ITCH Release Notes

ITCH version 1.0.4 is packed with added features, enhancements and bug-fixes, most notably an improved Gain Structure, an Offline Player, a Zoom function for text in the library, better Relocate Lost Files, and support for Mac OS X 10.5.6 and the new Apple Macbook and Macbook Pro (aluminium uni-body) models.

You do not need to install any previous version before installing 1.0.4. If you have ITCH 1.0.4 Release Candidate 1 installed there is no need to reinstall 1.0.4 Final, they are the same.

New Features and Enhancements:

Improved Gain Structure

The gain structure and metering have been changed to allow more headroom (for EQ, Trim and mixing tracks) before the output limiter comes into effect.

Previously, even with all channel Trim and EQ settings flat, mixing two full-scale tracks with both channel faders fully open could max out the mix, causing the output limiter to operate. With the new gain structure, the mix is quieter to allow headroom for mixing two loud tracks without limiting. Output Metering is now more accurate, with the top segment on the meter lighting up just before the output limiter activates, so if you need a hotter output you can now use the Trim control to boost your signal, and still keep an eye on how much headroom you have left.

The Mic/Aux channels come through without gain reduction when applied to the mix so that the hardware Thru level better matches the software level.

Offline Player

ITCH now has an Offline Player to allow you to pre-audition tracks using your computer sound device, or to set cue points or loops without ITCH hardware plugged in. The number and arrangement of cues and loops on the Offline Player will match the last ITCH hardware that was connected.

Library Zoom

The library can now be zoomed to make the library text bigger or smaller. The keyboard shortcuts are:

Ctrl + Zoom In
Ctrl - Zoom Out

Improved Relocate Lost Files

You can now click on the 'relocate lost files' button to scan all connected drives on your computer for missing files. This will be slow but it will work for users who have trouble dragging from Finder or Explorer, or if you do not know where your missing files might be found.

Bug Fixes and Miscellaneous Changes:

Audio Engine and Performance

* Changed the mix curves on the cue/master mix control.
* Reduced idle CPU usage by deactivating unused channel and EQ processes. Reduced CPU load when disconnected.
* Optimized mix engine for a slight improvement in CPU usage.
* Decreased Mic/Aux latency in the mix. Also improves overall latency.
* When the Mic/Aux channels are routed to the crossfader the regular input channels now remain routed through the crossfader as well.
* Improved priority of the Offline Player in Windows to address "stuttering on track load" on some machines.
* Fixed a problem that could cause 3x playback speed in the Offline Player on Windows Vista.
* Improved platter response (at a suitably high buffer setting) on minimum spec machines.
* Restart audio streaming if it stalls for 1 second or more. Improved recovery from some abnormal audio streaming (digital distortion) conditions.
* Fixed an audio dropout that might sometimes have occurred on song load.

Playback and Deck Controls

* A Crossfader Reverse option has been added to the setup screen to allow the VCI-300 crossfader to be used "hamster" style. The keyboard shortcut to toggle the Crossfader Reverse option on the VCI-300 is "Ctrl-Shift-R".
* Instant Doubles now works better for tracks without BPMs, and is more compatible with Auto Tempo: Instant Doubles now activates Auto Tempo (Tempo Sync) on the target deck.
* Fixed a bug where the Instant Doubles keyboard shortcut didn't work when "instant double on track load" was off in the setup screen.
* The Auto Tempo function now matches on "double/half" multiples of BPM as well, if the BPM for the track to be synced is more than (approximately) 0.7 or less than 1.4 times that of the track it needs to match, the tempo-matching function will shift range to allow tracks with doubled/halved BPM values to be tempo-synced.
* Auto-Tempo now switches off when a new track is loaded to a deck. Quartz now turns off Auto-Tempo.
* Set the "auto-Enter" timeout in the BPM tapper to 5 beats at the current BPM. This allows a tap interval of 4 beats to be used for a more accurate measurement.
* Improved the ability to Mix with loops if your track has an accurate bpm. This means that if you have two tracks beatmatched, and then loop one of the tracks, they should stay in sync. This won't beatmatch for you, or make bad loops work, but if your loop is of a sensible length it will stay in sync.
* Fixed a bug where loop end points were sometimes not copied to the other deck if the same song was loaded. This was causing the same loop to be set differently on each deck.
* Fixed a bug where the Loop Double doesn't work after setting loop in certain circumstances. May also fix loop function stability after editing the same loop on 2 decks at once.
* You can now save autoloops via a button on the GUI. The autoloop is saved into the first unoccupied loop slot, if no empty slot is available the button will be disabled.
* Change for Whitelabel.net files. Previously ITCH had no knowledge of Whitelabel.net files and this allowed it to easily play the preview version. Unfortunately this was causing ITCH to unmark Whitelabel.net files in the database it shares with Scratch Live which causes further issues. To simplify matters for now, ITCH now knows which tracks are Whitelabel.net files and will not play these tracks. We will return Whitelabel.net preview playback to ITCH when we can.
* On the VCI-300 you can now turn on both PFL A and PFL B at once by pressing both buttons together.
* Next and Previous track buttons now respect the Lock Playing Deck option.
* Fixed bug where pressing the platter then shift to shuttle, would stop playback if the platter was released before the shift button.
* Fixed a problem where the Reverse function would only stay on while the button was pressed.
* Added a gain knob to the recording widget.
* Limited the rate at which songs can be loaded to a deck so that key-repeat doesn't bog down the application. The time taken for a regular song load should not be noticeably affected.

