Standalone transport

The standalone app has no DAW to follow, so it runs its own transport. It gives every timed feature (pad quantize, Sync Loop, capture, Shape playback and takes) a tempo and bar grid to line up with, just as a playing host would.

In a plugin host these controls are hidden: the readout shows the host’s transport instead.

The transport controls

The transport sits in the middle of the header: a play/stop button and a click button, then the readout.

Control	Range	Default	What it does
Play/stop button	Playing, stopped	Stopped	Starts the transport from bar 1, or stops it. Lit while playing.
Click button	On, off	Off	Turns the metronome click on or off.
Tempo (readout)	20 to 300 BPM	120 BPM	The song tempo.
Time signature (readout)	1 to 16 beats; beat value 2, 4, 8 or 16	4/4	Beats per bar and the note value of a beat.

You can also click the lamp on the readout to play or stop.

Setting the tempo

Drag the tempo up or down to change it in whole BPM steps.
Alt+drag for fine steps of 0.01 BPM.
Double-click it to type a value. Press Enter or click away to set it, Esc to cancel.

A deck’s BPM menu can also set the transport to that deck’s sample tempo with Set transport to … BPM. See Sample tempo.

Setting the time signature

Drag the time signature to change the number of beats per bar.
Right-click it for presets (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, 12/8) and a Beat value submenu.

If you change the time signature while playing, the change starts at the current bar line, so the bar count carries on.

The tempo, time signature and click switch are saved with your session. Whether the transport is playing is not.

Play, Stop and the motors

In the standalone app the deck Motor buttons arm the decks rather than starting them directly:

A deck whose motor is armed runs while the transport plays. Play spins armed decks up with their Torque.
While the transport is stopped, armed decks are held still, and their Motor jewel shows red: armed, waiting for the transport.
A deck whose motor is off stays off when you press Play.

Stop silences everything: it stops pads, Shapes and auditions, cancels pads waiting for their quantize, stops both platters and puts both needles back on the cue. The motors stay armed, so the next Play starts them again. If the Shape view’s Play is on, it stays on and starts again with the next Play.

You can still scratch a deck by hand while the transport is stopped.

Some of this can be changed in the Feel window: Transport stop can wind the records down instead of stopping them at once, Re-cue on Stop can leave the needles where the records stop, and Re-cue on Play can drop the needles on the cue when you press Play.

The metronome click

With the click on, a short tone sounds on every beat while the transport plays, with a higher, louder tone on the first beat of each bar. The click is added after the master volume, so it ignores the crossfader and never ends up in a capture or a recorded take.

The click options live in the Feel window, under Click:

Option	Choices	Default	What it does
Click level	-40 to +6 dB	0 dB	How loud the click is.
Accent downbeat	On, off	On	Makes the first beat of each bar louder and higher. Off clicks every beat the same.
Click on	Beats, 8th notes, Triplets, 16th notes	Beats	How often the click sounds. Clicks between the beats play at half the beat’s level.
Click sound	Beep, Tick, Low	Beep	The click’s voice. Tick is short and bright; Low is lower and longer.

A change takes effect from the next click. Feel presets leave the click options alone.

Pads and the transport

Utility pads have a Transport action that plays or stops the standalone transport, so you can start and stop it from a MIDI controller.