The design of the current BeatCleaver (1.1) release was deliberately kept simple. It loads WAV files like drum loops and allows you to place slice points along the loop, then export them in a snap. Moving slice points is a breeze – you just drag them around.

The simplicity of the tool makes the workflow very fast.

But what if we wanted to take BeatCleaver to the next level? How can we add new features but keep the workflow fast and simple?

This has been one of my tasks for the last few months, and I’m excited to start sharing what we’ve come up with for BeatCleaver 1.2. In essence, we’ve improved the core functionality across the board, but there’s a story behind each new feature, so I’ll explain the new features across several blog posts.

Without further ado, the first new feature in the upcoming BeatCleaver 1.2 release is: 

MP3/M4A support

We want to be able to not just slice WAVs, but also be able to open up full songs and sample directly from there. So to sharpen our beat slicing skills, we’ve teamed up with the Mixxx Developers and created libaudiodecoder, a piece of code that will allow us to harness the native MP3/M4A decoding capabilities built into Windows and Mac OS X. BeatCleaver’s upcoming support for these formats is based on libaudiodecoder, which we’re developing concurrently.

So what else did we add then? What would be useful if we suddenly made BeatCleaver able to open up larger files?   

We’ll give you a few days to ponder…. and then we’ll be back with the answer. 😉