Overview

This overview will introduce you to the most important user interface elements of Stage Traxx 3.

Tab Bar

Stage Traxx 3 is divided into different functional areas that you can access via the tab bar on the bottom of the screen:

Tab Bar

The Queue tab is used to manage the playback queue if you have the setting Advanced Queue Mode enabled. If this setting is not enabled, this tab is hidden. Although there is another setting Show Queue Tab available if you want to see this view even if not working in the advanced mode. If the queue contains some songs, a red badge will show the number of songs in the queue.

The History tab will show a list of songs you have played.

You can manage your playlists in the Playlists tab.

Tip

When you have selected a song in a playlist, multiple taps on the Playlist tab will alternate between the playlists overview and the currently selected playlist.

The Songs tab is your song library. It contains all songs imported into Stage Traxx.

Open Settings to adapt the app to your needs. Stage Traxx supports many configuration settings to tweak the behavior of the app. Here you can also find Backup & Restore and Network Sessions.

Song Cells

In every list view throughout the app songs are displayed with the following cell layout:

Song Cell

The title and artist name are shown on the left. You can also see the duration of the song and if you change pitch and / or speed of the song you will find the changes displayed below the song duration. To the right of the song duration is a button Detail Disclosure Icon which will open the Song Details view.

In the queue view or in a playlist songs may show a grey or color arrow on the right side of the cell. This indicates that autoplay for a playlist (grey arrow) or for this song (color arrow) is enabled. This means that once the song finishes playing, the next song will automatically start playing.

You can always swipe songs to the left and in advanced queue mode also to the right to reveal actions that can be performed on the song.

Stage Traxx supports different song types. See Song types for details. All songs with a special song type will display either Multitrack or Lyrics Only to the right of the artist name:

Song Type

Songs can be displayed with colored backgrounds:

Play Marker

The blue PLAY marker indicates that this song is loaded in the player and either ready to play or already playing.

Next Marker

The next song that will be played is marked with a yellow NEXT marker. Once the currently playing song has finished, this will become the new playing song.

Done Marker

The purple DONE marker is displayed for all songs that are shown on the history tab. You can disable this feature by disabling the Show DONE Marker setting. If the history is cleared, this marker will disappear. Song marked with DONE are not automatically scheduled for playback to prevent playing the same song twice during a gig.

Missing Marker

If an audio file for a song can't be opened, the song will be shown with this red MISSING marker. To repair this problem, open song details by tapping on Detail Disclosure Icon. Here you can see which filename is expected. You can then copy the audio file with this name via the Files app into the Stage Traxx 3 folder.

Mini Player

The mini player is displayed directly above the tab bar whenever a song is selected. In advanced queue mode this player may be hidden when you clear the queue. It will be automatically displayed again once you add a song to the queue.

The mini player is a quick way to control playback from any screen you are on. It has a big play/stop button, displays the song title and has a waveform overview which you can use to quickly seek to a certain position in the song. The time display can be switched from showing elapsed time to remaining time by tapping on it.

Mini Player

You can open a full screen player view which will also display song lyrics by tapping on the song title in the mini player. There are settings to automatically open the full screen player when loading a playlist or starting playback.

Note

Seeking with the waveform view is by default only possible when playback is not running. You can enable this feature during playback by activating the setting Waveform Seek during Playback.

Full Screen Player with Lyrics

The full screen player is the primary view during a gig. The main feature is the large lyrics area.

The following screenshot shows the full screen player on an iPad screen. On the iPhone in portrait mode, some of the elements are not displayed.

Full Screen Player

The player consist of a number of elements. In the top left corner is a multifunctional display that can be used to view a clock, a session timer or the estimated end time of the queued up songs. You can switch the display with the Clock Mode setting. The session timer starts when you hit play. It will reset 10 minutes after the last song has stopped. You can manually reset the timer by tapping this field. This clock display is not visible on the iPhone in portrait mode.

The song title is displayed to the right of the multifunction display. You can close the player by tapping on the song title. If you enable the setting Show Next Song Title the title of the next song will also be displayed in the title field.

The player will close automatically once there are no more songs scheduled for playback.

The elapsed or remaining time of the song is displayed at position to the right of the title. To change the mode of this display, tap on it. It will flash during the last 30 seconds of playback.

Below these elements, you can see the waveform of the current song. When playback is stopped, you can swipe it to seek to a certain playback position. With the setting Waveform Seek during Playback enabled you can also seek during playback. The waveform and time display will flash during the last 30 seconds of playback.

To the right of the waveform you can find the button song popup button to open a popup window which allows you to modify certain song parameters of the currently loaded song. These modifications can be done during playback. You can find details about this popup in the section Song properties popup.

Another button equalizer popup button follows which will open a popup window with the song equalizer for standard songs or the multitrack configuration window for multitrack songs. For details see the section Equalizer & multitrack settings popup.

