Hey Guys,
There was a similar suggestion regarding adding a subcrate column, but I had some other thoughts that I think would improve subcrate usability beyond just a subcrate column (if even needed).

I know I'm a little late on the bandwagon, here, but I just switched over from 1.6.3 to 1.7.2 yesterday because I had a gig and I was really interested in using subcrates. I thought that they would solve an organization problem that I was having, but I think they fell short by just a hair...

Now, because it's really hard for me to identify tracks in SSL by name, the transition from vinyl has been a bit challenging as I'm used to using the vinyl sleeve color and grouping similar tracks next to each other. I have had to rely on sorting by BPM, which has been extremely helpful, however, this still leaves somewhat of a problem when it comes to a gig that you know you're going to hop styles within a genre. I can't remember track names for the life of me so searching is pretty useless, and it still doesn't provide for very good flow in the thought process that's going on. The goal here is to make the usage of SSL as smooth as possible such that it's not hindering my ability (or inabililty) to select the tracks efficiently and keep things sounding fresh.

To start out, let's say I have a house gig coming up. I know I'm going to want to play some funky house, latin, disco, and maybe a some deep/tech stuff for the later hours. Before subcrates, I'd have to create a crate for each style (because I can't tell styles apart based on the names of tracks) and put that style of music in the appropriate crate. That was pretty nifty, but I was still hopping from crate to crate. That made making transitions from one style to another a little more complex; then came along subcrates.

I thought subcrates would fix the problem because now you can essentially organize all of your music into an appropriate parent crate, but not have everything dumped in the main crate listing essentially keeping everything a little cleaner and avoid hopping from one crate to another crate - or so I thought.

So, I turned the feature on "include subcrate tracks", but this proved somewhat useless as I was back to the same point as having one main house crate with a bunch of tracks in it - if all the tracks are in subcrates, then everything is highlighted - no advantage gained. So, then I ended up hopping from one subcrate to another which was essentially what I was doing before when we didn't have subcrates.

I think what is so nice about a crate of vinyl is you see everything right there. Movements are fast when you're in the mix and you need to be able to scan everything at a glance, yet have some major indicators as to what you're picking out. For me, I had my record crate (real one) broken into sections, but quite often, I'd piece through another section to see if I wanted to move in that direction. The key here is fast accessibility to another style within the genre I was playing because it was only two inches away. In SSL, jumping to a subcrate meant too many keystrokes and a break in my flow.

So, here are a few ways to help to improve subcrate usability:

1. Subcrate tracks should be a highlighted with a different color from other tracks in a different subcrate. Assignable colors would be nice, but not essential.

1a. If the subcrates are being displayed in the crate view (not collapsed), the subcrates should be highlighted with the same color as the track highlighting withing the parent crate.

2. Subcrate tracks should be grouped together with the rest of the other tracks contained in the same subcrate.

3. The order of appearance of the subcrate track groupings should mimic the order of the subcrates within the parent crate. I tend to scroll down through the night so it would be nice if I could reorder the subcrates according to the direction I was going with the music.

4. The subcrate track groupings should follow the sort order of the subcrate, not the parent crate. This feature would be neat when you drag a subcrate to another parent crate for a different party, essentially making subcrates "portable".

5. Provide the name of the subcrate as an optional column view.

So yeah, there it is. I think this would be a huge improvement to help with song selection. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike