Time is the ultimate judge.

Last week-end the farthest of longjmp()'s has been invoked. Dennis Ritchie passed away. One book that I'm keen to remember was, and still is, "The C Programming Language", usually abbreviated as by just The K&R book. K's standing for Brian Kernighan, the R for the now late Dennis. This book changed, or better said, shaped my role in life or may I say it loud, my role in the society as we live in or I know about.

There's an excess of a quarter a century in my own life on this nostalgia already. Wait, it is not quite nostalgia as in portuguese term saudade, but an ever lasting spirit that still lingers on.

Dennis, on that regard, you are still alive. As long as any C compiler gets its toll. You are immortal. I envy you. I cannot stop repeating myself. As long as any C/C++ compiler gets its due, you won't ever rest in peace. I'm afraid it will be restless for times to come. So, there's no usual obituary R.I.P. from here to you Dennis, sorry.

I owe [you] much.

Cheers.

greetings,

rtirq, the init script that automagically tunes up your system for audio, has been updated as much for better avoid duplicates when alsa device drivers share their irq line with something else. here you can find the upstream tarballs or this very latest. nb. rtirq only applies to preempt_rt or threadirqs enabled kernels (>= 2.6.39).

byee

Summer is now long gone, obviously fall has already begun. As winter looms on the horizon the year steadily marches into its due end. (oh crap!...)

Today marks the day of this second public release while on the TYOQA age. It also marks yet another birthday of mine. One more year's gone, one less to go. Be happy! I hope you'd like my party as soon you get over from yesterday's bitten fruit showtime^*.

Now's the time...

Yes, it's "bravo" alright, not "beta" nor anything else. Despite any previous existing codename. Now, it's all dumb-down easy to predict any next release codenames, a matter of convergence and fact that just chalks one less of a burden on me :)

Believe it or not, this is the best and, allegedly, the most stable release ever. Ain't them all? ;)

Release highlights:

• Linked (aka. ref-counted) audio/MIDI clips (NEW)
• Aux-Send pseudo-plugin (NEW)
• Direct-access plugin parameter slider (NEW)
• MIDI file player (NEW)
• Automatic time-stretching of audio clips on tempo-map changes (FIX)
• Improved native Linux VST support (FIX)
• Improved JACK-Session support (FIX)
• Improved generic plugin form (FIX)
• MIDI-fx plugin support (NEW)
• Audio bus/ports auto-connect option (NEW)
• First translation call (Czech) (NEW)

* ps. as a matter of fact, bitten fruit's boss passed away on this very day; seconding his own beliefs he must have been reincarnated somehow... I wish him a jolly new journey ;)

Yay! It's been a great summer and, as always, good things never last longer. I remember two years ago when it made its premiere, also after a great summer vacation and a pretty longer and rather undercover existence. Two years have gone by now, there's nothing to be startling with. All that's about to say:

QXGEdit 0.1.1 slipped out!

If you're puzzled what this is, then don't worry nor go any further. This is just one extreme-niche piece of software program I've made for my own personal usage. But others may also feel compelled to try it out. I'm doin'g it just because I can :)

Now, already in its third public release, QXGEdit is a XG instrument editor, specially dedicated to the elderly Yamaha DB50XG. Yes, this is all synth-eldercare, if I may punch that line without the slightest lack of respect. How could it be? This is the best evidence I can show to the world how I love this piece of junk ;)

Only for the ones who know what I'm talking about ;)

Howdy! TYOQA (the year of qtractor automation for the clueless) is now pretty real. I'd say it's all been my prerogative, again and again, doing things my own way (do I hear Frank S. singing? nope. move along...).

Is this the time to do the unthinkable? Should I tag it as beta now? Should I? There's one single reason for not doing so and a couple of others to make it through:

1. basically it's all the same functionality that stays put or improved in a few spots;
2. it just feels like it! :)

Now comes the mighty corrosive one: I'll be off on vacation soon. Summer is waiting for me. And I just hate to miss that kind of deadline. Woohoo!

Is there anything else to mention? Go ahead, make your day:

Release highlights:

• TYOQA! Audio/MIDI track and plugin parameter automation (NEW)
• MIDI controller catch-up behavior (NEW)
• All zooming in/out relative to views center (NEW)
• Audio gain/panning smoothing changes (FIX)

Happy summer 2 y'all!

