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Qtractor 0.7.4 - The Tackiest Gluon released!

Ahoy there!

Qtractor 0.7.4 (the tackiest gluon) has been released!

Y'all know the drill...

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.

Change-log:

  • Eye-candy warning: muted/non-soloed tracks are now shaded over the main thumb-view.
  • Faster and crispier VST plugin editor (GUI) idle cycles.
  • Fixed all core processing when any plugin has more audio outputs than channels on a track/bus where it's inserted.
  • Added one decimal digit to all percentage input spin-boxes on the MIDI Tools dialog.
  • Added brand new and global option to disable the so called "catch-up" default behaviour (cf. View/Controllers.../Sync).
  • Fixed some track control issues related to MIDI Controllers generic mapping (cf. View/Controllers...).
  • Try making Help/Shortcuts... dialog window modeless, as far as under MIDI Controller, Inputs/Outputs Connections window also gets accessible enough.
  • Fixed some vertical scrolling and play-head line re-drawing glitches introduced by the recent unlimited slack to editing beyond current contents length on main tracks view.
  • Added one decimal digit to the Pitch-shift spin-box on audio Clip/Edit... properties dialog window.
  • Added application keywords to freedesktop.org's AppData.
  • Fixed local keyboard shortcuts on the Files organizer widget actions and context-menu.
  • Improved Mixer multi-row layout (patch by Holger Marzen aka. bluebell, thanks).
  • Fixed the Ctrl+drag/cloning left of a clip when towards near the beginning of session.

Enjoy && have (lots of) fun.

Website:

http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

Project page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

Downloads:

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

Wiki (on going, help still 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.

Donate to rncbc.org

Enjoy && have (lots of) fun.

Comments

yPhil's picture

Wow² looks (and sounds) like another great minor one.

Sensei, am I wrong (I must be, this is to big and painful) or is there is currently no way to (in a single action) get to A-The start of the timeline and B-The start of clip i the MIDI editor; No QT buttons, no shortcut, it's always sad when you can't use you're trusty, memory-wired-in-everybody-I-know end/home heys ;( Thems their poor jobless keys work! You couldn't just leave it to them, you had to take it and replace 'em with nothing, you heartless BDFL ;p

rncbc's picture

re. no way to (in a single action) get to A-The start of the timeline and B-The start of clip i the MIDI editor

if you're asking about moving the play-head to the beginning or to the end of the MIDI clip while on the piano-roll editor, then yes, you're right: there's no way to make that unless you set the edit-head/tail (blue) markers accordingly and then use Backward [<], Forward [>] transport actions; note that SHIFT+Backward/Forward will move the play-head to the absolute beginning/end of the whole session contents, not the MIDI clip in view.

however, if you're asking for moving the view or immediate scrolling to the beginning or end of the MIDI clip sequence, then HOME and END keys will do just that respectively, provided the piano-roll view is in focus.

hth.
cheers

yPhil's picture

> note that SHIFT+Backward/Forward will move the play-head to the absolute beginning/end of the whole session contents, not the MIDI clip in view.

Hey, that's it! This is exactly what I'm talking about, now why does it seem to not work with the corresponding KB shortcuts, only with the mouse and buttons? (Say I have BACKWARDS mapped to "b", then "shift-b" should take me to said "absolute beginning" of the session... Right?) ruining the whole "shortcut" paradigm?

rncbc's picture

because it reads the keyboard modifiers (shift, ctrl, alt) in real-time, overriding or better said, having top priority over the pc-keyboard shortcut parsing whatever; iow. any shortcut like Shift+ won't cut it! yes, kinda loop-hole.

otoh. just remember that, on the pc-keyboard model, "Shift+b" is so to speak equivalent to "B" (capital "b"), so that most of the time and practice both ends being one and the same keyboard command (or same logical shortcut for that matter).

hth.
cheers

yPhil's picture

Hi, me again :)

Gee, I'm wondering ; Why isn’t there an option to keep the plugin windows (and the MIDI clip editor) always on top, like the mixer? That would be so nice :)

Also, do you remember about that MIDI editor pianoroll key highlight? After all, it is 2016, technically ;)

rncbc's picture

re. Why isn’t there an option to keep the plugin windows (and the MIDI clip editor) always on top?

your WM should give you that option in particular--kwin of kde does have it on window frame/caption menu "Keep Above Others", don't know about others.

re.MIDI editor pianoroll key highlight?

we 're still in the early days of 1Q2016... :)

cheers

yPhil's picture

>> re. Why isn’t there an option to keep the plugin windows (and the MIDI clip editor) always on top?

> your WM should give you that option in particular--kwin of kde does have it on window frame/caption menu "Keep Above Others", don't know about others.

