Import Backing Track

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boone51
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Import Backing Track

Post by boone51 »

Is it too early to ask when we might get the ability to play along with a backing track? This app is so much fun to play with, but I'm not using it very much since I can't sync up recordings with it. I realize you released the app about 5 minutes ago, so forgive me for being so impatient. Just thought I'd ask.

jesse
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Re: Import Backing Track

Post by jesse »

Playing along with an arbitrary backing track? You might be able to accomplish this with another app running in the background that supports timestretch and midi clock sync. I don't have any specific apps to point you to right now, but it is probably worth a search on both our parts.

We do plan on adding at the ability to play back your own recorded loops in the app, and extending that to imported audio is likely, but specification/recognition of tempo and beat sync on those makes it a little unwieldy.

boone51
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Re: Import Backing Track

Post by boone51 »

The track that I'd like to "play along with" is in Auria and that app doesn't support midi like this. There is a great app you can look at for an example of what I'm talking about. It's called "Thumbjam" :shock: and it has just the most awesome interface for bringing in loops/songs and playing along with them so you can sync up your work. If I knew that developer I would ask him if you could just copy and paste that whole setup. Maybe someone there can reach out to them. :idea:

I'm sorry...I truly am. It's Friday and and all of my ability to refrain from being a smartass expired about a half hour ago. I've already started hanging my head in shame and now I just await the flood of chastising remarks that are surely about to come my way.

boone51
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2012 10:10 am
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Re: Import Backing Track

Post by boone51 »

Let me just go ahead and reply to some of these remarks before they come in;

"Holy cow, don't you realize that app development isn't as simple as just copy and pasting code between two completely different code bases?"

No, I don't. Thanks for pointing that out.

"Or are you just stupid?"

Pretty much, yes.

"This incredible app was just released a couple of months ago. Give the developer some time to get bugs squashed and maybe then they can work on making this awesome app even better by adding some new features"

Honestly, it sounds like you're just sucking up to the developer at this point.

"Maybe some of this goes away if they implement AudioBus"

Now we're talkin'. Even better. But being that Audiobus is vaporware for the general public right now, I'll just ask about things I'm familiar with and have seen working.

"Do you talk to yourself much?"

Unfortunately, yes. All the time.

"Did your parents drop you on your head or something?"

Probably.

jesse
Posts: 132
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Re: Import Backing Track

Post by jesse »

Laugh it up, fuzzball!

So here is the real reason DrumJam is missing such an obvious feature that TJ has:

ThumbJam doesn't have any time stretching functionality so it doesn't pretend to care about matching tempos of previously recorded loops, etc, and thus once you have a loop loaded it won't change tempo at all. DrumJam on the other hand operates with a high quality timestretch for all its built-in loops all the time, and the tempo can be changed arbitrarily. Due to resource usage (the expense of the HQ time stretching) it is currently designed so that all the built-in loops have the same base tempo (there are actually three sets of every loop, 3 different tempos to avoid too many artifacts) at any given time so that only one instance of the timestretch is running that applies across all loops. Introducing the ability to playback arbitrary imported (or recorded internally) loops would necessitate an additional time stretch instance because the original tempo could be different than the other built-in ones. Due to concerns about quality and CPU usage, I decided not to implement it for launch.

I can experiment with lower quality (and thus CPU usage) time stretching to solve the issue, or look into pre-rendering the stretched versions on demand, which would work OK as long you didn't change tempos often during normal playback.

I could also take the approach of TJ and just assume you will always match the tempo of any loaded "backing" track/loop and thus never stretch it, and lockout tempo changes. I have a feeling I would get complaints about that too though.

boone51
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2012 10:10 am
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Re: Import Backing Track

Post by boone51 »

Now that audiobus is implemented you can disregard this entirely, obviously. Very impressive. Thank you. I barely slept last night again because of drumjam. It's so addictive. So many possibilities now. Thank you Thank you Thank you!

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