Add new comment

you seem to be triggering qtractor from seq24 using the "monitor" facility over a MIDI track. right? check?

Yes. I'm using seq24 as the main sequencer for this track and connect the ALSA MIDI outputs of seq24 to dedicated MIDI tracks in Qtractor to which I added ZynAddSubFX-DSSI plug-ins or inserts to throughput the MIDI messages to separate Yoshimi instances.

well, this is a bit of embarrassing to me, but, unless your jackd settings for audio frames/buffer are pretty short and small, say 64 or 128 frames/buffer, i'm afraid you *do* have a midi timing quantization effect on the results on your performance.

I'm using either 64 or 128 frames/buffer.

i must say that the qtractor MIDI monitor feature for instrument plugins are sort of an impromptu helper, to check if things are being correctly routed and, yes, captured. but not for an influx streaming, let alone a performance.

So basically it's better to do it another way? For this track it worked ok, but if it's far from optimal than I'll try setting things up differently in the future.

let's do an experiment: gently increase the jack period to 1024 frames/buffer for instance; then try to reproduce your composition. you'll certainly notice that the timing of all or any of the zynaddsubfx plugins aren't, say, the same. terror, caos, mayhem... the "groove" feel is, most probably, utterly broken and, adding injury to insult, it varies each time you play ... yep, that's what i'm talking about ...

Ok, I'll give it a try. First I have to compile svn revision 1968 regarding the audio glitches me and my band experience when recording >4 tracks simultaneously ;) I guess this might be the cause why I couldn't use Arpage to do the arpeggio in the bridge, it was hopelessly out of sync while on my little netbook it worked fine (on my netbook I used one single instance of Yoshimi for all the instruments).

i guess i'll have to cope to this new "trend" of using qtractor not quite as a sequencer per se but as a audio/midi mixer, ain't i?

Qtractor just works brilliantly this way: great routing possibilities, support for every single native Linux plug-in platform, MIDI controlling. But yes, I guess it might be better to compose in seq24 and then record the MIDI output into Qtractor's sequencer and move on from there. But it's less flexible. It's just that I prefer step sequencing and Qtractor is not a step sequencer :(

Best,

Jeremy