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Enhance the audio player for playalongs
#1
Somebody said in another thread that MSP isn't an educational tool per se and I agree.

But it is suited very well for some educational tools, case in point playalongs like the Abersold or the Hal Leonard series. It's convenient to have the sheets and the music together on a tablet and on the go and to play with a BT headset.

While reeds, trumpets and other solo instruments can use this from the go with MSP it's not the same with bass and piano. Those are on separate channels and you can "mute" those by using balance on a hifi system.

It would be nice if the audio player in MSP could do something similar but put the the remaining mono output as stereo (so you hear it with both ears on a headphone). I haven't seen many audio players on the PC which can do that (just one very very old one actually) and don't know if it's difficult to implement.

But I think it's also something you could use to promote MSP to users of such playalongs.
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#2
This may be possible with the audio player changes that are coming but I'll have to investigate to be sure.
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#3
Thanks for implementing the panning in the new update. That's already 80% of my request. :-)

Do you think it's possible to make the mono option with the superpowered library, too?

(So that panned left or right channel can be heard the same on stereo speakers)

That would be awesome for playalongs to blend out bass or piano (which often are on left or right channels respectively on playalongs)
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#4
Using the superpowered audio library, I can separate a stereo mix into two mono channels, and then just expand one of those mono channels back to stereo. The way I want to handle this is as follows:

1) On the pan slider popup, a "Use mono output" checkbox will be visible if the "experimental audio player" is enabled (which it is by default now so I am change the wording to "Use advanced audio player").

2) The checkbox will only be enabled if the audio is panned completely left or right. 

How does that sound?

Thanks,
Mike
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#5
Sounds terrific and does completely what I want/need for the playalong stuff.

I don't know if there are people who might want to have a mono output regardless of the panning for other reason. It's nothing I would need, I guess.
It's for you to decide if the checkbox should be only enabled if the audio is panned completely left or right. Just wanted to mention it.

Thanks again.

(And I think you should put this playalong feature into your blurb for MSP)
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#6
BRX,

This feature was released with version 2.5.2. Have you had a chance to try it out yet? Just want to make sure it meets your needs.

Mike
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#7
Which feature are you talking about? The panning itself I already tried (I think with 2.5.1) already. That's why I wrote post #3. I tested with my Android tablet only so far (had a crackle in the loudspeakers but I think that's hardware's fault or something with not enough memory) and it works fine. The Mono feature I haven't seen yet, in 2.5.2 either. Did you really mean that?

And I'm still waiting on the W10 version to be published in the MS-Store to test it.

The nice thing for keyboarders is that the current models almost all have some Bluetooth functionality so you can connect your device directly with the keyboard and play the playalong stuff over that.
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#8
If you tap the panning icon v2.5.2, you should see the "Use Mono output" checkbox on the popup. It is only enabled if you pan completely to one side.

I'm still working on the Windows 10 update.

Mike
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#9
OK, I tested on my phone with 2.5.2. and as you said it's there and works like announced. I'm happy with this solution thank you.

On my tablet the automatic updates hadn't worked and I was erring about the version. There it was still 2.5.1. so I couldn't see it.

Well done and thanks. (Now I had some problems to connect my keyboard to the phone as Audio Output but that's hardly a MSP problem).
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#10
Again, this works fine now (sorted out the BT Audio output problems as well, none MSP related). So I finally started to add more audio to my sheets, a lot of playalongs actually.

I have two wishes related to the new audio feature.

The first one is minor but I would appreciate if the mono preference would stick and be remembered. I usually start the playalong and the sheet by tapping the little note symbol in the list view, sometimes only for a quick listen. But after a new start I have to open the song specifically, open the audio player and the preferences and tick the mono option again because MSP has forgotten.

My other wish is about optimizing a workflow. Adding Audio to the songs is tedious if you have to do a lot of audio files.
Selecting the song, Edit, Audio Tab, file chooser, navigate to file and select, OK and back to the next one.

Can you provide something like this: selecting the song and then if you tap the place where usually the note symbol shows up the file picker is directly invoked (with the last remembered directory) and you can navigate to and choose the audio file directly from there and with OK it's added as audio file to the song? If you want to add many audio files it would be really a time saver.
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#11
I'll look into the mono setting not being saved. As far as the other request, I'm not sure it makes sense to have a hidden option like that (in essence), as the user wouldn't know to tap there to add a file. It seems to me more useful to have something like a dropdown arrow that you could tap on and it would bring up options for the song such as Add File, Import Audio File, Edit, Delete, etc. Adding icons in the list does result in a slight performance hit when scrolling through the list, but as long as I don't add too many, it should be fine. I'm open to suggestions on what kinds of things could go in that dropdown list to make it more useful. I could through the song versioning option into that dropdown, although it might be faster to have a separate dropdown for that to make it really fast to switch the active version (versus having multiple taps to access the list of versions). 

Mike
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