Ok so I created a screen shot, of my new feature idea, I linked it to my server so you can see what I am talking about.

If the link gets shut down i will also explain it.
picasaweb.google.com


I do lots of mashups as well as need to get timing of songs till break downs or some part of the song. And we have the static waveform overview of each song displayed immediately next to the play deck which is a nice idea but of no real use because there is no context to that waveform.

Here is my suggestion, just below it put a little button nothing huge just an on/off for the feature. Then when when you mouse over the static waveform you would get a little readout adjacent to the curser position of the time where ever the mouse is pointing. Then if you have that little button turned on when you click the wave form instead of jumping to that position in the file you could now select a portion of the song and it would highlight that portion just like the loop has a green area on the looped part this would be lets say blue and you could then select a visual verse of the song and see some time readouts of the start/stop/length of your selection all while not interrupting your playing. This is particularly useful when you have abnormally long or short songs, with the 3.5min songs you get good at estimating but in the same amount of space the waveform for a longer song is tighter or a short song the opposite.

Lets explain this in practice. I am jamming away and I do this all of the time, i have song a playing on deck a then go oh $%@! i need to double check how long the breakdown is or how long do i have until the 4th verse which is where i wanted to do some crazy mix. Now currently I drop song a on to deck b, click around on the overview to get the playback to where i want and either put a marker there or note the time on the song. then have to go get song b ready on deck b and do my mix.

My suggestion would remove the need to load song a on deck b to find these times and could just mouse over the waveform and at a glance get a rough time for my mix or where i need to cut the song short. This becomes ultra important for those of us on the dual deck boxes and dont have the quad decks yet and during a mix may have both decks currently in live playback and need to get a time of some event within the song.