Aeros firmware 3.2.x

[Quad]

Great job! Looking forward to testing this out.

The delete last part feature is greatly appreciated!

@DavidPackouz

hands free by going to the mixer page, holding down the lower left button to change that button command to ‘lock’

Hoping this a sign of more hands free features to come using the left-hold button

Some minor issues:

• When I updated, the song I was working no was no longer loaded and there was a new Song 1. Might have updated before saving the last song, but not sure. The song list was alphabetical and I think it was sorted by date previously. No biggee.
• At some point after playing with all the above new features and bug fixes pressing the stop button stopped immediately, nit at the end of the loop. Not reproducible. Possible I might have had a very short loop and not realized it.
• If you undo or redo a muted track also umutes. This seems wrong. Pretty minor but its reasonable to want to undo/redo one or two times, get that ready … and then later unmute on your timing.
  • Also when the unmute is queued up until the loop start it says “Cancel Mute” and “Playing”. Should really say “UnMuting”. (when you mute it says “Muting”). This pretty minor.
• Pressing the track or song part circles/dots operate as on release buttons … but they provide no indication that they are pressed (like the other buttons that invert when pressed). Minor, but…
• Consider making the last part dot button a trash (or other) icon when stopped to indicate that it can be used to delete the part. This feature will be impossible to discover otherwise.
• Would be good to have the delete last part feature
  • be accessible while playing any other part (and not just stopped).
  • be triggered hands free
• Press and holding left button in mixer does noting until release. This makes it hard to discover and to know when you’ve held it long enough. Action of this hold should be when the hold timer has elapsed, not on release.
• Not sure how much I’ll really use the lock feature. If I did, it would be nice to have a bit more control over it (e.g., keep it locked only for some parts, allow locking and unlocking after other parts have been recorded (you just really need to make sure there is space on the screen for it on each part, right?) or at the very least allow this after all part afterwards have been undone (since e can’t clear on the fly) . Was surprised to realize that the locked track takes up on of slots in each part; makes perfect sense, but I didn’t like it.

Pretty solid so far…

[LaurentB]

Download in progress!! So cool! Hash please !

[Updated after download]:

sha512: b6346159448c549a6d9097aad43bdc75b6bb205ddfdfb1eabfaa0e04794747d433d057e2e7930a5b1a7418bc125a9f9d5c4e28caf0730cf6240446b0d40dc9ec  aeros-3.2.2.bin
sha1: 6655c7bdbaf92070d458fd12908fe56ef1f696af  aeros-3.2.2.bin
md5: 9b0fec27686c705da5d7bac910fb50c4  aeros-3.2.2.bin

[LaurentB]

Cool ! Everything seems to work as specified. Nevertheless the rules to allow specifying one track as locked seem a bit out of nowhere…

Ok I understand that whatever the mode (2x2 or 6x6) you allow n-1 tracks to be locked. Totally legit, after all what’s the point if everything is locked.

But when it comes to which track can we lock, this rule you mention makes particularly no sense:

@DavidPackouz

In 2x2, you can only lock the top track. In 6x6 you can lock up to 5 tracks and you can only lock a track if the tracks before it are locked

Question is why the first consecutive tracks ?? Sounds really like an implementation limitation more than a technical/physical limitation. Actually if the system is able to lock one (or more ) track, what is the justification to force me to use this one more than this one ?

Why am I insisting on that ? It is related to the flow of a live performance.

If I want to record something using my DAW, I would probably (although not forced to) record first the drums, then bass, then guitars and voices… But actually the order I record makes no difference. People will only listen to the resulting mix.

When I perform live, it’s a bit different, I will probably not perform in that order because the audience would probably be gone before I end recording the drums , I would probably start by recording a guitar to establish the tune (a track I don’t want to lock as changing along song parts), then record some tracks around (percussive guitar part, pseudo-bass using the guitar…) and will want to lock the latters.