Library, Crates and Tracklist

* Added a confirmation dialog box when you edit multiple tags in the library.
* Fixed an issue where dropping an item onto "build overviews" and "relocate lost files" would create new crates and duplicate files.
* Fixed the bug where the library could get stuck scrolling, after dragging a file quickly out of ITCH from the library area while the tracklist is scrolling.
* Fixed a crash when using the scroll wheel (or two finger scrolling) while the mouse is over the Library column chooser button.
* Fixed the browse panel from not being resizable.
* Fixed a crash that could occur while editing tags if you use ctrl and right arrow to edit the next tag field and the next tag field is off of the screen.
* Added some safeguards against crate corruption.
* Fixed a bug where the bpm column could appear blank in ITCH if you use 'read iTunes library'. (Issue details: If you had accurate song BPMs in ITCH, then used iTunes to edit song tags, then used 'read iTunes library', then the BPM value in ITCH would show up blank until you load the track. This is now fixed.)

Preferences and Setup Options

* Changed the time scale of the buffer size slider to milliseconds (approximate).
* Removed Track End Warning from setup screen, this is now always on.
* Some option defaults have changed: Center on Selected Song, Auto-Bpm, Auto-Gain & Hi-Quality Resampler all now default to On.
* Added a "CPU time" warning indicator to the setup screen. This indicator appears if the time taken to prepare a block of audio for output gets too close to time the next block should be started. This can be an indication that ITCH isn't getting the CPU resources it needs.

Graphical User Interface

* If the selected song in the tracklist was in view (for example with "center on selected song") then it will still be in view after re-sorting tracks or searching.
* The Pitch-scaled BPM is now displayed to 1 decimal place.
* Stopped the screen saver and screen sleep from starting while ITCH is running.
* Fixed a bug on Mac computers where clicking around on the overviews would sometimes stop the playhead marker from being drawn in the new position.
* Changed the "Import" button to "Files" so it matches the hardware.
* Improved switching back and forth between fullscreen and windowed mode on Mac.
* Added missing tooltips for previous and next track on the offline player.
* ITCH can now be run in fullscreen on secondary displays on mac.
* The ITCH window now no longer zooms to fill the screen when going to the exit screen on Mac while ITCH is in window mode.
* Any new cue points added using the VCI-300 now match the colors of the respective hardware buttons.
* Updated iTunes icons to be blue.

Tags and metadata

* Fixed bug where sometimes tags would be escanned on startup, or overviews kept needing rebuilding on the overview builder screen. Please let us know if you see this problem happen after exiting this build.
* Fixed bug where certain AAC files would not save their overviews or other changes made to the file
* Fixed a stall on build overviews for unsupported files.

Platform and Third-Party Application Compatibility

* Added workaround for the VCI-300 audio device name changing in OS X with Generation 5 Macbook and Macbook Pro (Aluminium Unibody model).
* Added workaround for performance decrease in FAT32 file access on Mac OS X 10.5.3 to 10.5.5. Track load/tag rescan times from a FAT32 drive should now be on par with 10.5.2. Apple have addressed the cause of this issue in OS X 10.5.6.
* Fixed a bug where an M4A file would show a garbage BPM when loaded to a deck on a PowerPC-based Mac.
* You can no longer select a buffer size of 1 with the VCI300 on Windows. This is due to a limitation of the OS audio streaming that makes this setting unreliable.
* Made the USB dropout indicator more accurate on Windows.

Other fixes and changes

* Fixed a crash that could occur if iTunes generates a bad "iTunes Music Library" XML file. This fix specifically addresses problems seen by users after updating to iTunes version 8.
* Fixed a bug where Beat Sync would crash if no song had been loaded to the other deck since startup.
* Fixed a crash on an MP3 with a certain kind of unsynchronized ID3 tag. Fixed a crash that could occur on a bad MP3 with no audio in it.
* Fixed a crash on certain quicktime files that have no bitrate. Fixed a crash that could occur on AAC files with non-english characters in the filename on windows.
* Fixed missing Quicktime files from being marked as corrupt instead of missing.
* Fixed a crash on exit that could occur if the browse panel had focus.
* Improved the robustness of importing and relocating files for files that normally crash the Quicktime engine.
* On starting ITCH with hardware connected, the audio and MIDI connections are opened later to prevent possible timing conflict while the application initializes.
* Revert to offline player and display a message if connection to hardware fails partway through.
* Fixed a problem where MIDI devices would reconnect on [i]any[/i] device change notification, e.g. when a USB hard disk was connected.