Changelog

New

• Loudness normalization. Backing tracks downloaded from different places land at wildly different volumes; until now the fix was a trip through a DAW. Tick Normalize on the workbench's export bar and every export is levelled to a consistent loudness (-16 LUFS by default, the live-set convention; streaming and broadcast presets included), measured the way Logic and the streaming platforms measure it (ITU BS.1770 / EBU R128, validated against the standard's own test signals).
• TraxxTool measures the mix your audience hears: your saved faders, pans, EQ and mutes, minus the click bus and any stems routed to a bus you mute on the device (the "band plays these live" setup from Bus Routing). One gain is then applied to the whole song via the Stage Traxx song volume - your stems and mix balance are never touched, so un-muting the drums live when the drummer can't make it still sounds exactly like your saved mix, just levelled.
• True-peak protected: the gain never pushes the mix's true peak (the 4x-oversampled kind, catching inter-sample overs) past -1 dBTP. Transparent gain only, no limiter - a song without the headroom lands as close to target as it honestly can, and says so.
• Click Loudness… to see this song's measurement: integrated LUFS, true peak, the exact gain the next export will apply, and a per-stem list showing what was measured and why anything was excluded. Odd one out in the set? Give a song its own target, or switch normalization always-on or off for just that song. Your song fader still rides on top as an artistic offset.
• Stereo mixes get the same gain baked in, so rehearsal files sit level across the set too. Every export re-measures automatically - change the mix, and the next export is right without any extra step.
• Chords. The missing piece for chord players: TraxxTool can now put chords on your songs and export them to Stage Traxx, drawn above the words on stage exactly where they belong.
• Open the workbench's lyrics room and click Import Chords. Paste any chord sheet - a copy from a chords website or a ChordPro file both work. Every chord lands on the matching synced lyric line, so your chords inherit the timing your lyrics already have; nothing to line up by hand.
• Sheet section headers (Verse, Chorus, Solo) become real song sections, and named sections now export to Stage Traxx as proper headings - also true for sections you already had from lyric syncing.
• Instrumental passages come across too: a bar line like "| Em7 | G |" becomes a timed line you can drag on the sync map like any lyric, shown in the chord colour.
• Chords show above their lines on the sync map, the karaoke strip stays clean words, and the StageTraxx preview shows exactly what will export. Made a mess? Import Chords also has Remove All Chords, and everything is undoable.
• A chord strip on the timeline. Toggle Show Chords on the workbench toolbar and a slim bar appears above the ruler charting the whole song: one colour-coded block per chord, from each change to the next, scrolling and zooming with the timeline. The same chord always gets the same colour, neighbouring chords never share one, and labels step aside rather than pile up when changes are close together.
• Ultimate Guitar add-on. A new separately-installed plugin (Settings, then Plugins) turns the Lyrics room into Lyrics & Chords: Import Chords gains a search box that finds the best-rated chord sheet for your song on Ultimate Guitar and loads it for review with one click. Fetches happen only when you ask, and the add-on shows its own legal notice before install - like all community add-ons, it is separate from TraxxTool and used at your own discretion.

Fixed

• Lyrics now stay in time on cut or tempo-warped exports. If a song had a Song Cut or a baked tempo change, the exported lyric line times were only shifted, not remapped - so the words could drift against the audio (the MIDI cues beside them were already handled correctly). Lyric lines now ride exactly the same cut-and-warp mapping as the MIDI, lines inside a removed section are dropped instead of piling up at the seam, and the StageTraxx preview in the lyrics room shows the corrected times.

New

• TraxxTool now updates itself. No more trips back to the website every release: when a new version is out, the app can tell you what changed and update in place. You choose how in Settings, then General, then Updates: Install automatically (updates download in the background and install themselves when you quit), Notify me (a notification shows you what's new, and nothing downloads until you say so - this is the default), or Never check. Help, then Check for Updates always asks on the spot, whatever the setting. Every download is integrity-checked before it is ever run, and an update only ever applies across a restart - never while you are mid-song.
• The full changelog is now on the website. Every release's notes live at traxxtool.app/changelog - the same notes the update window shows you, with a deep link per version.

