a smaller font - some of the dialogs barely fit on my netbook screen.


User-defined parameters
that we could add to the onscreen parameter list and manipulate there, bind to MIDI, etc, for use in scripts.


Loop windowing! :D




Peace,
RashaMatt

[stevoj]

Sensible suggestions there, RashaMatt. Also, consider updating the scripting manual, it seems that there is a lot missing from that.

Loop windowing, yes please!

[Per Boysen]

Some "loop windowing" similar behavior can be achieved in Mobius with the new scripting respons of Shuffle. And it is instant; you don't have to go through the preparation phase as with real loop windowing on the EDP.

Short recap for non EDP experienced users: "Loop Windowing" is a lovely bug in the EDP. It happens if you truncate a loop in memory, cutting it by Multiply/Multiply for example and then pressing the Undo button. Since the limited memory of the physical machine can't bring back the entire loop, on Undo, it simply shifts "the playback window" for another chunk of the, now scattered, original loop. All cut off slice are still held in memory (well, as much as fits into 16 MB RAM that is) and each time you press Undo a random chunk is brought into playback.

It seems Mobius Shuffle function is in the same department as EDP's Loop Windowing. Our former discussions on Shuffle are of interest for "loop windowing" as well. Maybe we should start thinking about these two commands as the same function (to be refined)? I mean, if implementing "loop windowing", wouldn't we want quite a lot more options than the old EDP bug? ;-)) EDP style "random playback of slices" would be just one choice. Reverse playback would be cool, as well as having lots of "windows" rather than one and being able to set conditions for each "slice". Maybe even "Shuffle Patches" by user design?

[mblais]

I never took advantage of "loop windowing" on the EDP. But there is something that I
would LOVE to be able to do with Mobius, which I think could appropriately be called
"loop windowing".

That would the ability to define a segment ("window") of any loop as the portion to be
played, while the rest of the loop is ignored. Then one could adjust the window length
and the start time: slip it forward or back by the window length or X bars; halve or
double its length, etc.


Here's an example of how I might use this: Start recording a loop and begin improvising,
without the need to keep track of the length of what I'm playing. At a certain point I
might say to myself "I really like the last four bars I just played", and so I hit a button
that defines the "loop window" to be the last four bars just recorded in the loop, then
stops recording, puts the loop in Play mode (or Overdub, etc). Then one has the ability
to move the playback window backward and forward in time through the recorded
material.

In terms of how it could be used, it's similar to switching between loops (shifting the
window among different parts of a long loop), but when the segments are all laid out
sequentially within a single loop, there are different possibilities for recording and
subsequent manipulation.

I didn't see any documentation on Shuffle.

Peace,
RashaMatt

[stevoj]

Here's an example of how I might use this: Start recording a loop and begin improvising,
without the need to keep track of the length of what I'm playing. At a certain point I
might say to myself "I really like the last four bars I just played", and so I hit a button
that defines the "loop window" to be the last four bars just recorded in the loop, then
stops recording, puts the loop in Play mode (or Overdub, etc). Then one has the ability
to move the playback window backward and forward in time through the recorded
material.

This is a really interesting idea, and a neat extension of the loop windowing available on the EDP. But I'm not quite sure how you could easily define 'the last 4 bars' in this situation, esp if just playing some sort of freeform jam.

[mblais]

This is a really interesting idea, and a neat extension of the loop windowing available on the EDP. But I'm not quite sure how you could easily define 'the last 4 bars' in this situation, esp if just playing some sort of freeform jam.

It was clear in my mind, but I should have said "start recording a new layer or a
new track" - i.e. improvising with already-recorded material, so the cycle length
has already been defined.

Though, unquantized operations like "set window start point to Now" and "set window end point to Now"
could (re)define the the cycle length, like an unrounded Multiply.

[mblais]

Another feature request, and this one might actually be easy:

"Instant extend to X bars" - like Instant Multiply, except it would extend the
loop with silence.

[Jeff]

All fine ideas, consider them "on the list" for what that's worth :)

As I mentioned in another thread, my focus right now is on the
"new user experience" and part of that is a revamp of the documentation.