What's new in Open Metronome 5.06
Mar 17, 2012
- Added ability to cancel a hotkey definition Space and Backspace now display something sensible in the hotkey definition box
- Hotkeys are now inactive if the custom or preset edit boxes have focus.
New in Open Metronome 5.05 (Mar 15, 2012)
- WAV version does not crash when you hit "Play". :/
New in Open Metronome 5.04 (Mar 15, 2012)
- A new custom-beat syntax prefix is available to allow you to speed up or slow down the first x beats of a y-beat bar. By example, [2/4@+10%]11112222 (reading left to right) means play the first 2 beats out of every 4-beat bar 10% faster than the current tempo.
- You can use -10% to play slower. Omit the % sign if you want to specify an absolute alternate tempo (The actual rhythm would be a loop of voice (1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2).
- WAV Export is now possible via the "exp" button (select "WAV" rather than "REG" as the save-type (specify number of loops in hotkey dlg) Fixed bug which was hiding the editable part of the preset combobox (which meant you could not enter new preset names to save)
- Fixed a bug whereby the WAV loop had a jitter if the loop was an odd number of bytes long New WAV samples!
New in Open Metronome 5.03 (Mar 15, 2012)
- Version label updated! Previously, my HTC TyTn II would "skip" every 128 seconds (an audible "gap" when running the metronome, very obvious if the "Hiss" WAV is played @ 60 bpm): this has been fixed by calling "SystemIdleTimerReset" every so often to prevent the device from going into power-saving mode. This "isn't very good", but I can't figure out a better way to solve it.
- The user can still manually turn the screen off without anything bad happening. I've spent ages looking at the more advanced power-state stuff, but none of it seems to keep the waveout alive the way I'd expect (I wonder if it is an issue with the Phoenix III ROM I am running, perhaps there is something in it that does something every 128 seconds if the device is idle). The application has been translated into Spanish! Currently, the error messages are still always in English, however; on the other hand, the user shoulnd't really ever see these.
- The GPL License is also still in English, but it looks like it will be very difficult to make this automatically display in the correct language due to the way Wix works.
- The user can now assign hotkeys to perform various actions: e.g., assign "CTRL-+" to increase tempo. Careful! You can bind metronome functions to simple keypresses as well, and the user can also set the tempo increment and decrement, and also set the maximum and minimum beats per minute via the user-interface.
- These configuration options, and also the about box, now are displayed as part of a new menu. On Windows Mobile, this menu is on the special 2-button bar along the bottom of the screen. I have reluctantly removed the application version from the title-bar: it won't fit on Windows 7, and I decided I'd prefer the full application name to be displayed.
- Previously, the wave device could be opened multiple times: this didn't cause any problem that I'm aware of, but now I've fixed it so that it won't open the wave device again if it is already open.
- Similarly for the "Beat Notification Thread" (I think the thread check is unnecessary, but it won't hurt).
- Tidied up various comments within the source. I'm no longer sure what problem I was seeing, but the wave file reading code was sometimes getting confused because it was using unsigned integers for arithmetic involving negative numbers or something.
- This has been fixed. The installation has been modified so as to provide example user files (a 1-second recording of hiss, that I found useful in demonstrating that the audio output was continuous (without skips)).
New in Open Metronome 5.02 (Aug 19, 2010)
- Version label updated!
- (PC-versions only) "About box" web link updated to point at sourceforge project web page instead of my old codebiscuit personal webspace.
- (PC-versions only) Similarly, the "Help Link" provided to Windows MSI installer for users to click on has been updated to the new sourceforge page.
- (WAV-version only) Previously, when two or more instruments were playing on the same beat, a slight "click" would sometimes be audible due to "clipping" - this is now fixed/improved) (the title-bar will now say ">Reduce Voice Volume!" if "unfixable" clipping is detected).
- (WAV-version only) You can now put a "Usr" sub-folder into the samples directory, which is now automatically scanned on startup, and samples found are automatically included in the available samples drop-down list.
- (WAV-version only) I am ashamed to say that there used to be an audible "skip" at the 1-minute rollover for some tempo/beat combinations: this has now been fixed! A consequence of this fix is that, hopefully, the application will require less memory, as it typically produces a smaller loop-buffer.
- (WAV-version only) Previously, it could take quite a long time (I mean, less than a second, but still!) to "catch up" when the user changed things (e.g., instrument volume) while a beat was playing - I have improved this.
- (PC-versions only) You can now export all of your settings (e.g., presets, current UI settings, etc.) to a ".REG" file - suggested for advanced users only! Settings are "imported" by double-clicking them (ignore the registry warning!).
- Previously, setting the maxaimum beats-per-minute (default is 1000) via the "MaxBPMinute" registry key (introduced in 5.01) would sometimes make the beats-per-minute slider unusable (and manual entry unreliable) - this has been fixed.