Fixed

• macOS: "TraxxTool is damaged and can't be opened" is gone. Some downloads reported the app as damaged and told you to move it to the Bin, and even right-click then Open would not get past it. The build process was compressing the app in a way that broke its signature; it no longer does. You get the normal one-time "unidentified developer" prompt instead, and right-click then Open works as documented.

Fixed

• Stage Traxx 4 could refuse to import an exported song ("Unexpected Error / typeMismatch"). If a song had its musical Key set, TraxxTool wrote that Key in a format Stage Traxx could not read, and it rejected the whole import. Fixed: the Key now exports in Stage Traxx's own format, as do the song Notes and the song-select MIDI trigger. Re-export the song on this version and it will import. (Already made a broken export on an earlier version? tools/repair_st4s.py repairs an existing file without re-exporting it.)

New

• A guided Interactive Tour. New in this release: open Help, then Interactive Tour, and TraxxTool walks you through itself with a spotlight over each part of the app as you go, importing stems, placing guides and markers, cutting a section, and running Prepare Song for real on a bundled demo song. Fresh installs (and anyone updating from before this release) get a one-time offer to take the tour on first launch. Start or restart it any time from the Help menu; if you step away partway through, it offers to pick up where you left off.

Changed

• "Export Song" is now "Prepare Song." The File-menu item, the button in the workbench and the Library's status column all read Prepare / Prepared now. It is the same action, rendering your stems and manifest into your library ready to package for Stage Traxx; the name just describes what it does before anything leaves the app.
• Faster launch. The branded splash now appears within a moment of opening the app instead of after a dead pause, and a chunk of startup work that used to run before the window showed has been moved off the launch path. Cold starts feel noticeably quicker.

Fixed

• macOS 26 (Tahoe): Detect Tempo and other busy actions no longer crash the app. On the newest macOS, putting up the "busy" wait cursor could abort TraxxTool with no error message, taking down Detect Tempo among other operations. The wait cursor is now handled safely there (macOS shows its own spinner instead), so those actions simply run.
• Linux: the app could fail to start when launched from a desktop icon. Started from a launcher, systemd or a container (anywhere without a controlling terminal), a startup check could throw before the window ever appeared. It now falls back cleanly and launches as expected.

Fixed

• macOS: launching no longer bounces the Dock icon for up to a minute. The app used to unpack itself on every launch; on first open (while macOS also verifies a new app) that could take a minute of bouncing with nothing in Activity Monitor, and clicking the icon again during the wait started a second copy - two TraxxTool icons. The app now ships fully unpacked inside the .app the way Mac apps normally do, so it starts in seconds, and opening it again just brings the running window forward.

Fixed

• macOS: repeated error windows then a crash. On recent macOS versions, opening almost any window (Settings, About, Lyrics Studio) could set off a cascade of error dialogs mentioning "WindowChrome" and eventually take the app down. A Windows-only piece of window styling was running on Mac and breaking half-initialised; it no longer runs there at all. Mac dialogs keep their standard title bars, exactly as before.
• The Karaoke Version and Genius add-ons could crash the app. The copies on the plugin server were outdated and failed against current TraxxTool, taking the Downloader tab down with them. The server now has fixed copies: open Settings, then Plugins, and update (or reinstall) the add-on. A broken plugin now shows a clear message instead of crashing the app.

New

• Installed plugins now keep themselves up to date. A few seconds after launch, TraxxTool checks the plugin database and quietly updates any add-on you have installed to its newest version (a small note appears when it does). Only plugins you chose to install are touched, downloads are integrity-checked, and you can turn it off in Settings, then Plugins.
• Help now has a User Manual entry. It opens the bundled PDF manual, or the current manual on traxxtool.app if your install does not carry one.

