Only six locators in arranger ?

First time using Arrange Mode (lately I had been living in the Clip Matrix), because I'm bootlegging a song (mostly voice and no low end - I'm slapping bass and drums under that, for cheap fun) thrown into the project as a whole audio track, so that frames the workflow. I'm working the song in sections (intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus etc.) - so, of course, the locators came handy, especially with Set Loop Range By Locator set to On. I'm happy to report that the whole setup is quite practical.

But only six locators ? C'mon Akai, that is an absolutely arbitrary limitation - gratuitous frustration... I understand that the standard soft buttons row only offers six positions, but there is a solution for that: let us jump to location directly from the Locate pop-up - there is plenty of room in there for a vertical scrollbar and a column of buttons on the left, that jump to location and close the popup at the same time... And implementing that won't break the bank or linger on the kanban board for more than a few days !

Anyway, how do y'all manage - is there a trick I missed ?

I agree it was one of the things I discovered when I bought the key 61 4 years ago. I'm just in the process of trying to use the loop mode much more when interrogating sections such as mixmode. This then enables you to do whatever it is on the screen that you want to do without having to use the screen to locate it to a point.

Just thinking about this now it would make a lot more sense if there was a facility such as shift + locator which then allowed the 16 pads to contain 16 locate points. I don't know if anyone has ever suggested this to akai?

altruistica wrote:Just thinking about this now it would make a lot more sense if there was a facility such as shift + locator which then allowed the 16 pads to contain 16 locate points. I don't know if anyone has ever suggested this to akai?

Nice idea. That mode could be activated while the Locate popup is open - pads are currently inactive at that time.

Also, four pad banks - so 64 locators... I would be happy with that arbitrary limit. 16 would be plenty already, but pad banks are standard mechanism to be expected.

So:
- Arbitrary limit of 64 locators
- Locators list scrollable in the Locate popup, scrollbar on the right
- Column of buttons on the left of the Locate popup, to jump to location and close the dialog
- Pads trigger the same function as the aforementioned buttons, and bear the color defined for the locator (color setting already implemented)
- Changing pad bank pages the scrollbar to the 16 locators page of the 16 pads

At that point, maybe a pad matrix would be better on-screen than a scrollable list - to avoid mental mismatch between list and matrix... But that requires stuffing the locator naming and location setting widgets in a pad matrix screen - and I'm not sure how that could work. Or maybe the list is the normal mode of that popup, but Shift pops up the pads matrix display (with just the names inside the pads) and pressing a pad closes the two levels of popups to jump to the location ? And the pads are of course a directly available while the Locate popup is open with the list - the Shift is optional for when one can't remember what pad goes to what location.

Raaah, I'm not supposed to do software product management on week-ends !

Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:

altruistica wrote:Just thinking about this now it would make a lot more sense if there was a facility such as shift + locator which then allowed the 16 pads to contain 16 locate points. I don't know if anyone has ever suggested this to akai?

Nice idea. That mode could be activated while the Locate popup is open - pads are currently inactive at that time.

Also, four pad banks - so 64 locators... I would be happy with that arbitrary limit. 16 would be plenty already, but pad banks are standard mechanism to be expected.

So:
- Arbitrary limit of 64 locators
- Locators list scrollable in the Locate popup, scrollbar on the right
- Column of buttons on the left of the Locate popup, to jump to location and close the dialog
- Pads trigger the same function as the aforementioned buttons, and bear the color defined for the locator (color setting already implemented)
- Changing pad bank pages the scrollbar to the 16 locators page of the 16 pads

At that point, maybe a pad matrix would be better on-screen than a scrollable list - to avoid mental mismatch between list and matrix... But that requires stuffing the locator naming and location setting widgets in a pad matrix screen - and I'm not sure how that could work. Or maybe the list is the normal mode of that popup, but Shift pops up the pads matrix display (with just the names inside the pads) and pressing a pad closes the two levels of popups to jump to the location ?

Raaah, I'm not supposed to do software product management on week-ends !

Please send this to Akai:
https://support.akaipro.com/en/support/ ... r_feedback

Us on the Force side have been pissed off about for years, Forgot about this BS & now I'm pissed off again! This idea would be great with the Force 64 pads

B-Wise wrote:Please send this to Akai

Done. To ensure my submission is read, I'll perform a few dance steps in front of my MPC, to please the Akai gods.

Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:

B-Wise wrote:Please send this to Akai

Done. To ensure my submission is read, I'll perform a few dance steps in front of my MPC, to please the Akai gods.

Thanks!

Yes THANKS!

I'm happy to report that I received a nice personal response from an inMusic support person. No promises about any implementation - of course, but they did pass it to the development team.

Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:I'm happy to report that I received a nice personal response from an inMusic support person. No promises about any implementation - of course, but they did pass it to the development team.

Well, that's better than nothing. 6 is just a stupid number to had settled on. At least make it 8, which is half of 16, but 16 should've been the min for something that shouldn't even have a limit.

Hopefully they'll upgrade, esp now that more people are using the arranger. The new arranger on screen shortcut tabs are great, but this just make the lack of locators standout even more .

Thanks again for the request & the follow up.

I've just seen this video and it seems we already have a way of accessing the locate points on the pads, albeit only six.
Watch this video and it shows you how:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMRYOFiaQlY