Qtractor 0.4.7 - The Furious Desertrix is out!

It's TYOQA (The Year Of Qtractor Automation:) what else? But wait, there's still three months to go... Meanwhile the foundations have already been laid and one can now tell that a rocky milestone is ready to get bumped. Ouch!

Release highlights:

• MIDI learn/controller mapping for all plugin parameters (NEW)
• Extended Clip fade-in/out WYSIWYG curves (NEW)
• MIDI resolution overflow (FIX)
• MIDI tempo standard base on quarter-note (FIX)
• Extended MIDI controller mapping for mixer/tracks (NEW)
• Audio metronome gain control (NEW)
• Mute/solo tracks while looping (FIX)
• MIDI Clock support (NEW)
• Audio clip import while looping (FIX)
• MIDI track bank-select/program-change transparency (FIX)
• VeSTige headers included for native VST plugin support (NEW)
• JACK transport sync support (FIX)
• Clip tempo-adjust tool (NEW)
• Audio tracks auto-monitoring (FIX)
• Transport back/forward stops on loop points (NEW)
• MIDI tracks redundant mute/solo (FIX)

Website:

Project page:

Downloads:

• source tarball:
  qtractor-0.4.7.tar.gz
• source package (openSUSE 11.3):
  qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.src.rpm
• binary packages (openSUSE 11.3):
  qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.i586.rpm
  qtractor-0.4.7-1.rncbc.suse113.x86_64.rpm
• user manual (nevermind outdated):
  qtractor-0.3.0-user-manual.pdf

Weblog (upstream support):

http://www.rncbc.org


License:

Qtractor is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.


Change-log:

• While moving multi-selected MIDI events around the clip editor (aka piano-roll), with help of keyboard arrow keys, that is, was not clear which one was the so-called "anchor" event, the one which positioning gets honored for snap-to-beat business. Not anymore: the anchor event now defaults to the earliest in time or the one the user's last point(-click)ed.
• MIDI control observer pattern implementation has sneaked in, making it ready for the so-called and long-awaited "MIDI Learn" feature and arbitrary MIDI controller assignment, for plugin parameters in particular.
• MMC DEFERRED PLAY doesn't cause transport state to stop if currently rolling (mitigating bug #3067264).
• Audio clip merge processing might have been skipping a few initial frame blocks, now fixed.
• Clip selection and plugin parameter hash optimization.
• Anti-glitch audio clip macro fade-in/out fixed again.
• New clip fade-in/out slopes (curves) are introduced, partially adapted and refactored from those easing equations of Robert Penner's fame.
• Clip fade-in/out non-linear slopes are now shown as actual WYSIWYG curves.
• Escape key now closes generic plugin widgets as ever found usual elsewhere.
• Picking nits: unselect current track when clicking on any gray empty area, also accessible from a new menu item: Track/Navigate/None.
• A nasty and deadly MIDI resolution overflow has been finally fixed, allowing for long MIDI sequences (1h+) to load correctly on 32bit machines from now on (was perfectly fine on 64bit though).
• MIDI editor selection hash optimization in face of reasonably huge event sequences.
• MIDI controller mapping finally refactored to support some other MIDI event types than just CC (0xBn) ones.
• Nitpicking fix: corrected main track-list (left pane) display when no track is currently selected.
• libX11 is now being added explicitly to the build link phase, as seen necessary on some bleeding-edge distros eg. Fedora 13, Debian 6. (fixing bug #3050944).
• New audio metronome bar and beat sample gain options.
• Progressively, the observer pattern is being finally introduced, targeting all potentially automation controls and widgets as plain ground-zero for the (ultra-)long overdue automation feature.
• MIDI controller mapping of still non-existing tracks were being implicitly assigned to the last, highly numbered, existing track. Now fixed.
• Moving from old deprecated Qt3'ish custom event post handling into regular asynchronous signal/slot strategy.
• Muting/soloing tracks while playback is looping was leaving current audio clip out-of-sync whenever that same track is later un-muted on any other preceding clip. Now hopefully fixed.
• MIDI Clock support makes its first appearance.
• All tempo (BPM) calculations are now compliant to the MIDI conventional equivalence between beat and quarter note (1/4, crotchet) as common standard time division.
• Automatic audio time-stretch option is not enabled by default anymore.
• Standard warning Apply button is now only shown when dismissing dialog changes are actually valid.
• Make sure non-dedicated metronome and player buses are properly reset and reopen when changing regular audio buses (hopefully fixing bug item #3021645 - Crash after changing audio bus).
• Hopefully, an outrageously old bug got squashed away, which was causing random impromptu crashes, most often when importing audio clips while looping and play-head is any near the loop end point.
• General standard dialog buttons layout is now in place.
• Fixed main track view off-limits play-head positioning.
• Main tool-bar Time and Tempo spin-boxes, may now have their colors correct, as for most non-Qt based theme engines (ie. Gnome). Green text on black background has been and still is the the intended aspect design ;)
• MIDI file import and internal sequence representation has been changed to be inclusive on all bank-select (CC#0,32) and program-change events which were previously discarded while honoring MIDI track properties. Interleaved SysEx events are now also preserved on their original sequence positions instead of squashing a duplicate into the MIDI bus SysEx setup.
• Attempt to include the VeSTige header by default, as for minimal VST plugin support.
• JACK transport support has been slightly rewritten, in fact the sync callback is now in effect for repositioning.
• The MIDI clip editor (piano roll) widget won't be flagged as a tool window anymore.
• A tempo adjustment tool is making inroads from the menu, as Edit/Clip/Tempo... (factory shortcut: F7).
• Audio tracks auto-monitoring is now effective on playback.
• Make sure to ask whether a dirty MIDI clip should be saved, upon resizing or stretching its edges (fixes bug #3017723).
• Backward and Forward transport commands are now taking additional stops on loop points.
• Attempt to optimize track solo/mute redundant transactions, in special regard to MIDI track events which were being duplicated on soloing and temporarily muted on unsoloing.

Cheers && Enjoy (be happy!)