User Interface Improvements

Until AM's new user interface now works better also with small screen sizes

The newest release is a more or less miscellaneous collection of small refinements: 

• The user interface graphics have been polished here and there. 
• Main menu was added to the top, quite empty at the moment but going to get handy for sure once the app becomes more complex. 
• Keyboard shortcuts for playing and pausing the turntables were added, and a list of all available shortcuts is available at the Help section of the top menu. 
• Double click a song on the list to queue it immediately to the "most idle" deck. In most cases the hidden logic does the trick for you, but if you like more control you're still welcome to drag'n'drop the songs onto whichever turntable you prefer.
• Once again, we found a way to reduce the CPU load by 10%.
• Some non-critical yet annoying bugs were found, and fixed of course.  Parts of the code were also restructured, ensuring the foundation of the house is solid before moving on to build the upper floors.

This kind of stuff is both minor and major at the same time: no huge leaps forward feature-wise, but details make the difference while striving towards a perfect user experience.

Song Downloading & Keyboard Control Added

Download song by clicking the small arrow at the upper right corner of the song box.

During the first days after the Until AM website launch, we've already received some feedback from the users. Great, keep it coming! 

Based on user input, we've now released a new version with important updates:

• Downloading songs in mp3 format 
• Keyboard shortcuts for controlling the cross fader
• Performance improvements: playback and scratching requires even less CPU than before
• Website face lift
• Minor bug fixes

If a song is available for download, you'll find a small arrow next to it (see right side of the picture above). Whether downloading a particular song is possible or not naturally depends on the decision made by the artist who chose to share the song.

Simply click the arrow, and the download starts. What exactly happens next depends on your browser settings, but typically you'll find yourself staring at a pop-up window for choosing the download folder on your computer. After the download has finished, you can open the mp3 file with any normal music player.

The crossfader can now be controlled with the left and right arrow keys of your keyboard. Clicking or holding down the arrow key moves the crossfader little by little. Shift-clicking causes a smooth transition to the extreme end to happen over time. Finally, alt-clicking moves the crossfader completely to the desired side at once. More keyboard shortcuts are coming up later, but we felt the crossfader was the most important thing to get your mixing session going.

Happy downloading!

Until AM featured in Rumba

Until AM was noted by Rumba magazine

Until AM was reviewed by Rumba, a Finnish music magazine. Read the whole article from their website (in Finnish):
Suomalainen Until AM muuttaa nettiselaimen dj-laitteistoksi

Thanks for a positive and encouraging article, Rumba!

Until AM is now available at Chrome Web Store!

Click this image to install Until AM as a free Chrome application.

While we're on a roll here, we updated the Until AM mixer to the Chrome Web Store!

So if you're using Google Chrome, go ahead and install the free application from there and have quick access to it at any time.

Until AM on Audio Silver Lining

Release of Until AM was reported in a nice article on Audio Silver Lining. Big up for the ASL team!

Major tech update: version 0.2.1 released

Under the hood of the Until AM mixer  

Alongside with the brand new website launch, Until AM has gone through a massive reprogramming operation. While the first public beta served as a proof-of-concept level prototype, we now managed to greatly improve the speed and user experience of the app.

As a result, the new version now features:

• RAM required to run the program was cut to less than 10% of the earlier. In practice this means Until AM should work also on older and slower machines without problems.
• The mechanism of preloading and preprocessing the audio files has been radically boosted, so you can start the record playback immediately after a song has been selected.
• All SoundCloud songs are now available for playback. You can access even long mixtapes just as quick as standard length songs: the beginning of the track is playable straight on, even though the end part is still being loaded.
• You can cancel the preloading of a song simply by dropping a new one onto the turntable, and it's OK to load new tracks onto both decks at the same time. This is handy especially when you're dealing with mixtapes or other relatively heavy files.
• The annoyances caused by missing browser scrollbars on some platforms have been solved, and you're now able to use the software with any screen resolution.

Enjoy!

Until AM website and blog opened!

Until AM loose in the wild 

The shiny and new Until AM website is now online. Some visitors might find the app and the site strangely familiar, and no wonder: Until AM was initially published at the audiosauna.com website. However, we thought the DJ application is cool enough to deserve a website of its own, so for the sake of clarity we separated the DJ tool and the composing studio into individual services. Both services are still being developed by the same crew, so basically not so much has changed production-wise.

To stay up to date with the development of Until AM, follow this blog, the Facebook page and the Twitter feed. Remember, this is still an early beta and hopefully we're able to release new features and other improvements on a regular basis.

And once again, please share your comments, proposals and possible bug reports with us! Any user feedback is extremely valuable for us and enables us to develop the app into the proper direction.