Tabular View Of All Songs/Sort By Create Date

[ayampols]

Hi,

I would love to be able to see all songs displayed in a table. If you could do a multi-column table (song name, date created, date last modified, bit rate, sampling frequency) with sortable columns, that would be so great!

If such a tabular view is not in the cards, how about just providing the ability to sort songs by date created? The current hard-coded alphabetical sort can get tough to work with when there are a lot of songs.

Many thanks!
-Armen

[martygras]

Tabs or folders would be a nice touch if possible. I don't currently have a large quantity of songs but can see how helpful it could be.

[ayampols]

I would like to bring this request to the attention of the developer.

Currently, on an iPad, the song grid is a 12x10 matrix of icons sorted alphabetically, with no customization of view. This scenario is considered unmanageable by usability professionals and I have started to use this as an example of poor usability in my class. I challenge you to find a reference to a similarly large yet unsortable matrix in any well-received professional application. My students have been unsuccessful in finding other examples in the wild.

The developer has at least the following options to improve on this.

1. Limit the number of songs supported by MT DAW, perhaps to about 8 or 10. Alphabetical sorting would not be considered an arbitrary choice in such a view.

2. Support customization of sort order. Better still, add the option of a tabular view with a useful set of columns, supporting sorting on any visible column.

[pwnified]

I challenge you to find a reference to a similarly large yet unsortable matrix in any well-received professional application. My students have been unsuccessful in finding other examples in the wild.

Eh, are you serious? The iPad home screen itself, is a large unsortable matrix of icons. I've always thought "Arrange by" is fairly "Cluttery" to be perfectly honest, in other words, you need lots of extra menu options and text, and the more text, the more confusing an app becomes. Apple solved these usability problems in other ways, like the ability to move icons to new locations and they stay where you placed them. This is also unintuitive in another way: there is nothing that leads someone to know about the Touch-Hold mechanism, they must either happen upon it, or be taught about it. However, once a user figures out Touch-Hold and uses it, the icons begin to jiggle, which conveys the fact they are movable.

Also with Apples UI, persistence of vision, i.e when a new icon appears, animations are used to convey the new location to the user, instead of just popping into a sorted list. Apple is very good with this, using animations to reinforce object persistence. I'm on board, it's just a lower priority because multitrack is more about having the highest performing audio engine.

That said, I'm biting the bullet, and introducing some way of sorting. Of course if I did that, you wouldn't be able to use it for your example anymore~!

[ayampols]

Thank you so much! It will really be a helpful improvement. I agree with you about the limitations of Apple's approach, and I can see you've really thought about this issue.

Looking forward to the changes!

I challenge you to find a reference to a similarly large yet unsortable matrix...

Eh, are you serious? The iPad home screen itself, is a large unsortable matrix of icons.

Unfortunately that example did not satisfy the criteria presented in the exercise. First, your matrix supports ~120 items, Apple iPad maxes out at 20, which is considered workable from a usability perspective. Second, as you say, its ordering/placement is fully customizable (if not entirely consistent), yours is not in the least customizable. But it sounds like you're going to make a change, and that is really great news! I'd love to no longer have this screen as an example!

-Armen