Ah, I Remember now that WM paradigm. Mine (Unity, the Ubuntu WM) doesn't... Wait, it does! Hm, it does not remember though, I have to do it everytime I use a window, but it's still super cool. Do KWin windows remember this "on top" status bit?

> we 're still in the early days of 1Q2016... :)

We are ; and I can see in the SourceForge RSS feed that you're busy with another eye-candy warning (you really want Qtr to look like early Cakewalk, now do you?) ;)

Hey, one teeny tiny thing : Is it me or the mixer's plugin strip behaviour has changed? I kinda remember that when you right-clicked on a given plugin and selected "add new" the new plugin was inserted right after the right-clicked one..? Now it seems that whatever you do, the new plugin ends up at the end of the chain, witch is almost never where you want it to be...?

Oh, a last one, regarding this changelog:

Fixed the Ctrl+drag/cloning left of a clip when towards near the beginning of session.

Wait, what? When I ctrl+click&drag a clip, it does not clone it..? Never has. I'd love it to do that (you bet) and I'm not the only one, my other-sequencer-using friends always try to do that in my Qtr sessions and complain that it doesn't ; but they always moan about everyting in my studio so I barely pay attention ;p

rncbc's picture

  • re. Do KWin windows remember this "on top" status bit?

    i guess it doesn't either.

    on qtractor watch this option would certainly get a unfair discrimination on each plugin type, VST and most probably on LV2 UIs... DSSI UIs are just out of the ring, so no chance for these little old fellows. VST UIs are game but LV2 ones, it really depends on their chosen implementation. for instance, lv2_external_ui based ones are out and, unfortunately, the later are currently honored on tops of everything else whether available.

    so, to get all things straight and leveled to a minimum and common denominator, the "keep tool windows on top" option ceased to apply to plugin own GUI's windows. so sorry. it's the least of lesser evils situation, occam razor's option whatever, i'm afraid ;)

  • re. being busy with another eye-candy warning (you really want Qtr to look like early Cakewalk, now do you?)

    you must refer to this re. Qtractor track [xicon] request for future releases... well i said there it was plain out of boredom... nonetheless, that whole effort level was quite, should i say novice level ? it didn't take more than a couple of hours, tops. say what? you, yes you could do that too. however, the MIDI clip editor real-time note highlighting, though in the same "eye-candy" league, nevertheless, it surely deserves a lot of specific and technical thought, say an order of magnitude above ... :)

    and probably it's getting more like some bitten-fruit something than cakewalk's ;)

  • re. new plugin was inserted right after the right-clicked one.

    that's is probably true or better is true nowadays. i'll see and check again where it got lost and try to recover that plugin insertion behavior. meanwhile, you can always move the plugin entry up or down afterwards, can't you? you may even drag-and-drop across plugin strip chains, didn't you know?

  • re. When I ctrl+click&drag a clip, it does not clone it..? Never has. I'd love it to do that
    it's over there since >= 0.7.3, you should have missed it, like this late:
    Ctrl+click and dragging the left or right edges of a clip will now make it spill over and replicate as many clip clones as it fits in the left or right horizontal extent. --in change-log, 2015-12-29 0.7.3 A Tackier Gluon

    .

hth.
cheers

yPhil's picture

>> re. When I ctrl+click&drag a clip, it does not clone it..? Never has. I'd love it to do that
> it's over there since >= 0.7.3, you should have missed it, like this late:
Ctrl+click and dragging the left or right edges of a clip will now make it spill over and replicate as many clip clones as it fits in the left or right horizontal extent. --in change-log, 2015-12-29 0.7.3 A Tackier Gluon

That is sim-ply-grand :)

yPhil's picture

Hi everyone, it's me again :)

I'd love (well, like) to have an option to stay in record mode after pressing stop. You know, to have the rec button be just a manual toggle...?

Another one (bigger) The ability to mute, simply that, mute, a clip, leaving it in the timeline (like greyed out or something) but silent. That would be downright awesome, would lead to better music and a brighter future for all mankind, animaldom and fauna alike.

And another one, but a big one this time. From the Original Tacky Gluon changelog:

- MIDI Track/Instrument bank/programs menu (NEW)

When I saw this one, my heart missed a beat. No seriously, I'm not kidding, it did. I though it would be addressing one of the only two real grips I have with the GUI: The access to plugins (the other being the playhead behavior, more about that later).

I'm really fond of how Ardour can display the currently selected track mixer strip (It calls it "editor mixing strip") into the main view. It speeds up things a lot ; I only use it to access (add, remove, rearrange, open, etc) the plugins quickly, leaving the mixer window for only one thing: Mixing. Man, this is a big step in ergonomics (when I must say, I find Qtractor ergonomics much better overall, specially the MIDI editing and the Jack Connections handling) to not be forced to open the mixer window not for mixing anything, but only to access the plugin on a given track!

