Audiotool board archive

Within Audiotool, there are only two distinct ways of loading a sample in the context of a project.
(1) Loading it into a Machiniste and (2) loading it into an Audiotrack.
However, in Next, some of the helpful visual feedback of the sample loading has been dropped.

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(1) Loading into a Machiniste

In Audiotool Next, there are two ways of loading a sample into the Machiniste (a) dragging a sample from the sample browser directly into a corresponding sample slot on the Machiniste and (b) using the "Browse sample" feature by opening the context menu of a sample slot on the Machiniste and selecting "Browse sample", then selecting a sample from the sample browser.

(a) In Next, when a new sample is dragged into a Machiniste slot, there is no feedback that it is loading. In part, because the empty slots on the Machiniste are not in fact empty but say "[no sample]". The sample will in fact display its name but doesn't seem to function at that point until a little later on.
Flash, however will display the text "...loading Sample..." before the sample is functional, then display it's name. It would be helpful to also see a loading percentage as well, though.

(b) The same holds true for the new "Browse Sample" feature, which shows absolutely no visual feedback denoting that the sample is loading. In fact, when testing it went straight from "[no sample]" to "[error]", meaning the user has no clue how far the sample loaded beforehand perhaps giving a little insight into debugging.

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(2) Loading into an Audiotrack.

In Audiotool, there are two ways of loading a sample from an Audiotrack (a) with an existing Audiotrack on the desktop, dragging a sample from the sample browser to an empty region in the timeline and (b) dragging a sample directly from the sample browser to the desktop will automatically create a new Audiotrack with the corresponding sample positioned at 00:00.

In the Flash version of Audiotool, both processes are consistent with handling loading. The loading process is initialized by displaying the text "Loading..." on the timeline region of the sample. Then the sample name is shown followed by the percent complete. However, when (a), Next will simply say "loading" followed by the sample name, until the sample is finished loading, with no percent complete. (b) Next will only say "loading" with no sample name until the process completes.

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As you can see, being able to visually see the process complete has proved to be useful, as Flash is evidence, for workflow and debugging alike.