So with the rules you have defined this is still possible I just need to record my guitar as track 2 and then the track/overdubs I want to lock as track 1…

So ok, it just means I need to lose the habit to record the track 1 first… which is not really intuitive, but still doable as recording the track 2 is directly accessible in this 2X2 mode.

Now if I talk 6x6, this becomes a bit weirder… If I take the same use case, it means that I have to switch to a subsequent track beforehand, and unfortunately, recording to a subsequent track, is not directly accessible in 6x6… For me, that renders that flow far too complex, if not unusable.

As a conclusion, for me everything is fine except that you have definitely to find a way to get rid of the limitation of the first consecutive tracks only to be eligible to the locking mechanism. I understand you have probably decided for this behavior because of other impacts I do not clearly see. Please do not hesitate to share them with us. Pretty sure we can come to a solution.

[popa]

Hi and thanks for providing lock tracks finally.

My very simple scenario als an acoustic guitarist: First record a rhythm part (beat box or taps on guitar body) and then perform a song with two or more parts over this.

I tested 2x2 mode only, whitout any additonal device. Song settings are Sync Tracks: Start&length, Quantize to Measure: Off.

Obviously lock track function exists and works. However, I’m not able to change parts IN SYNC after recording the rhythm basis. Change from one part to the other is always (*) done immediately (on release of the button) instead of at the end of the bar. Could not change this behaviour through setting changes. Under these cricumstances the lock track function is useless for me. Still missing the very basics! Hard to take this

(*) While recording track 2 (either in part 1 or in part 2), change is done only at the end of the bar. This is needed in playback mode too!

While waiting for lock tracks I haven’t been working with the Aeros for months now. Do I do something wrong?
Did I miss some restrictions regarding lock tracks?
Wasn’t there something like auto quantize connected to lock tracks?

@LaurentB: You seem to be pretty happy with this feature. Are you working with external clock or internal click from Aeros only?

[kingofthejaffacakes]

I’m with @LaurentB in his conclusion: those weird lock ordering restrictions seem like they’ve come from done weird internal implementation issues rather than genuine technical limits (if I had to guess, it sounds like developers have used a start and end pair for deciding which are “locked” when it clearly should be a bitmap or similar). Hopefully they are just temporary because this is alpha.

@LaurentB

Ok I understand that whatever the mode (2x2 or 6x6) you allow n-1 tracks to be locked. Totally legit, after all what’s the point if everything is locked.

Even this is, I think, an unnecessary limitation. Okay, it sounds like there is no reason to do it. But that’s not a technical limitation so why prevent it? I can think of one reason you should have free control over the locked tracks, even if that means all of them… Because intermediate states are sometimes invalid, but they’re still intermediate steps.

Let’s say I currently have tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 locked. Oops…I meant to have 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 locked. I want to lock 6 and unlock 1. If locking all isn’t allowed then the user is forced to do unlock 5, lock 6; when they might find lock 6, unlock 5 to be the more convenient order.

[LaurentB]

@popa

Obviously lock track function exists and works. However, I’m not able to change parts IN SYNC after recording the rhythm basis. Change from one part to the other is always (*) done immediately (on release of the button) instead of at the end of the bar. Could not change this behaviour through setting changes. Under these cricumstances the lock track function is useless for me. Still missing the very basics! Hard to take this

HI @popa, I am not really sure I understand your problem there. I have the same settings (Song settings are Sync Tracks: Start&length, Quantize to Measure: Off) yet when I change of part, it occurs as expected at the end of the loop.

Did you check the global setting named “change song part/stop song” and is it set to “End Of Loop” ?

It is easy to miss, I already mentioned in a dedicated topic that I find the configuration split between song level and global level both irrelevant for some of the flags and globally not flexible enough.

@popa

You seem to be pretty happy with this feature. Are you working with external clock or internal click from Aeros only?

Let’s say half happy (a bit more actually but see what I say in my conclusion and the previous post from @kingofthejaffacakes . Basically we talk about an alpha, and its purpose is exactly to discuss those kind of points), but it’s already a huge move towards the right direction. Well done to the dev team… I don’t use (yet) any external device with my Aeros.

