Important
macOS first launch (no code signing yet). After dragging StemDeck to Applications, clear the Gatekeeper quarantine flag or macOS will say the app is damaged:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/StemDeck.app
Optional: start from a clean slate. To reproduce a true first-run experience, open each path in Finder via the Go menu, then Go to Folder (Shift+Cmd+G), and move the folders to Trash:
~/Library/Application Support/StemDeck~/Library/WebKit/app.stemdeck.desktop~/Library/Caches/stemdeck~/Library/Caches/app.stemdeck.desktop
You can also delete ~/Library/Preferences/app.stemdeck.desktop.plist the same way. This is optional; the app will work without it.
What's new in 0.12.2
More stems-relocation fixes on desktop, a better default location for new portable Windows installs, and a handful of DAW UI polish items.
StemDeck is still alpha. A leading 0. means no stability promise.
Stems relocation, continued (desktop)
- The default jobs folder no longer gets recreated after you relocate your library. Even after moving your stems folder via Settings, StemDeck was still silently recreating an empty default folder (
~/Documents/StemDeck/jobson Windows/macOS/Linux) on every launch. It was harmless clutter, not a lost-data issue, but it shouldn't have been there. Fixed on all three desktop platforms (thanks again to the #403 reporter for catching this). - New portable Windows installs now default their library inside the portable package itself, next to the cache and model folders, instead of
~/Documents/StemDeck. This only affects fresh installs: if you already have stems in the old default location, that stays exactly where it is.
DAW UI polish
- The footer overview waveform strip is more compact.
- The Key/BPM/LUFS/Duration/Scale/Dynamic Range/Tempo Stability summary cards are more compact and vertically centered, so shorter cards don't sit oddly top-anchored next to taller ones.
- The mute button now lights up blue when engaged, matching the solo button's own lit-up treatment, so it's clearer at a glance which lanes are muted.
Notes on the beat detection model
Unchanged, repeated here for anyone upgrading from an older release:
- The first time you use the click track, StemDeck downloads a 77 MB beat-detection model (MIT licensed, code and weights). It is cached alongside the Demucs models, so this happens once.
- If that download is unavailable, for example on a machine with no internet, detection falls back to the classic librosa tracker automatically. The click still works; it is just more likely to pick half or double tempo on fast material, which
/2andx2correct. - Known limitation: tracks whose time signature changes bar to bar, such as odd-time progressive material, get a usable steady pulse but the bar accents will not follow the written meter. No current beat tracker handles that automatically. The grid editor is the way to fix it by hand.
- Tracks with no drums fall back to detecting on the full mix and are less reliable.