SMS wrote:OK just opened DP and tried it again, and the "Solo front-most MIDI... " pref now has no effect on this behavior.
Let me give you a brief rundown on the "Solo Frontmost MIDI." It was always very useful. Many years ago, when it was just called Performer, you would observe your tracks from the Tracks Overview Window (which was appropriately named for that function), now renamed "Tracks Window." Double click any MIDI track, and it would open a window in which you could observe that track as a piano roll. If you needed to observe many tracks, you'd select them all and double-click, and Performer would open a track for each window. So, you may have 5 or 10 windows open, each containing 1 MIDI track. You could resize them and position them, and they'd remember their positions (if I recall correctly), so that you could arrange the windows to form a rudimentary score of just a few tracks. Monitors weren't large enough to do very many of them, but you could shrink the MIDI very small, so the windows didn't have to be very tall. Still, about 5 windows was all I could get on the screen at once. It was a pain to go back to the Tracks Overview Window to change a solo setup, but by soloing the frontmost window, it became a lot easier. Especially if you had 5 or 10 more windows open in the background. So, if you were observing from the Tracks Overview Window, you could set up a group of tracks — say, all the woodwinds — to solo merely by dragging the cursor over the little "play" arrows. But what if you wanted to solo out and focus on one track from those you have set up to solo in the Tracks Overview Window? Solo Frontmost Window was the answer.
You could open a track, and as long as its window was the frontmost (active) window it would solo, all by itself.
Switch to another MIDI Edit Window, and the solo would switch to that window.
Switch to the Event List, and the track that's selected would solo.
Switch to the Notation Editor (not the Quickscribe Window), and that track would solo.
Switch to the Tracks Overview, and you'd get the whole soloed ensemble. Whatever window was in front would determine what soloed.
Meanwhile, a lot of us were getting pretty tired of seeing only ONE track in a window. I drew a picture in Adobe Illustrator of a window with multiple MIDI tracks in it and color-coded MIDI notes so they wouldn't get lost among the other tracks. What I drew was very much like what we have now. I sent it to MOTU, and asked them if they would do it. I had been asking for it for years, but Les Quindipan, at MOTU, got my letter and put it through. I'm sure that many other people had sent similar requests, possibly drawing their own pictures, but I had sent it with a list of about 35 other suggestions. In December 1997, I got a call from Les who said the new release of DP was out, and that I should look at it. I did, and it had nearly all my suggestions. The one glaring omission was this new multi-track MIDI window. I called and asked about it, and he said they were going to do it, but it might be a while. That was the last release of Performer, but Digital Performer 2.7 became the primary app after that.
Just a few years later, in December of 2000, Digital Performer 3.0 was released, and it contained the new MIDI Edit Window with multiple tracks and color coded notes. We were thrilled, but we had to adjust our method of soloing tracks. The MIDI Edit Window would still be the frontmost track, but it could have many tracks visible at once. So, the method chosen by MOTU was to allow all VISIBLE tracks to solo, if the preference was chosen for "Solo Frontmost Window." All the tracks you select in the MIDI Edit Window will be soloed if it's the frontmost window.
Still, you can switch to another window, and whatever track(s) are selected elsewhere for solo will be soloed.
And still, you can turn OFF the preference for "solo frontmost window," and the soloed tracks will default to the ones chosen in the Mixing Board, or on the Tracks Overview Window.
The solo hierarchy goes something like this:
1) SOLO Button, on the Control Panel, toggles Solo on and off.
- 2) User Selection of a track Solo button anywhere. With nothing selected to solo, the SOLO button toggles off, and you hear everything that is play enabled.
- 3) Preferences/Solo and Patch Thru/SOLO Frontmost Window The window in front is in charge of what gets soloed.
- 4) MIXING Board sets up the basic Solo configuration by toggling on the Solo buttons for each track
4) Tracks Window, MIDI Edit Window, and Sequence Editor share Solo Buttons with the Mixing Board. Each window has solo buttons located somewhere in the vicinity of track controls for each individual track.
- 5) MIDI Editor: Active Track Selector As frontmost track, this overrides all above settings except the #1 SOLO button on the Control Panel. Otherwise, it's just a window.
I may have left out some, and others can amend the list, but that's what's off the top of my head.
Shooshie