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Just my 5 cents. No 1. This can get annoying in some situations. You can assign this to a keyboard shortcut and turn it on and off when needed. Window / Keyboard Shortcuts / Editor / Sound Selected Midi Notes. No 2: I've been bitten by this a couple of times. Imho it would be better if regions were individual by default and you got to choose when copying regions if they are individual or not. You may want most of drum patterns to be instances of the same copy but not necessarily regions for other midi instruments. However I have learned to live with the current default, although I sometimes forget and find out later my edit was done on many regions and I need to redo the thing. |
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I have no strong opinion about (1). Except when you select a lot of notes simultaneously this can lead to a loud, speaker-blasting noise. and should that happen our current excuse is that "you asked for it". As for (2). Once regions are independent, they will irreversibly remain so. So this is a sane default. Users who record live MIDI, don't usually copy regions, and users who make pattern based music or use drum-patterns do want copied to be linked (and only un-link on individual basis). It's not a feature on paper as you suggest, but essential for pattern based music. So this seems a sane default. There is already feature request to indicate linked copies in the tracker, but it's not trivial to implement. |
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1. Maybe the amount of notes played at once could be limited with a preference and a low default setting could be used to prevent the earrape? I guess 6 notes at once should usually suffice even for complex chords. 2. My music is pretty much all pattern-based, but after trying to use linked duplicates as being on by default I've had to disable them due to lack of control and visual feedback. I was unable to remember which regions are linked, and unlinking them requires a lot of menu-diving, unless the user sets a custom shortcut for himself. So far I've encountered many new users asking about this, being confused, and so far no one I talked to seemed to be using this feature. I've created a simple Mastodon poll to hopefully get some numbers: https://mastodon.social/@unfa/104601674634813433 |
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Just for the record: linked regions is a nice useful feature. When I'm writing a song recording in Ardour I start with a simple drum pattern that is repeating all through the song. I use linked regions here. When I've finalized the structure of the song and recorded in guitars, bass and vocals I start to tweak the drums here and there adding fills and changing drum patterns in some parts of the song. This is where I need to use unlinked regions. If I now want to make a change to the original drum pattern across the song it's easy as the change gets copied into every linked region. I can also see unfa's use case and agree that the default is not optimal now. I think the preference is in wrong place, since it's a session preference and you need to change it every time you create a new session. The setting should perhaps be global, since a user probably may prefer not to use linked regions ever. Or maybe the options needs to be remembered by Ardour, so the user would not need to change it every time after creating a session. |
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> I've created a simple Mastodon poll to hopefully get some numbers: Please don't. Ardour is not a democracy, nor design by committee. Good arguments and constructive criticism are preferable, and those are, alas, usually only provided by a minority. |
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To be clear: Preferences are only used for session independent settings (studio setup, hardware, system specifics, etc). Monitoring is part of the preferences (do you have a control room, or not). (2) is intentionally **NOT** a preference but a session-property. You may have one session where you extensively use linked regions patterns and another where you don't. You can however save default session props that are used for new sessions. |
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"You can however save default session props that are used for new sessions". I can't believe I have not noticed the big "Use these settings as default" button on the bottom of the Session Properties window in all these years of using Ardour. The button blends to the background quite effectively, maybe it should be of different color from the background to pop up a little:) Thanks for pointing this out, there is a Session Setting I've been changing every time after creating a new session and now I don't have to :) |
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> Please don't. Ardour is not a democracy, nor design by committee. Well, so far the poll seems to be pretty uniform. I guess that doesn't matter though. > Good arguments and constructive criticism are preferable Here you go: I think without visual feedback and usability improvements linked duplicates are mighty confusing and are bound to cause data loss when a user forgets a duplicate is linked somewhere and overwrites something in his project only to find out minutes later when it's far gone. This happened to me a few times - so I've learned to *always disable this feature and save my defaults right away*. Always. And I suspect almost everyone who uses MIDI in Ardour goes through the same experience at some point. As improving the feature is not an easy task, I think it'd benefit the grand majority of users to have linked duplicates off by default. The feature is simply half-baked right now. |
