Main menu
You are here
The Frantic Dame
Season greetings. As (almost) everybody knows already, or ought to, Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application, written in C++ on the Qt4 framework and Linux is about its native platform. Thus, JACK and ALSA are the main infrastructures that fit to purpose, respectively for audio and MIDI.
Also a known fact is that this is nothing more than my pet, hobby, spare-time-burner, whatever project, but... it's actually my own dogfood where digital music making and (re)creation matters. Yep. I still have this sublime hope to make it evolve as a fairly featured Desktop Audio/MIDI Workstation, one special and dedicated to the personal homestudio. As joked many times before, it's perfectly tagged for the techno-boy bedroom home-studio, but techno-girls can also apply ;). You tell me.
Qtractor 0.1.2 (frantic dame) is out!
As obvious as in any respectable easter egg ;)
This time, some important fixes have sneaked in and other are surely popping and will be lurking out. Main ones go down like this:
- You can finally create new clips from scratch.
- Track record monitoring with audio effects applied.
- New Track/View menu items, all shortcut configurable.
- Overlapped clips rendering hopefully fixed.
- Improved MIDI editor selection.
- New clip-split command.
- VST plug-in parameters are now undo/redo-able (mostly).
You can grab the new stuff from the usual project site:
http://qtractor.sourceforge.net
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor
Direct download links:
Now the plain change-log follows, since she was just a futile duchess:
- Session length fixed (yet again) while extend recording; also improved follow-playhead switching while playback/recording.
- Whitespace sanitization gets leaner for all recorded filenames.
- Run-time SSE optimization detection has been improved while on configure; additionally, IEEE 32bit float specific optimizations have also sneaked in.
- SSE optimization is now featured over all audio monitoring, and most specially on audio bus buffering, lowering the CPU burden a bit while doing track and bus gain, pan, metering and mix-down.
- Fixed MIDI clip move into new track, preserving the original channel, bank and program whenever possible.
- Fixed session cursor seeking, specially regarding overlapped clips, once gain.
- The MIDI editor gets new menu access to current MIDI clip track (see File/Track/Inputs, Outputs, Properties); selection of MIDI events has also been improved, specially regarding overlapped note events.
- Clip split command enters the stage (see Edit/Clip/Split) about splitting the current (selected) clip at the current playhead position (red cursor line).
- Creating new clips from scratch is now finally permitted (see Edit/Clip/New...); additionally, the clip properties dialog is now also allowing for changing the filename (and track/channel as special to MIDI clips).
- Record armed tracks are now properly monitored and fed through their own output audio bus on mix-down, which includes plug-in effects processing.
- The files widget get alternating coloured rows.
- VST plug-in preset values are now being restored properly; individual parameter changes are now being queued for the also convenient undo/redo command pattern.
- Some audio clip buffer-sync tweaks have sneaked in, improving and fixing the rendering of full-overlapped, integrally cached and/or offset clips altogether.
- Stuffed one primordial shot on XInitThreads() at the main head, and let native VST plug-ins start behaving as they should, or not; this might be in fact problematic and dangerous for people who won't ever try the JUCE based plugins as from JUCETICE (http://www.anticore.org/jucetice), due to some broken locking mechanism in xcb; thanks anyway to mighty kRAkEn/gORe@JUCETICE for this precious hint and from who knows best.
- True deterministic session length update has due fixed.
- Track menu has new accessible actions:
- Track/Inputs - show current track input bus connections;
- Track/Outputs - show current track output bus connections;
- Track/State/Record - arm current track for recording;
- Track/State/Mute - mute current track;
- Track/State/Solo - solo current track;
- Track/Navigate/First - make current the first track;
- Track/Navigate/Previous - make current the previous track;
- Track/Navigate/Next - make current the next track;
- Track/Navigate/Last - make current the last track;
- Track/Move/Top - move current track to top;
- Track/Move/Up - move current track up;
- Track/Move/Down - move current track down;
- Track/Move/Bottom - move current track to bottom;
- View menus have new accessible actions:
- View/Zoom/In - horizontal and vertical zoom-in (Ctrl +);
- View/Zoom/Out - horizontal and vertical zoom-out (Ctrl -);
- View/Zoom/Reset - reset both zoom levels to default;
- View/Snap - select current snap-per-beat setting;
- Plug-in forms don't auto-open on session reload anymore.
- Keyboard shortcuts icon item (Help/Shortcuts...) sneaks in.
