The Fluffy Doll

Merry season greetings! After a very long quarantine period, and while after the last Flirty Ditz romance, this pet has calmly bumped a few more steps ahead. Please welcome, my Christmas present to y'all,

Qtractor 0.3.0 (fluffy doll) has been released!

Release highlights:

• Paste-Repeat command.
• Punch in/out recording.
• Session/project template support.
• Current track auto-monitoring.
• MIDI buses now supporting multi-timbral instrument plug-ins.
• Individual clip gain/volume, normalize and audio/MIDI file export.
• Copy/paste to desktop environment clipboard.

and many, many fixes and new bugs ;)

Website:

http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

Project page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

Downloads:

• source tarball
  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.3.0.tar.gz
• user manual
  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.3.0-user-manual.pdf

Weblog (think 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.

Features:

• Multi-track audio and MIDI sequencing and recording.
• Developed on pure Qt4 C++ application framework (no Qt3 nor KDE dependencies).
• Uses JACK for audio and ALSA sequencer for MIDI as multimedia infrastructures.
• Traditional multi-track tape recorder control paradigm.
• Audio file formats support: OGG (via libvorbis), MP3 (via libmad, playback only), WAV, FLAC, AIFF and many, many more (via libsndfile).
• Standard MIDI files support (format 0 and 1).
• Non-destructive, non-linear editing.
• Unlimited number of tracks per session/project.
• Unlimited number of overlapping clips per track.
• XML encoded session/project description files (SDI).
• Point-and-click, multi-select, drag-and-drop interaction (drag, move, drop, cut, copy, paste, paste-repeat, delete, split)
• Unlimited undo/redo.
• Built-in mixer and monitor controls.
• Built-in connection patchbay control and persistence (a-la QjackCtl).
• LADSPA, DSSI and native VSTi plug-in support.
• Unlimited number of plug-ins per track or bus.
• Plug-in presets, programs and chunk/configurations support.
• Audio/MIDI clip fade-in/out (linear, quadratic, cubic).
• Audio/MIDI clip gain/volume, normalize, export.
• Audio clip time-stretching (WSOLA-like or via librubberband), pitch-shifting (via librubberband) and seamless sample-rate conversion (via libsamplerate).
• Audio/MIDI track export (mix-down, merge).
• Audio/MIDI metronome bar/beat clicks.
• MIDI clip editor (matrix/piano roll).
• MIDI instrument definitions (a-la Cakewalk(tm))
• JACK transport sync master.
• MMC control surface enabled.
• Configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Change log:

• Almost complete rewrite of the plugin configuration and parameter initialization logic.
• MIDI bank/program selection is now taken into account on plugins initialization and replication.
• Fixed initial parameter values for native VST plugins.
• Track form plugin lists are now properly (re)initialized when track type changes.
• Generic plugin forms now have the option to show/hide the parameter widgets through the new "Params" button.
• New auto-monitor toggle option (menu Track/Auto Monitor): the current selected track is now set on monitor and MIDI channel omni-mode automagically, as a convenient workflow feature (kindly suggested by Holborn).
• MIDI clip editor Tools menu is not disabled anymore when there's no selection, drop-down menu items are instead.
• Make all recorded clips to honor either the punch-out or play-head accumulated position; resolve all pending MIDI sequence note events on record stop/close.
• Major silent move: audio plugins chain are now applied in a pre-fader/meter basis as is usually implied from the mixer strip layout ie. signal flows from the top to the bottom.
• All MIDI buses may now have plugins inserted so that multi-timbral synth/sampler plugins get driven to their fullness.
• MIDI track plugin's dedicated audio output bus may now be effective, as it seems, good old master audio output bus was being used, no matter what.
• Paste-repeat command has been introduced, now allowing to replicate and concatenate the clipboard contents over the time-line, with a given repeat-count and optional period (see menu Edit/Paste Repeat... on the main and MIDI clip editor windows).
• Normalize tool on MIDI clip editor got rewritten from its previous brain-dead, useless and utterly wrong operation.
• All time offsets and lengths are now zero-bar/beat based when displayed in the BBT (bar.beat.ticks) format.
• MMC STEP gets adjusted to current snap-per-beat setting.
• Fixed broken initial buffering that was randomly crippling those audio clips that fit integrally in cached and while on playback.
• Fix initialization of multiple instances of DSSI plugins which implement run_multiple_synths (eg. fluidsynth-dssi), preventing an instant crash on activation.
• Exclude deprecated VST elements from compilation.
• Export tracks dialog has new punch in/out range option.
• Somehow realized that looping and punch-recording are two mutually exclusive states, at least until loop recording (ie. takes) gets real.
• Fixed bug #2249291 - Crash on tempo change; affecting the WSOLA based time-stretching on all non-stereo audio clips.
• Incomplete audio peaks were being cached prematurely, fixed.
• Make way for paste/dropping items from the system clipboard over the main track view. Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete of file items have now this workaround fixed, wrt. Files widget keyboard shortcuts, respectively.
• Clip gain/volume propriety is now in place and reflected in audio clip waveform drawing in particular.
• A new hideous progress bar is now lurking in the main status line, as found convenient to display progress of the also new clip tools (normalize, export, etc.).
• Clip normalize tool is now available (Edit/Clip/Normalise).
• Audio and MIDI clip file export is now available as a tool (see Edit/Clip/Export...).
• Punch in/out (range) recording is now in experimental shape, with minimal settings and functionality, already accessible through the main menus, transport toolbars and visible on main tracks view and MIDI editors as magenta colored line markers.
• External MIDI control events for channel volume (7) and channel panning (10) are now handled properly through session tracks.
• Session file templates make its debut with new usability option, on whether new sessions are created based on existing template file (see View/Options.../Display/Session/New session template; nb. session templates are just regular session files but loaded and saved with no media content (no clips nor files).
• Grayed/disabled palette color group fix for dark color themes.
• Implicit attempt to flush all pending notes for some, if not most plugin instruments (eg. VSTi), on playback stop.
• Fait-divers: desktop menu file touched to openSUSE conventions.
• Internal refactoring alert: Session and Options instances are now being redesigned as singletons, preparing to get out of the way from the master GUI/MainForm instance.
• Clip drawing methods refactored so let the fade-in/out handles get seen with transparency over the clip graphics content.
• Reset and continue looping even still when continue past end transport option is not set and playback is rolling.

Hope it makes through a Happy New Year with flying colors ;)

Cheers && Enjoy!