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Here's another idea: The first time setup dialog could offer a choice which defaults to use. The classical setup or some more unfa-like preferences. Then again, I like your suggestion to tell users to actively disable these settings, when they want a workflow like you prefer. That raises awareness that linked regions exist and they have to acknowledge that be able to use linked pattern regions by actively opting out. |
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x42: I think the first run wizard question could be a nice thing - it'd let users disable this easily if they know they don't want it, or (hopefully) put in their minds that there's something like this and when they experience problems, they may remember to seek some MIDI settings (however I think people mostly search for it in Preferences, not Session Properties - I know I wasn't able to find it at first). Maybe an information where to find this setting to change it later would be a good idea. I'll keep the warning about this in my tutorial - maybe I can also include a part about using the feature to help users decide if they want it on. I don't want to force my workflow on people, though I'm obviously biased towards it. I've got some feedback on YouTube (attached screenshot). Screenshot_20200730_122100.png (70,534 bytes) |
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I just want to add an idea to the conversation. A user may want to make a global decision about linked and unlinked regions. But one may also want to duplicate both linked and unlinked regions in the same session. Imho the global default is only one half of the discussion, region duplication is the other. One should be able to choose between duplicating linked or unliked regions also. Could it be possible to add the possibility to choose between these in the multi - duplicate window ? Imho a single region duplication could just follow the global setting. Thoughts ? |
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I think it'd be great to have an option to choose linked or non-linked duplicates individually, though I think without visual indication it's not going to be of much use. More comments on YouTube under my post here: https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugy4h5cADm9YscUmqER4AaABCQ?lc=UgwCOObliRU8LgIeWpN4AaABAg The relevant ones so far: > [ Iurie ] (Geonkick developer) > 6 hours ago (edited) > Linked for me creates only problem most of the time. It should be unlinked and an option to select and link if there is a need, copy as linked etc. > [ DanVideo ] > 1 day ago > What is missing is a shortcut for copying clip linked/unlinked and a clear sign of what is linked and what is not. > [ QuotePilgrim ] > 22 hours ago (edited) > You shouldn't be asking if people are using the feature, that's not going to answer your real question, which is if they think it should be enabled by default. > > The way you phrased your question, people who use the feature but don't think it should be enabled by default are forced to answer yes. If there are many such people, you'll come to the conclusion that the feature should be enabled by default, even though that wouldn't be the case. > [ Tim Hawthorn ] (an Ardour beginner) > 22 hours ago > That threw me to start with and I'm still getting used to it. For the way I work I'd prefer it disabled by default. > [ PastelComGini ] > 20 hours ago > It shouldn't be enabled by default. |
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How about a check box in the duplicate dialogue? "Linked copies? [ ]" Maybe add a little chain icon to linked regions and it lists the links when you hover over it? |
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When I'm writing a song recording in Ardour I start with a simple drum pattern that is repeating all through the song. I use linked regions here. When I've finalized the structure of the song and recorded in guitars, bass and vocals I start to tweak the drums here and there adding fills and changing drum patterns in some parts of the song. See here: https://www.google.com ? www.google.com |
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My regions are linked.. I'd say 70-80% of the time. Ardour should be able to create (un)linked regions. 2 shortcut Ctrl+d -> linked, ctrl+xx ->unlinked. There should be a marker on the linked regions, like a small anchor.. |
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I agree with unfa's default recommendations. I installed Ardour yesterday and I made a bass track with midi. Then I copied that track to a drum track and started editing the drums. Moments later I found out I was editing both tracks at the same time, because the MIDI regions were linked. As many have said here and on the forum, I believe that the default should be unlinked. If you copy a region to a new track, you should be expecting a copy, not the same region. 2021-09-17-184800_399x240_scrot.png (5,093 bytes) |
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Sorry I published my previous note too soon and did not figure out how to edit the note. I added a screenshot from Bitwig, showing how the cursor indicates if you are making a looped region. Might be useful instead of copy pasting a region on the same track, when the goal is to use a linked region. |
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I have no preferences for N.1. Personally I find it's fine as it is, even if I always enable it. I got trapped for N.2. I didn't used linked copies for now. |