That's all folks. For the time being... :)
Cheers && Enjoy
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Comments
Re: meter colors
Alex,
I'm puzzled with the meter colors question. Is that just you don't like the colors, or pardon me, are you somewhat color blind? that might be a very good reason to make those colors configurable. Noted. And, BTW, which colors would you suggest as alternatives?
Or is that you're saying you miss the gradient thing everybody else uses? Mind you, I have that gradient meters here ready for ages. I just don't like it myself--it just looks dull to me or somewhat resembling slime (as in lime green eheh;) Whatever...
And what are those actions you're missing keyboard shortcuts the most? This also might get implemented soon at your directed request, you know? Unless it's a pure WIMPy thing, oh no, no, no :o)
Cheers
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Hehe Rui, You might have
Hehe Rui,
You might have misunderstood me here i think. In relation to meter colours (in the mixer) i just don't like the colour. And fortunately i'm not colour blind either. The slime green as you describe it, is too harsh for me to stare at for long periods of time, and i would suggest a softer blue, or something similar. Your suggestion of user configurable suits me just fine, and others may benefit from this as well, so you get my vote for this inclusion!
As for shortcuts, i wasn't asking so much for additions to current actions, but that you consider adding shortcuts as a 'default' whenever a new action is initiated.
I have an additional suggestion here too. In Qjackctl we get three tabs, for audio, and jack and alsa midi. Can we have the same in qtractor? I have more than one programme in one midi form or the other, and lashing them together was, until recently, problematic. Now of course the Jack team have instigated a 'linking' utility within the programme. Can we see this as well in qtractor?
Regards,
Alex.
Re: meter colors & jack midi tab
The slime green as you describe it, is too harsh for me to stare at for long periods of time, and i would suggest a softer blue
Hmmm... maybe I need to ask this: are you referring just to the MIDI meters or also to the audio ones? At the least, the audio meters have five color levels: slime green (<10dB), even-slimier green (<6dB), yellow (<3dB), orange (<0dB) and red (>0dB). Do you suggest to change or make this configurable too?
Anyway, I was considering to change MIDI meter colors to something else, just to make it once distinguishable from audio ones, but never got out of the procrastination tar pit. Maybe this is in deed the time :)
In Qjackctl we get three tabs, for audio, and jack and alsa midi. Can we have the same in qtractor?
This one has the potential to be a FAQ. I guess the answer is no. Qtractor deals audio on JACK and MIDI on ALSA. There's no JACK MIDI in or out of it, sorry, so there's no sense in having a JACK-MIDI tab on the Qtractor/Connections widget. Unless just for the commodity of it. As usual, you know best :) Can you explain in all the possible detail what's the use case?
Byee.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Re: meter colors (DONE)
Aha. as one could read from todays CVS HEAD (qtractor 0.1.2.941+)
- Audio and MIDI meter level colors are now user configurable (as
global configuration options, View/Options.../Display/Meters)
Hope you enjoy it! :)
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Color blind
I never really noticed the meter was slime green, as I really AM color blind, or color deficient as I think it is actually called. I cannot see light greens (looks like yellow) purples (blue) Browns and reds sometimes look the same....etc.
I fail, with flying colors (pun intended), every color blind test thrown at me. ;)
There are a lot of color changes I would like to see in Qtractor, but thought them not worth mentioning (okay, more clip waveform color choices would be great, as they all look mostly alike to me), as there are far more important things I'd like to see added first.
cya,
Lexridge
Re: Color Blind
Gee, the last time I looked at the color choices for waveforms, which I'd admit was a while ago, the choices were limited. Now, it looks the like full color spectrum is selectable. How long ago did this happen? Wow, was I ever asleep at the wheel! :)
Lexridge
Re: Track Colors
While on the Track Properties dialog, the foreground and background colors maybe chosen from the limited pastel ones shown on the drop-down list. Or you can select any other arbitrary color by clicking on ellipsis-button on its right and pick it up from the color palette dialog that is therefore shown.
Just can't remember since when this has been available, but I'm sure it has been there on all publicly (pre-)released versions :)
Don't worry, probably there's plenty of this kind of easter-eggs still lurking in there ;)
Cheers.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
PPC
Rui,
I've finally got Fedora8+ working on my old PPC G4 Laptop, and i'm asking if you could consider porting Qtractor to this arch in the future. Qtractor is so light and fast that i think it would be a valuable addition to the PPC toolbox.
