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QjackCtl 0.3.7 released!

JACK Session managerism. This might well be ahead of its time. And probably is. JACK session infrastructure and its promised functionality is still dormant in subversion source pits. However, good news are, no matter which flavor you pick, either JACK1 (>= 0.119.2) or JACK2 (>= 1.9.7), both already do it all to the promise. However still on their respective SVN trunks though.

Maybe this very announcement will get that all loose and out of the dorm ;) At least, I'm trying.

Meanwhile and until that ever happen, QjackCtl will be already here even though its JACK Session manager(istic) features will be just lurking to get out of redundancy. Fact is, this new source won't do much better than that of good old Patchbay, if compiled with existing JACK package distributions (latest are 0.118.0 and 1.9.6, respectively) . Nor even close. Actually, only when it gets ever compiled and built against a current JACK Session API it will take off. Fly high or low, you may ask. Well, may I say, it will only fly as high as many Linux audio application developers will do to embrace the daunting trouble of adding a few dozen lines of source code to their creatures. And to their help, chances are that Torben Hohn already has all the starters ready (ask torbenh on #jack @ irc.freenode.net; maybe he still has some fresh git repo/patch on the fridge:). Then again, this very announcement is being kind of a heads-up. Avast ye LADs!

Anyway, there are a few new tricks this old dog have been taught, besides putting the carriage before the horses, nevertheless... :)

QjackCtl 0.3.7 has been released!

That's it. Well, the uber-procrastinator sometimes gets over it. Sometimes :) Maybe there's a fine distinction between elegant procrastination and being just lazy. Tradition still rules: lazy enough to procrastinate no more :)

Aha, don't forget, you still can Flattr this ;)

Website:

http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net

Project page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qjackctl

Downloads:

  • source tarball:
    qjackctl-0.3.7.tar.gz
  • source package (openSUSE 11.3):
    qjackctl-0.3.7-1.rncbc.suse113.src.rpm
  • binary packages (openSUSE 11.3):
    qjackctl-0.3.7-1.rncbc.suse113.i586.rpm
    qjackctl-0.3.7-1.rncbc.suse113.x86_64.rpm
  • Weblog (upstream support):

    http://www.rncbc.org

    License:

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

    Change-log:

    • Session widget has session save type preserved as well.
    • Connections and the new Messages/Status widgets now have their last open tab preserved across program run-cycles.
    • Connections and Patchbay widgets have been finally given up on an old feature request: an Expand All items button.
    • A significant UI layout has been made: the Messages and Status widgets were merged into one, giving space to the brand new Session wigdet to be easy accessible from the main panel control window.
    • libX11 is now being added explicitly to the build link phase, as seen necessary on some bleeding-edge distros eg. Fedora 13, Debian 6. (closing bug #3050915).
    • Input/Output latency options were missing but now finally enabled for the firewire back-end.
    • General standard dialog buttons layout is now in place.
    • Avoid pre-loading a stalled patchbay definition filename and its nagging error on startup (fixes bug #3017078).
    • Client connection retrial logic scrapped. Being a leftover from early ages, when machines were slower and JACK server startup times were longer... now, if it can't connect first time as client, it will tear down the server whether it's starting up still or not at all. (cf. Setup/Settings/Start Delay for the rescue).
    • Server name is finally part of the server settings presets, thanks to Fons Adriaensen for the heads-up.
    • As a workaround regarding issues switching jack2's backends, Robin Gareus sends us yet another D-Bus metho slot: "preset", (dbus-send --system / org.rncbc.qjackctl.preset string:PRESET). Thanks again.
    • Another D-Bus interface slot makes it through implementation: "quit" (eg. usage: dbus-send --system / org.rncbc.qjackctl.quit). Besides, there's also these new JACK session management actions which were being overlooked as well: "load", "save", "savequit" and "savetemplate" are also available as D-Bus method slots.
    • Make sure that Patchbay socket names are unique when adding or copying, fixing previous patch by Dominic Sacré.
    • JACK version is now being shown on the About box (jack2).
    • Slight Connections widget behavioral change: (dis)connecting a client (from) to one single port, (dis)connections will be applied in sequence from (to) all client output ports to (from) as many input ports there are in below, one by one (satisfying a 5 year old request from Yann Orlarey, thanks:).
    • JACK session support is being introduced.
    • Ignore first XRUN occurrence option dropped from statistics.
    • Initial widget geometry and visibility persistence logic has been slightly revised as much to avoid crash failures due to wrong main widget hidden state.
    • Double-quotes are now being added to device names which include blank characters and were rendering invalid all command line invocation of the classic JACK server (eg. specially due for Portaudio device names on Windows).
    • Transport play (rolling) status is now being guarded to avoid backfiring from extraneous transport state changes.
    • General source tree layout and build configuration change.
    • Italian (it) translation added (by Sergio Atzori).
    • Post-shutdown script invocation logic slightly refactored in attempt to enforce its execution on application quit.

