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Qtractor 0.8.0 - The Snobbiest Graviton is out!

Hello there!

This might come as an end to a long cycle indeed, really approaching a final and last milestone, whatever...

But one thing is for sure: besides the prodigal but (pun, somewhat, not intended:)), this wraps up the so called Qstuff* Fall'16 release business deal.

Qtractor 0.8.0 (snobbiest graviton) is out!

And the release highlights are:

  • Auto-backward location marker (NEW)
  • Clip selection edge adjustment (NEW)
  • Improved audio clip zoom-in resolution (NEW)
  • Clip selection resilience (FIX)
  • MIDI (N)RPN running status (FIX)

And the band plays on...

Maybe you can further decrypt the fresh juice from the change-log below -- or rather never mind though and go for the grabs already ;).

Qtractor is an audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt framework. Target platform is Linux, where the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for audio and the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) for MIDI are the main infrastructures to evolve as a fairly-featured Linux desktop audio workstation GUI, specially dedicated to the personal home-studio.

Website:

http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

Project page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

Downloads:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor/files

Git repos:

http://git.code.sf.net/p/qtractor/code
https://github.com/rncbc/qtractor.git
https://gitlab.com/rncbc/qtractor.git
https://bitbucket.org/rncbc/qtractor.git

Wiki (on-going help wanted!):

http://sourceforge.net/p/qtractor/wiki/

License:

Qtractor is free, open-source Linux Audio software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.

Change-log:

  • MIDI clip tools redo/undo processing refactored as much to avoid replication over multiple hash-linked clips; MIDI clip editor's floating selection/anchor event stability has been also improved, in regard to MIDI tools processing range.
  • Auto-backward play-head location, when playback was last started, is now shown on main track-view, as a momentary dark-red vertical line marker.
  • LV2 plugin-in parameter optimization: stuff consecutive series of plug-in's parameter value changes, as much as possible into one single undo/redo command.
  • LV2_STATE__StateChanged is now recognized as a regular atom notification event and raising the current session dirty flag, as normal behavior.
  • Adjusting clip selection edges is now possible and honored while on the the main track-view canvas.
  • Audio peak file caching and rendering, as far as audio clip wave-forms are concerned, have been refactored and optimized a couple of notches higher, on the ephemeral and rather marginal throughput front ;).
  • Fixed a potential crash on the singleton/unique application instance setup.
  • Edit/Select Mode tool-buttons moved into single drop-down tool-button on the main and MIDI editor's tool-bar.
  • Do not reset the current clip selection when updating the main track-view extents eg. while zooming in or out.
  • Automation curve node editing auto-smoothing revisited; also fixed input MIDI RPN/NRPN running status processing, which was crippling some plug-in automation curve nodes, when saved in high-resolution 14-bit mode.
  • Fixed the visual play-head position (vertical red line) while zooming in or out horizontally.
  • Almost complete overhaul on the configure script command line options, wrt. installation directories specification, eg. --prefix, --bindir, --libdir, --datadir and --mandir.
  • LV2 Plugin-in worker/schedule fix: make request/response ring-buffer writes in one go, hopefully atomic (suggested patch by Stefan Westerfeld, while on SpectMorph, thanks).

Donate to rncbc.org

 

Enjoy && Keep the fun.

Comments

yPhil's picture

Hi everybody!

You know what would be great? See that "Description" text area in the session's "properties" dialog? I'd love to be able to use it for lyrics. I mean, I'd like to be able to embed it like the "file" dialog, neatly on the right of the timeline, to read/write the lyrics on the fly ; I bet it's just me, but I'd love that.

rncbc's picture

hi Yassin,

notwithstanding your marvelous dedication to the cause, i kinda hear, or guess what, a karaoke-like sticking in there :)

look and take note as hints will follow: qtractor is a plain jack transport client application; just like xjadeo makes it possible to sync&follow the current jack transport information, i believe it is perfectly possible to have some application to read some lyrics/text file and display it in some order and timely fashion--think about a subtitles overlay support for xjadeo, for instance, wouldn't that be great? and, more to the point, what you actually wish to be there?

hope to have open the pandora box for a great new addition to the (now ageing) jack ecosystem ;)

cheers

Hi all. I'm new and haven't installed Qtractor yet. Actually i'm with ardour but I'm about quitting it.
I just found out that is not possible to export midi. So here's my question: I have some project which contains both audio and midi tracks. Is it possible in Qtractor to export all the tracks without limitations? If I have a song with a midi piano, it's ridiculous not being able to have it in the final tune.
Thank you very much.

rncbc's picture

in qtractor, you do just that via (menu) Track/Export Tracks/Audio...

it renders the whole audio mix-down, over the selected output audio buses, from all audio _and_ MIDI tracks, as long those MIDI tracks have some (MIDI) instrument plugins excited and pumping their business out (as audio of course!).

all that is to say, that any external MIDI instruments are not included on that export process--for that, you better get to bounce (realtime recording) their output signal, back into some qtractor audio tracks, as a rule.

hth.
cheers

Thanks alot for the answer. Don't get worried or annoyed if I post silly questions or don't understand something because I'm very new to this (beside the fact I always hated midi and refused to understand what the hell it is).
In my tracks the MIDIs I have are the MDA Piano and another electric piano for which I used my Yamaha keyboard sending inside the track both the audio and midi signals.
A curiosity: could I import in Qtractor the tracks I already made with ardour? I usually build the drum truck via Hydrogen then export it and import in Ardour. Once in Ardour, I add all the other tracks I need.

rncbc's picture

could I import in Qtractor the tracks I already made with ardour?

as long as files to import are plain standard audio sample files (*.wav, *.flac, *.ogg, *.mp3, *.aiff, etc.) or plain standard MIDI files (*.mid, *.smf), you're dang fine to import them into as qtractor tracks or clips.

note that you probably will need to pick or export them like so from ardour, otherwise, i guess, no dice! :)

cheers

Hi again. I was trying to install the program but as I typed ./config in the unzipped folder, I had this error messages:

checking for Qt major version... qmake: could not exec '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/qmake': No such file or directory
0
configure: error: qmake-qt5 not found in current PATH. Maybe QT development environment isn't available. (qt5-devel)

rncbc's picture

why don't you go with already packaged stuff from your distro?

anyway, to get it to build and compile from source all the way through, you certainly need to install all or some of the development prerequisites (see requirements on README).

these package-names are the most make it working on those CI systems out there, so please look into this build-requires directives on the following files:

  1. for .rpm based distros (redhat, fedora, suse, opensuse, etc.):
    qtractor.spec.in
  2. for .deb based distros (debian, ubuntu, etc.):
    debian/control

speaking of option b. you'll better off going with the awesome kxstudio repos, if you praise my opinion and skip that whole building from scratch (and probably keep your mind and nails sane and healthy in the process:)).

hth.
cheers

Thank you for the help, Rui. Actually I was looking for a packaged version but it's not in the Ubuntu repository. That's why I downloaded the package from the site. If you know where to find a version I just have to install, it would be great.

Finally. Found it and installed. I'm going to check it out.

I take the opportunity to give a suggestion. In the next release it would be very, very, very useful putting jack directly inside Qtractor, like in Ardour that doesn't need to have jack installed. I haven't tried Qtractor yet because I had a mess with qjack so I have to download it and install it again, then I can try the software. I understood that jack is really a mess, it's not even more in the Ubuntu repositories.

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