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Audio Automation in QTractor
18 June, 2011 - 16:07 — babarosa
Dear Nuno,
now it is here and working fine on my system!
Thank you very much. To my mind you give us one of the best (maybe the best ) midi- and audiosequencers available for gnu/linux.
Greetings, Michael
Edited, because of potentially misunderstandable compliment ;-) I am no native english speaker
Forums:
Re: Audio Automation in QTractor
thanks Michael,
so, you're one of the brave already. good. i'm all ears re. your experience with this new stuff.
be prepared to update often ;)
please, test & tell
cheers
Audio Automation in QTractor svn2205
Dear Nuno,
at first once again "hats off" to your awesome work!
All the following comments are meant very politely and "feature requests" are uttered humble by me.
I tested with the latest QTractor svn2205, using a 31 minute (for stability issues) song with 2 tracks with midi drums to 2 different hardware synths and 1 audio file @ 32bit and 44.1KHz.
The audio automation in the track window works fine within the audio-track. No glitches and hick-ups, the features play/play all/clear/colour/gain/pan ... work very well.
Yet, I was not able to get the midi automation to work from within the track window at all (I can change pan/volume settings with the mixer rulers as well as sending midi controller messages). Yet sending midi controller messages, clock sync, program and bank changes works fine in my setup consisting of 5 hardware synthesizers, 1 vst and 2 tracks with SF2 using QSynth. Do I overlook a setting? - if so, could be very embarrassing for me ;-)
Automation possibilities are read afaik correctly from the instruments (tested it with Kurzweil SP2X, Waldorf microQ, Delay Lama VST, audio track).
Generally, I like the way indicating activated automation with the green "roof"-symbol and only to show all activated automation with the green leds in the menu and not in the track, therefore it is not looking overcrowded - which I prefer.
I do not miss saving displayed automation curves when saving a file and reopening it as well as a global "show automation on/off" button in the top menu bar.
Adding automation-points works fine and they can be moved flawlessly. Hoovering over an automation-point shows properly it's info (which automation, position, track, value). I personally do not miss a box to "type in" exact positions.
Changing colours of the curves works fine, being able to choose from different types of automation curves (linear, spline, fixed value) is a musically feature I love.
Greetings,
Michael
Re: Audio Automation in QTractor svn2205
thanks again.
i'm not sure of what you call midi automation and why it's not working for you -- i guess you did found some trouble. would you care to explain it a little bit clearly, please?
cheers
Audio Automation in QTractor svn2205
Dear Rui,
In the track window:
I can draw curves into audio tracks and the automation (gain, pan) works perfectly.
I can draw curves (volume, pan) into a midi track but still I can't get it to work (of course I can draw midi controller curves using the midi editor window).
Here is a screen shot: http://i24.servimg.com/u/f24/12/84/23/35/midi_a10.png
Is the automation feature intended for audio tracks only?
Cheers, Michael
Re: Audio Automation in QTractor svn2205
aha, gain and panning automation might not work on midi tracks.
at least, the gain (volume) and pan controls on midi tracks do not affect the midi track contents whatsoever;
since ever, midi tracks volume and panning are about sending standard midi channel controllers CC7 (volume) and CC10 (pan) respectively. again they not affect the midi stream being rendered, they stuff new channel events instead.
i'm afraid that midi volume or pan automation won't get to work just yet , so i guess you're experiencing on what one may call dummy automation curves--that is, volume and pan automation is a no-op on midi tracks--however, all other automation subjects are effective on midi tracks though: monitor, record, mute, solo, plugin control parameters, so all is not lost, i hope ;)
cheers
Automation in QTractor
;-) Thank you for helping me feeling less silly now!
"so all is not lost, i hope ;)"
I will use the dummy automation curves for writing lyrics into my songs - M, N, W, L go well, U is a bit tricky, F, O and Q are difficult :-)
Re: Automation in QTractor
I will use the dummy automation curves for writing lyrics into my songs - M, N, W, L go well, U is a bit tricky, F, O and Q are difficult :-)
now that's pretty hilarious :D
next thing will be using the dummy curve shapes as realtime visual cues, like subtitles in karaoke. oh my ;)
cheers
Stereo automation of midi tracks
Guys, is there a trick that comes to mind to pan a midi track, let alone automate that ? I tried creating an audio track and an insert to return the sound of this particular fluidsynth-dssi, but to no avail..? I *have* to put that HH (oh so slightly) on the left!
Re: Stereo automation of midi tracks
as said before, volume and pan automation doesn't work on midi tracks. sorry.
you should check whether fluisdynth-dssi responds properly to cc10 (pan) on the assigned midi channel. i'm afraid that would be the only way to get what you want.
seeya
Re: automation of midi tracks
it's working now :)
MIDI track/channel volume and panning automation has been finally fixed and promoted to fully functional status as of svn trunk rev.2247+ (aka. qtractor 0.4.9.27+)
enjoy!
