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.
With this release Doggiebox is now a full-fledged Universal Binary application, running natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. In addition, Doggiebox now operates properly on Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard).
To improve usability, the behaviour of the "Insert Bar(s)" function has been reversed: To insert one new empty bar, click the toolbar's "Insert Bar" button (or choose the menu command). To insert serveral bars at once, first press Shift, which causes the command's name to change to "Insert Bars..." and prompts for a quantity.
Doggiebox now uses audio file import/export routines provided by the Mac OS, rather than a previously built-in library. As a result, some of the file type choices available in the "Export Audio..." dialogue will have changed slightly.
A minimum of Mac OS 10.4.11 (Tiger) is now required.
Doggiebox now sports, among other improvements, two new long-awaited features: beat-level editing and velocity adjustment.
In addition to being able to move around entire bars as in all previous versions of Doggiebox, it is now possible to manipulate (cut, copy, delete, paste) the drums within beats and sub-beats of patterns without affecting the structure itself. Accordingly, there are new cursor key and mouse techniques for navigating amongst and selecting bars or subdivisions within.
Copy and paste operations on partial bars will not alter the song structure, but only the affected drums. This makes it now possible to cut a passage of drums from the middle of one bar and paste them elsewhere in the bar, or in a different existing bar, for example. Additionally, a new Paste Over command facilitates overlaying drums from the clipboard onto an existing passage.
The velocity (volume level) of individual drum hits can now be adjusted by right- or Control-clicking on any drum in the pattern editor to reveal a pop-up slider. Drums with lower velocities will be displayed in slightly lighter shades.
There is a new floating inspector palette which provides easier access to properties such as tempo and time signature, as well as convenient buttons for adding and deleting bars and beats. Also, zooming is now adjustable on a bar-by-bar basis, and is saved.
To support the new beat-level editing capabilities has necessitated an upgrade to the .dbsong file format. While compatibility will be maintained for opening your song files in older versions of Doggiebox, there is a new preferences option which you may turn off if you don't anticipate needing to revert to Doggiebox 1.1 or 1.2.
A number of other smaller improvements and fixes also grace this version; please peruse the revision history for details.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 1.1 requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later; 10.3 (Panther) is recommended.