Fixed

• The stem-splitting engine download crashed on every install. Clicking Download in the engine dialog brought up a "Failed to execute script" error before anything was fetched, on all installed builds (the same fault also blocked the MIDI add-on installer). The installer's bundled copy of pip could not run inside the packaged app; it now ships in a form that can. If this hit you, just Retry the download on this version.
• Custom ElevenLabs voice IDs work without Advanced mode. Picking "Custom voice id" in the guide-voice list now reveals the ID field for everyone. It used to live with the bring-your-own-key controls, so credits users had nowhere to type it.
• Changing your Project Root now refreshes the Library immediately - no more manual refresh (or restart) to see the songs from the new folder.
• MIDI markers now show in the Lyrics Studio StageTraxx preview. With "Embed MIDI as lyric tags" turned on, the [midi] tag lines your timeline markers export are now part of the preview, exactly as StageTraxx will receive them. The Custom MIDI Commands window also lists them (read-only, they are edited on the timeline) so everything that exports is visible in one place.
• The library export list now says StageTraxx 4, so it cannot be mistaken for the new StageTraxx 3 option next to it.

New

• Export to Stage Traxx 3. Still on ST3, or share songs with a bandmate who is? Pick StageTraxx 3 in the export format dropdown. You get the same choices as ST4: a Song Share (.stsa) to import alongside your library, or a full Backup (.st3), with Merge to add songs to an existing backup without disturbing what's already there.
• Multitrack Backup collapses each output bus into one ST3 track (ST3 tops out at 8), bouncing the stems together and only pulling a track's level down if it would clip. If a song uses more than 8 buses it tells you to simplify the routing first, rather than quietly dropping stems.
• Single Mix Backup embeds one stereo Band Mix per song - click and cues in one ear, the backing in the other, the parts your band plays live left out - for a lightweight single-file backing track.
• Guide cues, markers, lyrics and MIDI all come across. Because ST3 has no attached-MIDI support, your device MIDI is written as timed lyric tags automatically.
• Backups and Merge are Pro, exactly like the ST4 versions; the song share is free.
• Embed MIDI as lyric tags instead of a .mid file (Settings → General). Off by default for ST4; always used for ST3. Handy if your setup reads MIDI from the lyrics rather than an attached file. The Lyrics Studio StageTraxx preview now shows your [midi] command tags inline.

Fixed

• First launch no longer hangs on the splash screen. On a brand-new install, the "Welcome to TraxxTool" window could open hidden behind the loading splash, which then never went away - the app looked frozen before you ever saw it. The welcome step now waits until the main window is actually on screen. If 2.0.1 stuck on the splash for you, this is the fix (and in the meantime, clicking the splash card gets you through).
• The macOS installer window shows its proper background again. The drag-to-Applications window could come up plain white with two bare icons; it now reliably shows the styled layout with the arrow and instructions, and the installer disk mounts with a TraxxTool drive icon.

Fixed

• KV plugin settings tab now appears after install even when Playwright hasn't been downloaded yet (deferred the browser-automation imports so register() runs unconditionally).
• ElevenLabs gating: a saved API key no longer grants access unless Advanced / BYOK mode is enabled. Previously a leftover key bypassed the credits gate.
• Rig tab device errors ("no module src.gui.device_connection") on the HeadRush and X Air panels: the module is now included in frozen builds.
• macOS deep link (traxxtool://) no longer opens a second instance; events that arrive during startup are queued and replayed.
• macOS custom chrome: the native title bar is now transparent with traffic-light buttons, matching the Windows custom chrome.
• macOS app icon now shows in Finder (was missing the .icns bundle).
• Windows taskbar icon fixed on machines that launched from an installer shortcut (AppUserModelID now set on the Inno Setup shortcuts).

Changed

• macOS builds ship as branded .dmg installers with an Applications shortcut and drag-to-install instructions instead of bare .zip archives.

