Test [xbuses2]

thanks

it would be very interesting if you do all your tests, on both branches, [xbuses2](https://github.com/rncbc/qtractor/tree/xbuses2) and [xaudio-bus-aux](https://github.com/rncbc/qtractor/tree/xaudio-busaux), independently of course, starting from the same baseline, a new scratch session or one that is untouched by any of these experimental builds (remember to do backups and name or testing sessions wisely ;))

btw. the deeper cyclic/loop detection and avoidance is now also in effect in xaudio-bus-aux.

Sending signals from the output of an output bus to the input of an input bus still fails (at least in pipewire) if there are no intermediaries (Carla external etc.). The first commit of the xaudio-bus-aux branch seemed to fix this.

that's strange,... both branches do nothing in this regard, at least directly; are you really saying that xaudio-bus-aux fixed it in an earlier commit (and now it doesn't anymore)? or am I misunderstanding the whole story?

seeya

hi, sorry to bother you again,

something come out in the mean time re. alleged old/new session compatibility to xbuses2 branch which wasn't quite right...

good news are: new commit 6ed844f tries to fix said allegation; bad news are that it might invalidate (hopefully not) some of your findings and testings :S

it would be awesome if you take the plunge again, granted it's now into xbuses2 alone and see if you find any inconsistencies...

nb. opening sessions that were saved under the previous xbuses2 head are granted to mess up the perceptual (UI) and procedural (DSP) order of the audio output buses, so it is here recommended for you to redo all the testings from scratch, if possible.

wholly thanks again for all the patience you had; no hard feelings, quite the contrary ;)

cheers

great! thanks

so, it's official then :)

if no blockers appear until then, maybe today the xbuses2 solution will merge into develop and main.

thanks a lot. cheers

UPDATE: it's live now, in develop and main: qtractor >= 1.2.0.17git.be3b40

Thanks both of you for everything done here. I haven't been testing as I quickly realized I wasn't following and knew I'd just end up adding noise. That said, I've studied the test_xbuses2_6ed844f.qtz session. I'll start converting one of my sessions over to use the new workflow which I believe is based on the following:

1. Routing from bus A to bus B should always be done via an AUX Send and never by connecting the outputs of bus A to the inputs of bus B.
2. The Master Audio bus will always sit left-most in the Mixer, first in the list of Audio buses in the Buses panel, and exist in Duplex mode.

I think I'm starting to understand how cool this is going to be as it gets me out of the business of creating and connecting inputs! Nice.

Number 2 makes perfect sense. I've done a similar thing with a "SCRATCH" bus which hosts a bunch of typical plugins (synths) I use. By enabling only 1 plugin at a time, I have a constant "audition" track. The benefit here is I'd end up with a similar work flow which wouldn't need to be chased after manually each and every time a new track is added. Brilliant!

hi, it seems that you messing up the session with different versions of the program, possibly one built on xbuses2 branch and another from an older main or develop head...

for full correctness, once you work under the xbuses2 branch you ought to not open and save a session again on an older build (ie. non xbuses2-aware) as there's a bunch of information that gets lost in between the sheets... :)

anyway, provided you're running the xbuses2 build, you can fix it by reassigning the aux-send in "Mix" to "Master" again, possibly resetting it to "(none)" first and then to "Master" again (see below the results).

btw. the xbuses2 branch has been merged into main (and develop) a few days ago and by this time it is outdated on a couple of fixes already.

hth. cheers

Yes, building a fresh session works entirely as expected. Very nice!

That said, I just discovered something. I have 3 audio buses: Default, MixDown, and Master

When I go to add the Aux Send on a bus, the MixDown string gets truncated.

Of course I figured "Oh we'll just shorten the string to Mix". Next time we pull down the same selection menu, Mix appears as expected but Master is truncated down to Ma..er

OK so on a whim, I removed the Aux Send on the Delay bus and created a new one with Master as a target. This works but it is not ideal since I'm in the habit of having a final bus where everything is sent before Master.

maybe the solution is just simple as this: moving or copying an aux-send must always reset target bus name to "(none)".

get it? :)

iirc. this was fixed to the current state of matters recently during the xaudio-bus-aux sprints, or sort of, but now I reckon that's probably a (serious) mistake. EDIT: it wasn't, sorry about that; but the writing is on the wall: copying/moving aux-sends must always reset to "(none)", nevertheless

what you think?

Cool. Does anyone have any feedback on the aux send snafu I posted above? I'll continue messing around later today to see if I can figure out what's going wrong. The good news is my existing sessions are still working. These use the "Insert routing" approach introduced by Carl Irwin.

Yea, this works as expected. Thanks so much. Just curious though, was the Aux Send to Master left on the track as an oversight? Obviously everything works when I disable it.

BTW, this is such a good .qtz to provide alongside any documentation covering this new area of Qtractor's capabilities. In fact, given how difficult it is to write documentation around these topics and ideas, the more usable artifacts that can be presented alongside a given topic, the better.

Thanks again for that.