Upgrading to Doggiebox 1.2

This page discusses the major changes between version series of Doggiebox. If you are a current user upgrading from an earlier version, reading these notes will help you to best migrate your existing projects and find out about what new features are available while avoiding any major pitfalls.

What's new in Doggiebox 1.2

If you are upgrading from Doggiebox 1.1, most aspects of its operation will remain familiar to you. In addition to various improvements to the user interface, several important new features have been added.

MIDI support

Doggiebox finally has basic MIDI input/output support. Songs can be exported to standard MIDI files, as well as played back in real time to other MIDI devices or hardware. Playback can be controlled by inbound MMC (MIDI Machine Control) PLAY and STOP commands as well as MIDI START and STOP events; the same are also sent to outboard devices, along with MIDI timecode, during playback.

In order to work with MIDI, existing drum kits will need to be edited to include MIDI assignments for their instruments.

Improved drum kit features

Drum kits are now stored in such a manner that sound files are loaded as needed, rather than all at once when the kit is opened, providing better responsiveness when loading songs or changing kits.

Linked (external) sound files are now also supported, making it possible to maintain and distribute smaller-sized drum kits without the overhead of embedded samples (see the accompanying GarageBand kits as an example).

In addition to MIDI messages, there is a new drum attribute which provides manual control over which drum sounds interrupt others (which used to be determined based on obscure hard-coded naming conventions). Existing kits will be upgraded automatically.

Text-based instrument details are now added to the clipboard while copying drums between kits (suitable for pasting into a text editor or spreadsheet).

The drum kit file format now uses a "bundle" structure, which means that on systems running earlier versions of Doggiebox, a .dbkit may appear in the Finder as a folder containing several files (instead of as a single drum kit) If you find this to be the case, make sure you delete any older copies of Doggiebox. You may also have to logout and re-login. Note that due to these changes, kits saved by Doggiebox 1.2 will not work properly with older versions of Doggiebox.

Miscellaneous improvements

A number of cosmetic improvements have been made to the playback controls in the song document window, including new buttons for expand/collapse in the pattern editor.

Playback and Export operations have been simplified to be context sensitive depending on whether there is a selection in the pattern editor. If one or more bars are selected, the operation will affect those bars only; otherwise all bars currently shown in the pattern editor are affected. As a consequence, the Play Selection and Export Selected Bars commands have been removed.

A bug has been fixed which occasionally caused garbage in the right channel when exporting to an audio file under some circumstances.

What's new in Doggiebox 1.1

New section and playlist model

Doggiebox 1.1 introduced more flexibility for song layout and structuring with the new section list and playlist paradigm. The meaning of the word "section" has changed. While this may raise some confusion at first, you should soon realise how it provides much more power and efficiency in creating songs.

In the new Doggiebox world, a section is now a discrete grouping of bars which is treated as a unit, as opposed to simply a "bookmarked" range within the song. Instead of building one giant sequence of bars, you can now make up a bunch of building blocks which can then be easily re-used many times within the song.

By organizing sections within the playlist, you determine in what order they will play. This is a new feature designed to let you easily re-use parts of a song (such as verses or choruses) which may appear several times, without having to manually copy and paste things repeatedly. Furthermore, when you make a change within a section, it will be automatically mirrored everywhere in the playlist where that section is referred to.

Upgrading 1.0.x song files

Because of the change in song model, you may have to do some minor cleanup to existing (1.0.x) songs when you open them again the first time, though Doggiebox will make its best effort to convert old-style section markers into new-style sections with corresponding entries in the playlist.

Other changes and considerations

There are also a number of bug fixes, usability improvements and interface design changes in this version. See the revision history for a more exhaustive list.

Note that the song file (.dbsong) and drum kit (.dbkit) file formats both changed significantly in Doggiebox 1.1, in order to accommodate new features and flexibility moving forward. As a result, you should be aware that files you save will not be readable by 1.0.x versions of Doggiebox.

Doggiebox requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later; 10.3 (Panther) is recommended.