I propose to replace the current active / inactive buttons for tracks in the timeline by solo / mute buttons. These buttons would be global, that is, would work across all track types (note, automation and audio) and all devices with tracks on the timeline. The mute button would have the same functionality as the current active / inactive button. The solo button would solo the affected track. Several tracks could be solo-ed simultaneously. This would provide more flexibility and save a lot of time and history steps when deactivating many tracks to isolate just one or a few, or reactivating all of them again.
Comments (14)
I brought this same idea up in the early beta days but it didn't gain much traction.
I searched the board for something like this but didn't find anything. Maybe I used the wrong search terms. If you can still locate your original topic, link it here, or I can delete this one and bump yours.
it was way before the board days. It was back when the discussions were all on the private facebook page. I'm glad that you brought it back up!
how does one make an automation track solo? not to be disrespectful, but what would it do if its just the automation and nothing else
The way I see it, the solo (or mute) function wouldn't distinguish between track types (note, automation, audio). It would be up to you to use it in a way that makes sense to you. I could imagine that a solo automated looping track might make sense in a live situation where you play the automated synth with a MIDI controller.
ah true
Yes please, I'm working more on the timeline then on the desktop, and having to go back to the centroid to solo can really be a pain on big laggy drafts
Just to confirm, do you mean similar to the way FL studio has it where you can left click to select/solo channels and right click to mute/solo/unmute all channels? Good idea. That'd be nice so if you want to take off one thing is so that we wouldn't need to mute/unmute every channel individually XD.
I don't know how FL Studio works but, yes, the idea is to avoid the situation where you have to activate or deactivate many tracks one after another. It takes a lot of time and grows the history list unnecessarily.
Have a dropdown menu.
Just an arrow which reveals the solo and mute buttons may work.
"For instance if I solo a note track I would disable all automations, pattern changes and audio-tracks. I find this behaviour very arbitrary." What if that's exactly what the user wants to do? If there's any other track that needs to be active for the user's needs, it's then very easy to then solo it as well. And note, pattern and audio tracks won't generally belong to the same device. I don't see this as so complicated, since the current implementation (only mute) already allows users to create completely arbitrary mute/solo states of different track types, including even individual regions inside tracks.
You could use a similar approach to the Centroid mixer, without the need for a drop-down menu or a bloated UI. All tracks would have the current mute and an additional solo button, which would light up when used to show the track's status. Solo would work globally across all track types. Several tracks could have Mute or Solo active at the same time and you'd just click the relevant button to deactivate their status. If you want to make the solo/mute function more versatile, you could add "master" Mute and Solo buttons at the top of the timeline and even "device" Mute and Solo buttons at the top of each device to un-Mute or un-Solo all tracks in the timeline or all tracks in a particular device respectively simultaneously.
Reason has a hierarchical way of organising tracks, where children tracks of a master track are called "lanes". For me, Audiotool's approach is more a "flat" list of tracks, not hierarchical, in which different tracks are managed independently. That's how it works now with muting anyway. You can't mute a whole device, but only individual tracks. It is debatable what system is better, but I thought that AT's "flat" approach can be an advantage because it's the most flexible and can cover all the scenarios and user needs. (I actually believe that AT's timeline is one of the most efficient that there is.) Therefore, a Solo function that works globally across all track types would provide the fastest workflow in my opinion: if I want to solo a single device (for example, for performance reasons), I solo its tracks instead of having to mute everything else, which could take ages and lots of history events in a big arrangement. If I need to solo two devices but I don't want to solo one track (say, notes) of one of the devices, I just solo the tracks that I need. Yes, I mentioned the global un-solo and un-mute buttons at the end my first comment. They are very convenient when you're done working with the current solo status and want to return the timeline to an unsoloed status.
I guess that my main point is that a global (meaning, not track-type aware) Solo function for timeline tracks (taking into account that more than one track can be soloed simultaneously) wouldn't create any scenario that cannot be created right now with the current mute function. Therefore I don't fully share the fear of confusing statuses or hard to follow consequences. I think that's the main difference in our opinions. I guess that the best way to test these ideas would be with a simple mock-up simulating a timeline and coming up with specific examples of the dangers that you describe.
Yes, that would be a workaround. If I wanted to solo a particular device, I'd just click the "mute all" button and then unmute any tracks I wanted to "solo". Still, it demands one extra click (possibly far away from the relevant tracks) compared to a direct solo function. I think that while you can implement both functions (solo and mute) by using only one (mute), in the end it's a matter of convenience. Mute is well suited to take out a few tracks (less than half) from the whole. Solo is well suited to isolate a few tracks (less than half) from the whole. Using the opposite function to what is needed always introduces one extra step. I'd love to know what the other people who seemed to support this idea think about this: @netime ? @markolmx ?
Definitely, it's better. I was just thinking that if you had just Solo buttons instead of Mute buttons, the situation would be exactly equivalent: to mute a few tracks, you'd have to first solo everything (possibly with a "solo all/unsolo all" button) and then deactivate the solo status of the tracks you wanted to make silent. That's why I think that a Solo function wouldn't introduce anything than the Mute function didn't, and that having both would provide the chance to use the most appropriate depending on what the desired status was.