I used find mixable tracks extensively on a recent gig where I had a problem with an incomplete export, which left some crates that I rely on mostly empty, so I needed to use the Laptop anyway and decided to give it a go. Here’s my feedback:
- I would vastly prefer a colour selection over a “use same colour”, as I often want to change between colours.
- The dialog is very large, so large in fact that I just barely can press the “generate” button on my 2014 retina 14 inch MacBook (there’s like 5 rows of pixels visible at the lower edge of the screen when maximised). I have a feeling that energy, danceability popularity and happiness could be placed more space-efficiently in one row. Or maybe allow me to close the tooltip permanently.
- Defining genres was by far the most time consuming part. Clicking together the groups I needed was what most often kept me from using it. I use Supergenre\Genre\Subgenre notation in my tags (e.g. Latin\Bachata\Modern), and I had to select all relevant subgenres instead of matching the String “Bachata”. It would be neat if I could use such a fuzzy search, as that would likely remove 90% of my time spent on that dialog.
- I spent a lot of time readjusting the dialog to same four or five settings. It would be neat if you could save searches as prototypes and load them with a click. That would likely also solve my problem with point 3 adequately.
- Adjustments I made to the columns in find mixable settings did not carry over to the next time I used it.
- I would like to see the following additional options in the “basic” layout (i.e. “Show advanced options” is deselected): Rating, Colour
- Under advanced options, I’d like to see an option for “Date Added” to filter for new tracks. I’d personally prefer a single slider that allows me to cut off older tracks, with a precision down to month, for up to two years*; but a similar design to year might be better suited too the general audience. (* or simply “not longer than X months ago”)
Overall, the tool gave me surprisingly good results. I defaulted to using it for only one specific genre constellation because I got tired of clicking together each genre list alternatingly, but inside that setting, I made some transitions I would probably not have attempted. The key benefit is the complexity of the filters, especially in combination with tags. Searching for a “Energetic song with percussion intro from one of four different subgenres in a specific tempo- and key-range” is simply not feasible on the prime 4 (and honestly, neither in Serato). So yes, this is a feature I will continue to use.