[LaurentB]

Yup, I agree that the end-user should be able to do whatever he wants, even if myself I don’t see the point of locking all tracks as it would basically void the possibility to have multiple parts…

But I fully agree with you the point is not what I think. The point is as long as something is not a technical problem there is no reason to prevent it. The more you let those doors open the more you open your system, and I you may eventually have some clever user twisting the system to come out with something new you (or me obviously) didn’t think about initially and that will totally rock.

[Quad]

My guess is the restrictions mean they don’t have to worry about making sure there is a free slot in the later tracks and no gaps in the used tracks. Suspect Aeros has a very direct mapping of tracks in there code for the UI and control plane with some assumptions about no gaps in track numbers. So likely nothing that could not be fixed without some thought and effort.

Idea: Always display the locked tracks at the top no matter what (and let any track be locked/unlocked as long as there are free tracks in other parts.). Easier said than done.

Doesn’t seem to be a logical reason (versus design/implementation reason) to require this.

[kingofthejaffacakes]

@Quad

My guess is the restrictions mean they don’t have to worry about making sure there is a free slot in the later tracks and no gaps in the used tracks. Suspect Aeros has a very direct mapping of tracks in there code for the UI and control plane with some assumptions about no gaps in track numbers. So likely nothing that could not be fixed without some thought and effort.

I’m sure you’re right. Makes me wish it was open source, I’m sure community help would sort these sorts of things out quickly. People tend to be willing to spend a lot of time to scratch their own itches.

[popa]

Thanks @LaurentB, I forgot the Change Song Part setting!
And yes, I share your opinion. Global settings are not flexible enough.

[LaurentB]

You are welcome.

[popa]

Please support this important change request on song settings in connection with lock tracks! Thanks.

Urgent Change Request: Song Settings (Lock Track related)

I’m urgently asking for a song setting optimization as there is a logic breach (even in your documentation). This has become very important with the lock track feature. Please uncouple CHANGE SONG PART and STOP SONG. These are two completely different things, technically and particularly from a musical point of view. It’s very likely that you want to stop a song immediately and change a part only at the end of a loop, for example. There are many reasons for stopping a song, not only at the en…

[Quad]

A few bugs:

• Missing partial audio from playback of song with different midi tempo than sync.
  • Loaded another song that was previously saved that had 164 bpm. BB was at 84bpm.
  • This is really two related issues, both important to fix :
    • Missing audio playback upon bpm mismatch
    • Lack of a warning when the bpm is mismatched.
• Shrinking Waveform
  • Not sure how i got this, but he waveform in my track (6x6 mode I think) kept on getting shorter and shorter. May have been related to repeated clearing of the song (which may have included changing of song settings). After going to another song and coming back it was fine.
• Song Saved to no Location Warning:
  • No idea how this popped up, but when editing a song after changing the name, there was a popup that said something like “one of SDCard or Internal must be selected”. Tried to reproduce this with various sequences of pressing the setting buttons, but was not able to get anything other than a standard radio button exclusive choice behavior. Clearly someone coded the warning to to cover some case that should never happen. Suggests someone looking at the code saw/smelled something. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing. Perhaps a race condition or visibility issue. Not a big deal unless it’s a sign of worse things to come.

If not fixed in this release, please track at least the first two as explicit bugs…

[Pincho_Paxton]

I couldn’t get any tracks to lock. I tried pressing on the clock of the first track, and I looked in the Mixer, and I couldn’t get EXIT to change into LOCK (or if you mean the top button, that didn’t change to LOCK either). I pressed on all the clocks, nothing happened. Also next part was bit strange, because it contained all of the parts, and I couldn’t get rid of them. But I had no white squares around any circles. Updates says I have version 3.2.2.