Howdy! JACK Session versioning is quite simply the most interesting new feature for this release. It's optional but enabled by default. One can just turn it off and keep the bad old take-no-prisoneers behavior :)

Never is too late,

Enjoy, and

On the verge of the summer solstice (read astronomical years middle point) and after years in the making (read procrastination), track automation or dynamic curves, as some like to call, is finally a reality, tricky though but real nevertheless. The very first milestone has been bumped over already and is publicly available for the brave to experiment. All in the latest & greatest subversion trunk, of course.

Yess. This is one hopeful attempt to be the very last one before officially entering the TYOQA age. Mainly a big fix and optimization release. Yes, you've read that right. Big. Some earthquake-bound changes have sneaked in and all under the hood. Most are bearable visible, if at all. Quite frankly, the most time-critical code paths have been subject to some kind of a deep overhaul, and to say the very least, might get only noticeable while loading hugely complex sessions. Whatever that means. In other words and put simply, there are gentle performance wins and nice resource savings.

Anyway, there's no breakage regarding the past. Everything should work smooth as ever. Nevertheless, there's a good chance it might enter beta phase or whatever you wish to call it. I guess most people had ditched any serious assessment on this piece of software just because I've been sticking with an infamous alpha label for so long. Well, in my own opinion (what else?), if you care, it's just that. All software is always either in that so-called alpha or omega--there's no middle term, all else is marketing gibberish--all software is more or less in a broken state (ie. alpha) or just simply dead and gone (omega). There you have it :)

With nothing else to say (and then time being the worst of enemies),

Release highlights:

• MIDI scale-quantize and snap-to-scale tools (NEW)
• Audio recording latency compensation (NEW)
• Mute/un-solo tracks shading (NEW)
• MIDI controller invert value and connects access (NEW)
• Tempo map dialog tap helper (NEW)
• Audio peak/waveform generation pipeline (NEW)
• Track-view clip invert selection (NEW)
• MIDI clip editor range selection (NEW)
• Major audio clip buffering/streaming thread optimization (FIX)
• Temporary JACK session extract directory (FIX)
• Red shade recording display (NEW) and looping (FIX)
• Audio clip over-extended ghost-playback (FIX)
• MIDI tempo map resolution import (FIX)
• Audio/MIDI time drift correction (FIX)
• Changed bus connections preservation (FIX)
• Simultaneous multi-track recording result extents (FIX)
• Track-view selection and redrawing optimization (FIX)
• LV2 instrument/synth on audio tracks crash (FIX)

Real juice follows, below...

It's all gone by now. Another year, yet another LAC is now accomplished. For the first time ever, it took place on a officially English-speaking country besides the native Gaelic/Irish alternative. The Linux Audio Conference 2011, just ran out at the National University of Ireland (NUI), Music Department, Maynooth, on May 6-8 2011 for the record.

Ephemerally, it also marked the 9th edition of the meeting. A very happy anniversary to the LAD's! On my shift, it was just the 7th time in a row and sure am happy as well. I'm humble enough to tell that this year everything went so smooth that I'm really having a hard time finding a good incidental spot to blog about. Alas, it's all gone now, business as usual, I should tell.

Season greetings! It's spring-cleaning time once again. Dust has severely piled up and brand old mite is already lurking around. That's the bad news. Good news are there are plans for this FluidSynth gooey front-end, you know it's about Qsynth. Alas, plans are follow today's slip release though.

Finally, you may say. Not that there's any big (not even small) new features being slung out today. In fact, there's just a lousy couple of the same old crap. Never mind. Big plans are all about getting some channel controllers--also known as generators--into the picture. Yes, finally. It means amplitude, filter envelope generators, LFO modulators, knobs and sliders gore fest and what not. I hear you thinking that's all what a synth is about. And you're damn right. Dropping an initial, synth has been in the name all this time hasn't it? Right, it has been a pretty old plan, ever since early dawn. Well, it still is... a plan.

As always, I won't make any promises, which would be a terrible thing to do, specially from one who keeps calling himself the über-procrastinator. Yeah, I'm sure you know me from previous auto-proclamations. Back to subject at hand, there it is.

Qsynth 0.3.6 slipped away from the dust!