The first public release of TraxxTool.

New

• Lyrics Studio. A room of its own for lyrics: type or paste them, see them exactly as StageTraxx will render them, and drag the sync map against the vocal stem until it lands. Exports drop .txt/.lrc sidecars next to the song.
• Stem separation, built in. Drop in an mp3 and get six stems back - free on your own machine, or on a cloud GPU when the laptop is busy. You can also pull a hard-panned click out of an old backing track.
• Community charts. Share and download finished arrangements. A chart now carries every parameter and is fingerprinted against the stems it was built from, so a download either matches your audio or tells you plainly that it does not. Rated, browsable in its own window, and never carries lyric text.
• Rig tab. Devices get their own room instead of being scattered through Settings: HeadRush, X-Air mixer, QLC lighting and generic MIDI gear, each with a connection banner so you always know whether you are editing live or offline.
• Tempo detection and normalising. TraxxTool works out a song's BPM and uses it everywhere - the click, the count-in, the DAW export. Normalising fits a drifting click onto a steady grid, and toggling it off puts the original back.
• Sign in without a Google account. Alongside "Continue with Google", you can now get a six-digit code emailed to any address - no password to set, remember or reset.
• Google Drive downloads, alongside direct links.
• Song naming that sorts itself out. Stem filenames are mined for the title and artist, with an AI guess as backup, and nothing is renamed until you have seen the review dialog.
• Cloud backup that actually restores. A complete content-addressed mirror of your library: re-uploading unchanged songs costs nothing, and a second machine can pull the whole thing back down.
• Multi-command markers. One marker can now fire several MIDI commands at once.
• Align Click picker. The one-click button guesses which stem is the click and which is the drums. When it guesses wrong - two click stems, or the Drums role on the wrong file - shift-click or right-click to say what you meant.
• Combined DAW export. Reaper and Ableton in one pass, carrying your MIDI through, with the Live set built from a real Live 12 template.
• Guide voices you can hear before you pick. A curated list with previews instead of raw model ids. Custom cues are global now, not per-song.
• Diagnostics and support. One place to see what the app thinks of your setup and send a support bundle. Telemetry is opt-in.
• Deep links. traxxtool:// links open in the copy you already have running instead of starting a second one that fights over the library.

Changed

• Credits by default. AI features run on credits with no provider account needed. Bring-your-own-key now sits behind a single Advanced switch rather than a setting per feature. Bulk jobs tell you the cost before they start.
• New look. Bundled fonts, a proper brand palette, app-drawn window chrome, compact/comfortable density modes, and a zoom-aware timeline scrollbar.
• Renamed to TraxxTool throughout. Existing installs migrate their settings, licence and library automatically on first launch.
• The website has been restyled and reshot, with per-platform downloads.

Fixed

• Smart quotes stopped being cleaned up. Track titles and artists carrying curly quotes were passed through untouched, which quietly hurt lyrics matching. The normalisation had been dead for some time and nothing failed loudly.
• Doomed AI jobs no longer start. Having AI configured is not the same as having the balance to pay for it; jobs used to begin and die at the API. The cost is now checked at the click.
• TraxxTool could hard-quit when you closed the workbench. Opening a song kicks off a background check for your HeadRush board; closing again within half a second of opening left that check running with nothing to hold it, and the app died outright a moment later - no error, no crash box, just gone. Most likely to bite when clicking through songs quickly, or with no board on the network.
• Self-record guide cues are never billed.
• Quitting during the first couple of seconds after startup no longer fires a model fetch at a half-closed window.
• Downloads survive a restart, and renaming one keeps folder and marker in step.
• AI settings are clearer. Bring-your-own-key controls (including the ElevenLabs key) all live on the AI tab now, credits is no longer offered as a "your own key" provider, and cloud stem splitting and ElevenLabs voice grey out cleanly when you are signed out instead of failing later.