This was all on a fresh song, I pressed the + button, and it said Song_3, so I used that. Recorded the first track, pressed clock, it didn’t lock. Recorded the second track, pressed the clock on the first track, it didn’t lock. Started a new Part, still couldn’t get a square around the clock to appear.

Also track 3 vanished. It still played, and saved, but the image of the sample vanished.

[Johnyhorse]

Desperately need midi cc implementation for locking tracks, is that going to happen soon or will we have to wait for the Hands Free update.
Everything so far has been functioning well. I am a keyboard player and have the Aeros on a stand and use a foot pedal Morningstar MC8 for all controls.
Thanks for all your hard work.

[Pincho_Paxton]

After turning it off, and editing in Reaper, and then going back to it, it has started working now.

[sharifkerbage]

Is it possible to, at least, unlock a track in a further song part?
i.e: I have 4 tracks in song part 1, I lock the first track, then I start recording on the second track of the second song part; theeen I would like to unlock this track since I don’t want it in the next song part.
I’m thinking that maybe, if the Locking tracks feature behaves as a track duplicator, then the flexibility on this would be better.

[DavidPackouz]

Hi everybody,

We’ve read through all your thoughts and commentary, thank you for all of this valuable feedback. Of course, the thing we want to do most is please you guys with the best looper on Earth and do it at a good pace. After discussing with our engineering team (who also read the thread) it seems that a lot of what is being asked for is no simple task. This is because of the file structure and UI overhaul needed to create a better experience.

One thing that we are considering is looking into how we can create a settings menu component that is pre-settable and allows you to selectively lock tracks in parts. This is no simple feat and is tied in with requests we’ve seen and considered for a settings menu overhaul, and so we see that as a better time to address this.

As to the ability to do it live/hands-free while outside of part 1, we don’t believe this would come any time soon, if ever. The complexity of setting how and when a track locks in real time is a rabbit hole due to all the things you could be doing before/during/after you lock/unlock the track.

Let’s talk about current limitations. The Aeros is not currently meant to allow “holes” or empty tracks in between recorded tracks. Tracks must be locked in order and kept in that order, for that reason. Changing this core functionality will not be pretty, there are a lot of corner cases for this. Locking/unlocking tracks is not going to be doable in any part other than part 1 due to the complexity of things that can be done instantaneously if the Aeros is set to do so. This virtually eliminates the possibility of real-time changes without audible issues that are hard to cover in all cases without spending a very long time trying to do it – and it may never work.

Let me be clear, I am not saying that it is impossible but that takes me back to my first assertion in this post: we want to make you happy and do it quickly and also stick to our frequent releases.

We think that if we get stuck here and try and meet all these expectations, we won’t be able to meet these expectations quickly and all other things that we want to do will suffer and be pushed back. We are eager to move on and keep improving all the functionality further. The next few releases we are looking at are the Hands Free Song Selection Release, an undone logic revamp, and a memory handling improvement release.

These are the last few updates that are focused on improving logic and core use. We will soon be able to move on to more advanced and coveted features like Auto-quantize and a reimagination of audio routing and manipulation.

We understand that this is not exactly what everyone wants to hear, but we want you to know that we have seen your points and many of them make sense. Still, we prefer rounding out the edges and gradually improving the overall experience of the entire unit before we polish just one feature so heavily.

6x6 locked tracks mode is something no looper has ever tried to do. It definitely has room for improvement, so thank you for elucidating us to your use-cases and your wish-lists because we do value that perspective you all give us.

We’re looking forward to this official release and to continuing on our journey of improving the best looper ever made.

Keep Rockin’!

[Johnyhorse]

Hi David. Thanks for your info into locked tracks etc. I understand the difficulty in advancing any further with locked tracks, and would be happy to leave the function as is, with just one other improvement, a MIDI cc function to lock the tracks, or just the first track, as holding down the the button to enable mixer and then to hold again to lock a track is too awkward when Aeros is on a stand. I would much rather see the other functions you mentioned being developed as soon as possible.

[Johnyhorse]

Pre locking track 1 Before Recording would also be a great benefit