Alex.
Re: PPC
What do you mean? Does it currently fail to build on ppc?
I don't have one any near me to test but I infer that it's possible, because Packman has done it for openSUSE:
Maybe you can grab the SRPM, tweak the SPEC and try yourself on your F8 mac(hine)?
Cheers
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
So here we go....
Rui,
I'm having a go at installing Qtractor from CVS, and after a couple of hiccups with QT, i can configure now as far as the following error:
'Jack library not found."
It won't configure further (obviously)
Any clues on how to fix this?
Alex.
p.s. If i get this installed ok, that's linux on PPC you can tell others about too!
:)
Re: So here we go....
You won't get far without JACK, that's for sure :)
Again, I'll suggest you to the Packman PPC repository. There you'll find every other dependency ready ... but that just seems that I'm selling you openSUSE instead of Fedora, isn't it?
You can always try building JACK from source ... :) or even jackdmp ?
Wanna ride?
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Rui, thanks for the tip, but
Rui, thanks for the tip, but this time, i'm barely a step in front of you. Suse won't work with my particular version of ppc (Hw), i've already got Alsa and Jack latest installed with rpm already available from the F9 repository, and according to a lot of research in the last few days, even if i could somehow hammer suse into the box, the sound won't work, because there's a well documented problem between the sound module snd-powermac, and the kernel. (Hence the reason i've had to use a late model kernel, like, for example, Fedora PPC.) And none of the current distros, including Suse 10.3 offer rt kernels for PPC, including, it's fair to say, fedora.
Rosegarden works a treat, i've got most of the ladspa plugs already in, and Jack is running sweetly. So in reality, i'd like to get Linuxsampler (which i'm working on at the moment) and Qtractor in the laptop as, imho, they'd both be ideal for working while travelling, and that was my intent in the first place. I'm fairly confident LS will go reasonably ok.
I seriously considered trying the suse rpm of qtractor, but after reading quite a bit about the differences between fedora and suse, and i'll be frank here, i'm not smart enough yet with linux to be sure of doing a good job.
It'll take me time to learn, and i'll get there in the end because i never give up, and never surrender, as the saying goes, but, and again i'll be frank here, i was attempting to be a bit supportive of qtractor. I think it's a great programme, but if i can't install it, and use it, then, well, what can i say?
Anyway, i may try again, when i have a bit more time. I'm fully into getting LS going, and that's the priority at the moment.
Enjoy the ride.
Alex.
:)
Re: Rui, thanks for the tip, but
From the sound of it, you simply need to install the jack-audio-connection-kit-devel package for Fedora 8. It should be up to version 0.109.2. You not only need the binary packages for Qtractor's requirements, but the development packages as well, so you will probably run into more of this as you proceed. For example, you will also need the samplerate devel kit, alsa devel, and so on.
Lexridge
Thanks Lexridge, i have them
Thanks Lexridge, i have them installed already. Rosegarden demanded most of this stuff on install.
Alex.
Build workaround
Alex, when I suggested you to try the openSUSE RPMs I was inferring for you to start from the SRPMs (.src.rpm) and not the binary one (.ppc.rpm) which would lead to trouble anyway (opensuse and fedora, as any other distro for a matter o fact, just don't match in gcc a libc levels, etc.)
But let's get back to square one. As read from your earlier post, the problem seems to be that
configureis reporting it can't find libjack, isn't that so? You can try sending me theconfig.logprivately.Or...
now that you said you have all the required -devel packages installed, I'll point you to this shortcut for you to build Qtractor in a quickie :) That is to try bypassing all the autoconf stuff and go to the
win32subdirectory. There just enterqmake... Let's see how far you go... :)Cheers
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Rui, thanks for the effort,
Rui, thanks for the effort, but no go. Wouldn't even start.
I'll need to find the libjack path i think, and export it, then try that.
Alex.
Re: config.log
The output of your experiments might be of some help. What won't even start? Its is
qmakethat don't start?--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
qtractor-0.2.0
Thank you, thank you! I'm now using 2.0 with xjadeo and it works 'out of the box' - no sync problems, cool :-)
qtractor is now my application of choice. OK, Ardour2 and Rosegarden et al, but this _isn't_ bloated and is a joy to use. I take my hat off to you,
Nev.
Re. qtractor-0.2.0
Thank you!
P.S: next time please try to post your comment in the right entry :))
Pages
Add new comment