.I don’t have a beta ready, but I’m experimenting with a new feature that I would like your input on:
There is a new track toolbar in the default setup, with a few new toolbar elements as shown in the screenshot:
The “+” button will add a new track. Right-clicking will open the track template menu for creating a new track.
Three new global SMR buttons, which indicate if there are any tracks that are soloed, muted or record armed. Moving the mouse over the button will show a popup with a list of the corresponding track names. Clicking the button will reset the mode on all tracks.
Finally there is a new “Track category bar”. This is a feature that I in a previous preview topic referred to as “track filters”, but I’m thinking that “category” is a better description. If you have a better word for it, let me know. In a new arrangement it will initially show only the “Categories” button. Clicking the button will open the dialog shown in the screenshot, where you can add up to 32 categories and assign each track to any of the categories. The categories are stored per arrangement, so each arrangement can have different categories.
There are several uses for this: You can use the category buttons to quickly show/hide tracks. You can also use the buttons to solo/mute all tracks in the category. Compared to group tracks, the difference is that categories can contain an arbitrary track selection. In the screenshot above I created a mockup arrangement where I try to illustrate this:
First there is a group of “player” categories, which could be identical to group tracks in the arrangement. You can use these category buttons to quickly show/hide tracks so that you don’t have to scroll the entire track list all the time. You can have several categories selected simultaneously, so that you can view e.g. the Drummer and Busses tracks only.
The second set of categories is divided into microphone placement. Each player may have been recorded using several mikes, and so you can use the categories to for example mute ambient mike tracks or solo overhead mike tracks, etc.
I’m not settled on how many options should be available for a category. The basic options are show/hide tracks, solo and mute. Taking it further it could as an example also be used to lock faders together, so that if you select the lock faders option on the overhead mikes category, moving a fader on a track in that category will cause all other overhead mike track faders to move in sync.
Post your opinions/ideas please.
How cool is that? This whole category idea is simply genius! What a wonderful way to work with the UI.
What an amazing idea! It is fantastic to see global SMR (YES!) 
but wow in addition to that the categories idea is utterly brilliant. They are like folder tracks but in this case for viewing tracks quickly from a horizontal bar AFAICT. I love the way you can easily show or hide categories. One can have one or 3 or 4 e.t.c it should never get cluttered as the user can add the categories he wants or not.
Brilliant. šÆ
The global SMR pop up idea “with a list of the corresponding track names” on the button is crazy (in a really good way) š
Well done Frits!!!
@Malcolm Jacobson wrote:
@Zynewave wrote:
If you need an initial number of tracks, isn’t it sufficient that you have the track setting in the “new arrangement” dialog?
This works for the initial arrangement, but doesn’t work when you want to add multiple tracks to an existing arrangement. I would really like an option to “Insert N new tracks”.
I would also like the ability to select multiple tracks.
The addition of these two features would make a great improvement to the workflow, IMO.
Cheers,
Malcolm.
Yes. Agreed. Good points Malcolm. IMO Frits really these are basic features. Again though so far the whole category idea is great IMO. Global SMR is great to have (especially the pop up idea which is really clever stuff)