On the far right is the autoplay button autoplay-icon to toggle the autoplay function for the current song. If autoplay is enabled, playback will not stop after the current song is finished. The playback will continue with the next song.

Below the waveform on the left is the song list view. Here you can choose to view the queue (if in advanced queue mode or enabled by settings), the playback history, your playlists or a list of all songs in your library via the tab bar on top of the view. This list can be hidden to have more room for the lyrics either by:

  • tapping on the button Hide song list
  • double tap gesture on the lyrics
  • Hide Song List in Playback setting to automatically hide the view during playback

You can also resize the list view by a long press on the close button. Once it changes color, move it to the desired size:

resize song list

Stage Traxx will remember for each orientation (landscape or portrait) if you prefer to see this view or hide it and which size you prefer.

Note

This view is always hidden on the iPhone in portrait mode.

You can use the pinch gesture in the lyrics view to change the font size. Other display options for the lyrics can be changed in the settings.

The bottom of the screen is dominated by a big start / stop button. You can activate a double tap stop mode by enabling Double Tap to Stop in settings. If it is enabled, you need to double tap the button to stop playback. There is also a double tap start mode that you can enable with Double Tap to Start in the settings.

The stop button can behave in different ways. It is possible to use it as a pause button where the playback is stopped at the current position and pressing start will continue playback from this position. Another mode is to rewind the position to the beginning of the song when you press stop. And finally you can jump to the next song in the queue when you press stop. The behavior can be changed with Stop Button Mode in the settings. If you have activated fade out in the settings the button will change color to yellow. You can stop playback immediately during a fade out by tapping the button again. If you start playback in the middle of a song you can enable a fade in option in the settings.

The second big element on the bottom of the screen is the volume slider. With this slider you can control either the song volume (blue slider) or the queue/playlist volume (yellow slider). To switch between song volume and queue volume, tap on labels above or below the slider. The slider always has a range of minus infinity to +6 dB. A double tap on the slider will reset it to 0dB. Besides the volume slider you can also use the volume buttons on the left of the play button. You can hide these buttons with in the Show Volume Buttons setting. The buttons will always modify the current volume slider values. These buttons are hidden on the iPhone in portrait mode.

Tip

If advanced queue mode is disabled and you are playing a song from the song list or history, the yellow volume mode will be named Queue Volume because the current song has not been loaded from a playlist and changing this volume will not affect any playlist. If the current song has been selected within a playlist, the yellow slider is named Playlist Volume and will always change the stored volume for the current playlist.

With advanced queue mode enabled, the yellow slider will always control Queue Volume and have no effect on any playlist.

With the queue or playlist volume you can control the overall volume of your performance. This is the preferred volume mode as the song volume should only be used to normalize your songs so that there are now unintentional volume changes between songs. Changing the song volume is also possible in the song properties popup.

If you load a playlist into the queue in advanced queue mode or load a song from within a playlist when advanced queue mode is off, the queue volume will be automatically set to the playlist volume.

Note

Changing song or playlist volume will be stored in the database and applied the next time you load this song or playlist.

Finally there are stepper controls on each side of the volume slider that allow you the change the font size of your lyrics and the scrolling speed. Scrolling speed can only be changed if the current song has no time code embedded in the lyrics. If time code is embedded, the speed stepper is disabled and shows a value of auto. See the section Constant scrolling speed on how this setting affects the scrolling behavior.

If you enable the setting Manual Scrolling Override you can scroll lyrics manually during playback. As soon as you scroll the automatic scrolling will be disabled. This is indicated by the label manual above the speed stepper:

Manual Scrolling Override

To reenable automatic scrolling tap on the label manual.

Both stepper settings are stored for each song. On the iPhone in portrait view only one of these sliders is displayed. If the song has time coded lyrics, the text size control is displayed. If the lyrics contain no time code, the scrolling speed stepper is displayed.

Tip

If a song has no time coded lyrics and you scroll manually during playback, automatic scrolling is disabled until playback is stopped or the next song is loaded.

Song properties popup

Song Properties Popup

This popup can be used to make changes to certain song properties during playback. It will always display the properties of the active song in the player.

On top of the popup is a utility button to send a MIDI Panic command to all connected MIDI devices.

The rest of the popup is mostly similar to the audio options available in the song details view except the following omissions:

  • No mini player
  • Trimming start/end times and setting fades is not possible
  • No equalizer
  • No Multitrack settings

Depending on the song type certain section will not be displayed.

Note

Changing the song speed during playback can cause issues if a song makes use of audio regions. Speeding up a song will lead to a small pause between the next two regions while slowing down can cause the current region to end a bit early.

Equalizer & multitrack settings popup

For standard songs, the song equalizer will be displayed:

Song Equalizer Popup

Please see Equalizer for details.

For multitrack songs, the multitrack settings view will be displayed:

Song Multitrack Popup

Please see Multitrack settings for details. Please note, that you will not be able to modify the audio files for a multitrack song within this view.