    Enjoy!

    Comments

    http://pastebin.com/MBDqDZag

    But libqt4-dbus package is installed

    rncbc's picture

    maybe it´s missing the corresponding -dev package or ultimately retry with ./configure --disable-dbus

    byee

    There is no libqt4-dbus-dev in 10.04. I'll try --disable-dbus, thanks for the tip.

    AutoStatic's picture

    And did you also try libdbus-qt-1-dev?

    Best,

    Jeremy

    You mean headers for Qt3? Why?

    AutoStatic's picture

    Are those QT3 headers? Oops, sorry, didn't know that :(

    It finally built. However I get a crash whenever I press the button to add a socket. Here is the backtrace: http://pastebin.com/vHTcXXUd

    Hello Rui!

    Thx for all your great work.

    I just wanted to let you know I'm having a little bit of an issue with MIDI port aliases and the renaming them option in the MIDI tab, when I rename a MIDI port and then power off the MIDI device and turn it back on it looses the alias I gave it and it grabs a standard "midi_capture_X" where X is the following available value in the list. How can I do it to remember the alias so I don't have to reasign it everytime I power off and on the device or without having to restart jackd?

    Thanks again and good luck!

    rncbc's picture

    Which MIDI driver/back-end are you using (raw or seq) ?

    EDIT: I guess that's not quite a QjackCtl issue but a JACK-MIDI back-end one. It just happens that MIDI hardware ports are named sequentially (midi_capture_1, 2, ...?). If you, for instance, power off one of the hardware MIDI devices, it might well happen that all remaining ports will get renumbered and fill in sequence, with no holes.

    As QjackCtl client/port aliasing assumes that port names are unique literal names. Let's think you renamed "midi_capture_2" to something like "MIDI In 2", then you unplug the supporting hardware device. Uh. it might just happen that what was previously named as "midi_capture_3" now is automatically named as the new "midi_capture_2", aha indeed. See what I mean?

    I guess again this is subject for a bug ticket on the JACK-MIDI back-end -- make sure you get it into http://trac.jackaudio.org/ ;)

    Ok, I'll get in touch with them there then.

    Thank you so much for your great work!

    BTW, yes I use seq backend.

    Cheers!

    Oh great work. I'm interested in translation into Polish. How can I contact you?

    rncbc's picture

    no translations are on call atm.

    code and translatables is both revolving all the time, that's why :)

    please, i beg you to be a little more of a patient and wait.. at least until v0.5.0 gets into the oven and beta status is officially considered

    until then...

    cheers

    Dear Rui,

    after some weeks of using Rosegarden, I started looking for an alternative Audio/MIDI recorder and found qtractor. The two things which makes it fit more than Rosegarden are:
    - Import of instrument files (I own a Kurzweil K2000 for 10 years and never manged, to enter all programs/instruments - whatever I was using. Now, with qtractor - I found an instrumen definition file! Great!!!)
    - Combined MIDI and Audio Mixer.
    What I am missing is: Simple AUX Busses - especially to use one 'Master Reverb' for all Audio Channels with different gains...

    Bau what currently makes moving to qtractor is a really weird thing: If I have MIDI channels in my song, it is nearly impossible to do anything without XRuns on Audio...

    e.g. A simple song fragment, 16 bars, two audio tracks (bass and guitar), three MIDI tracks (two drum tracks for the same device and program) one piano (different device).

    Starting the song mostly works. But when I loop the 16 bars, XRuns appear when the loop start is reached for the first time.
    They appear when at least 1 MIDI track is enablen - even if no audio track is enabled...
    When I mute all MIDI tracks, everything works fine.

    (BTW, the CPU usage in general is twice as high as with Rosegarden....)

    I have compiled the trunk version and I'm willing to help if I can!

    Thank you

    Holger

    rncbc's picture

    which particular qtractor version is this?

    qtractor -v

    what are the current jackd parameter settings? which hardware, sound device, kernel, system configuration setup?

    in any case, please send me the session file (.qtr) for reproducible evidence; if you're using the latest svn trunk you can even save it into a single zip/archive file bundle (.qtz) where all media files will be included.

    cheers

    ps. you can register and please start a new thread on the qtractor forum; there you'll be able to file upload and besides, it will be on-topic as well ;)

    great - thanks also from my side

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