SwingDJs

I was bored today and I got frustrated with WinBPM so I decided to make my own BPM counter in Visual Studio .NET. It will show you the previous hit's BPM, the Average BPM, Median BPM, and the "Best BPM" found so far (based on the change from the previous number). If the change is within +-0.2 the number will turn red. It will display the number of taps and the total time elapsed. It doesn't have a metronome sound like WinBPM. I basically wrote it all today but it seems to be working pretty well. If anyone feels like tinkering with it I uploaded it to my website.

I might release the source code... I'm not sure yet. It's written in VB.NET 2003. I guess I'll see if anyone is interested. I'd like to make it so it saves the BPM to the ID3 tags because it would save me a lot of extra work but I haven't had time to play with that yet.

For the latest version go to:
http://www.tapbpm.com

I made a bunch of improvements since the first release. If the current BPM is within 0.2 of the last value then it will be shown in red and is considered "accurate". If it's accurate and the difference between the median & best average bpm is less than 0.5 then it is green and shown as exact bpm.

I'm not sure if anyone has tried it or is interested but if you do try it out I'd be curious to hear what you think. I know BPM isn't the only thing to DJing but I do think it's helpful to use as a reference and I seem to be able to find a more accurate BPM quicker now than with other methods. In fact, it will even show you what you would've gotten if you would've only taken the counts for 15 sec. etc. and multiplied it to get the BPM. It's interesting to compare the accuracy of that method with how I do it now.

http://www.altmantc.com/software/tapbpm/

I made a bunch of changes to the screen layout since my last post and added the metronome sound. I found it interesting to see the difference between the average/median bpm and what would've been the bpm if you had just counted for 15 seconds and multiplied it by 4. I think it's kind of neat to see it all on one screen.

Has anyone tried it out? Just wondering if anyone else has found it useful.

JeffyCupcake wrote:Has anyone tried it out? Just wondering if anyone else has found it useful.

I tried to but I don't have the ".net framework" nor do I know what that is. I suck. _d

Analog bitch.

I didn't include that in the install because it adds to the size of the download. The .NET Framework 1.1 can be downloaded from WindowsUpdate. I also added a link on my site a few minutes ago but it's a pretty big download... if you're on dial-up Internet I wouldn't recommend it :p
http://www.altmantc.com/software/tapbpm/

JeffyCupcake wrote:Has anyone tried it out? Just wondering if anyone else has found it useful.

I have the .NET framework and tried it out. It seemed to work very well, until it crashed out from a decimal point error and gobbled up my machine resources. Before that, I compared it to the results I got from my usual tool (ArBPM) and your tool was giving me the same end results but was homing in quicker and giving more confidence in the accuracy.

I'll try it again sometime and let you know any error messages that pop up.

gobbled up your resources? hmmmm... you wouldn't happen to still be on Win98 or WinME would you? Ummm... I hadn't seen ArBPM yet so I'll check it out. I was using WinBPM some but I have WinXP SP2 and a lot of times recently (at least on my desktop) it would say the Win 16 Subsystem is low on resources and then it would close.

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it. I suppose I should mention to everyone in general that I've only tested it on XP so far and while it should work on the Win9x series I'm not sure how well it will work (i.e. how much resources it uses). I also haven't tried to optimize the memory use yet. One thing I do need to do is check all the number variables and make sure they can handle large enough numbers. I have had it crash a couple times but it was rare... mostly when doing something weird like holding the spacebar in or something like that... it seems pretty stable on my XP system when I'm just using it normally but I have a ton more songs to go through so it'll get plenty of testing :p

Also, I probably should've started another thread I think... I sort of hijacked this one it seems.

I split it for you. You may rename it as you see fit.

Thanks :p

Has any one tried Beat Monitor by Cubic Carrot Software... Is it any good /??

Hey, very cool program! It would be nice if you could change the volume on the metronome and if the mini helpfile described what the colours mean. Why is it that the BPM it reports in the bottom right hand corner is higher than the calculated BPM, even when I carry it out to 60s? Different algorhythm?

The one in the corner is the Median BPM rounded to the nearest whole number... but it only updates when the Median and Best Average BMP are within 0.5 of each other and if both of their CHG values are <= 0.2. I pretty much just put the 15/30/45/60sec BPMs there for reference. Of course, you have the option of using those #s if you want.

I'm going to make it so you can turn off the metronome. I just added it in the most recent update and I find it kind of annoying too actually :p I was trying to add it because I used to use WinBPM and that had one built-in.

Thanks for the feedback.

I turned the beep off by default but you can double-click the speaker icon to turn it on. I fixed the hyperlinks on the about page. But the biggest fix I made was I went through and adjusted the data types so the random crashes due to overflows shouldn't happen anymore. I also registered tapbpm.com and it should be "live" everywhere within 48 hours. It already seems to be working at my house. http://www.tapbpm.com

You can now hit "m" to toggle the metronome sound on/off (as well as double-click the speaker). I also made some minor changes to the help/about screen. I also made a change to the way the key presses are handled... I moved them to the KeyUp event instead of KeyPress.