Automation of midi tracks
Dear Rui,
thank you very much, your software products are awesome!
Cheers, Michael
Enabling automation is no
Enabling automation is no problem. How do I actually edit it?
Update: nevermind, found the button :)
Re: Enabling automation
yes, among other things, there's this new button, which icon is a mouse pointer pointing to a yellow star, also accessible via the Edit/Select Mode/Automation menu item--i know the name tells you nothing but its function is just as simple: when turned on, it allows to create automation curve nodes by just clicking on the track canvas, otherwise you get the usual clip selection clicks and drags.
the other way to get new automation nodes into play is of course to record them ;)
cheers
This is historical
Wooow ! Behold, TYOQA has begun !
It was about 16:30 GMT, on the 20th day of june of the year 2011 of the gregorian calendar
I fired up the latest qjackctl, hydrogen, qtractor 0.4.9.17, clicked a few kick hits in hydrogen, then created a midi track, added CALF Monosynth as a plugin, entered a melody, and then everything went magic.
I clicked the "a" button/menu in said track, discovered that every single parameter of the synth was there for me to automate (along with volume/gain, pan, monitor toggle and punch options) I selected the cutoff (I wanted to be sure to hear it) and clicked a few points in the timeline. Oh boy.
Then I grabbed this crappy Charvel guitar that gathers dust in the office, tuned it, and strummed a cot-cot plucked rhythm pattern, added "guitarix wah" and "Invada stereo phaser" as plugins, and created a killer wah curve along the HH hits. Mama mia.
Rui Nuno, minstrels will write songs about you.
Real time mixer control movements
Hi there, ...
... and did you see the real time movements of the mixer controls?
Cheers Rui and thank you so much!!
:D Michael
... and did you see the real
... and did you see the real time movements of the mixer controls?
Ooh no I didn't... I just created a pan move to see it... Damn, that's beautiful.
That said I noticed a harsh slow down, or is it just me ? This machine is a modest
-Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
-Linux version 2.6.33.5-1.rt23.1mdv (mandrake@n1.mandriva.com) (gcc version 4.4.3 (GCC) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT RT Sun Jun 13 13:38:14 UTC 2010
/0/1 memory 128KiB BIOS
/0/5/7 memory 64KiB L1 cache
/0/5/8 memory 2MiB L2 cache
/0/37 memory System Memory
/0/37/0 memory 512MiB DIMM DDR2 Synchronous 667 MH
/0/37/1 memory 1GiB DIMM DDR2 Synchronous 667 MHz
/0/37/2 memory 512MiB DIMM DDR2 Synchronous 667 MH
(I use LXDE when making music because under KDE4.4 the mem footprint is ridiculous - it's simply not usable - oh and bonus, under LXDE you get a nice mixer taskbar icon instead of the confusing dumb X ! this is not a small ergonomic point - digression off)
And yet with only three tracks, there is no way I can loop it 3 times w/o xrun, whatever the jack config.
When I have this other project, with 7 tracks so far, a long one, with big bits of audio, complex monosynth sequences and rakattack insert, that runs from top to bottom w/o xrun. Just so you know. I can run more tests if you're interested in that kind of low-end HW ; This is really exciting, I think I'm gonna go for a walk and fresh air.
EDIT - I re-run this test and no, sorry, no xrun, only a double-start of the hydrogen pattern every other bar.. Hum
EDIT2 Weird, I shifted everything one bar to the right, added a bar of the same pattern in hydrogen, the double-start effect stopped, but this time, one bar out of two, I can't hear the first kick (1st even in the looped pattern) this really looks like something I should know and I don't...
Re: double-start effect (can't hear first kick)...
this might well be a off-by-one situation, probably due to midi vs. audio time drift correction--it could be missing the precise midi events which onset is the loop start point, on every other loop turn-around.
a low midi timer resolution is one hint for investigation, depending on the kernel system timer config. see which case is it under View/Options.../MIDI ...
byee
I broke everything
Arg, I tried changing the Queue MIDI resolution from "default" to the first one, something like "system 1000 something" and now qtractor refuses to finish starting, it stays in this limbo white window state... I tried removinq ~/.config/rncbc.org/Qtractor.conf but it doesn't work...? In fact qjackctl is showing the same symptoms, therefore it very much looks like I broke jack. Help :(
EDIT never mind, it works now ; Sometimes you just have to reboot.
Nota bene this morning a new jackit 1.9.7 version popped up in the tray, installed it, and it worked *very* bad, 10xruns/second, so I had to downgrade it to 1.9.6. I'm just saying, because it can be anything.
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