Now I understand that for one, it must not be easy to do ; Ardour cheats - they all do that way - by implementing its own GUI toolkit, a route that I praise Qtractor not to have chosen, but let's not digress into pretentious digital philosophy. Here my proposal. Hum, no "proposal" is too much nice a word for that... I guess it's more like a delusional vision ;)

A (Ta-daa) View menu entry (actually a "track" sub-menu) to toggle the display of the columns (all but the track name I guess)

- Silly (but kinda cool too) early (Logic, you are right) instrument icon (in the pipeline as I understand)
- Bus name
- MIDI/Audio Channel #
- Patch name
- Instrument name
- And a new one, Plugins (the very mixer plugin box, complete with the direct access)
- Oh, and another one, Volume (a mixer "fader")

All become optional, toggles. Now I can tell you right away, even without the plugin box and the volume fader, that I myself would uncheck ALL leaving only maybe the channel number, if that. That's because 1-I don't use external MIDI hardware and 2-I need to see as much timeline as I can.

That's the grand idea. Now for the small one, the possibility of just opening the plugins in a given track without making the detour by the mixer would already be very nice. But I don't get this new Gluon plugin menu, what does it do? I get checkboxes that look like they toggle activation but they don't, and a couple of none/none final menu entries? Can it be used at all to open the plugin?

Now, there is also the Ableton Live approach : A top-level embedded, optional pane with all the track's plugins generic UIs, with the volume in the track controls. I always found this superfast, standard, consistent generic plugin UI underused anyway. With the signal flow either vertical or horizontal ; this would be even more powerful, can you picture this? I hope I make at least a little sense.

About the playhead: I really dont understand why we can't click anywhere (well OK, perhaps not within a clip boundary but yes, with a something-click) in the timeline to have the playhead positioned. I'm not sure you realise how mean this feels to new users ; watch them click click click in rage, hear them moan in pain! Please, make at least something-click move the playhead (leaving the markers alone)!! The main idea is to move the playhead in one, single action, opposed to 1 - Click to position a marker (that, come to think of it, you may - probably - wish to stay where he is) and 2 - snap the playhead to it. And frankly, this is not those marker's job! They have better things to do :)

Apart from that (distracting action-prone access to plugins, and punishing autoritarian playhead) it's really, and even more and more so as the versions increment, the bee's knees <= this would blink if it could :p I spent some hours in Ardour 4.7 last week, decided to catch up with it, and I must say, I'm so happier in the Q. Take two simple things: The re-positionable GUI elements (can't think of a single other DAW offering you this kind of freedom, and I tried a few) and the granularity of the re-definable KB shortcuts (down to - amost a fault - the point where you can define two different shortcuts to accomplish the same thing in two different contexts (timeline and clip editor - I was quite confused before I understood this one) I mean, this is simply the best tool I ever used to do music with, thank you again, mâster Rui :)

Now all that is left is to thank everybody very much for their patience reading this big and very possibly nonsensic rant :)

rncbc's picture

still pulling this one from the TL;DR basket :)...

  • re. stay in record mode after pressing stop...
    - noted. also, in the same department, to have an option for a track not staying in record-armed mode, something i was pondering ever since day one--i now sense that could only add rage to a living hell now, i guess :)
  • re. mute, a clip
    - indeed that has been a recurring feature request--meanwhile you can set a clip gain to at least -80dB (audio clips only), and you«'ll get the same result, although not quite as freaky awesome as you wish, i know ;)
  • re. MIDI Track/Instrument bank/programs menu
    - this is not related to plugins per se, rather to overall MIDI instrument in general, be that plugins, soft or outboard hard(ware)--it deals about MIDI bank/program patch name selection and magic numbers whatever (read .midnam, cakewalk .ins and .sf2 preset names for example).
  • re. currently selected track mixer strip...
    - that's of course a very good point; unfortunately i'm not that found to make it a top priority atm. there are plenty other good UI ideas on other s/w in the world out there. i just don't have the time nor life to evaluate all of them. i'm sure you get the picture ;)
  • re. move the playhead in one, single action
    - did i ever say that SHIFT+click on the time-ruler will do just that? including the thumb-view or in the midi clip editor canvas? else, on any empty time-line space in the main tracks view? i rest my case here :)
  • re. Ableton Live approach (generic plugin control pane)
    - that's yet another good (alien;)) idea just lacking an implementation/reproduction--anyone willing to take the call and step in? :)

hth.
cheers

yPhil's picture

>> re. stay in record mode after pressing stop...
> - noted. also, in the same department, to have an option for a track not staying in record-armed mode, something i was pondering ever since day one--i now sense that could only add rage to a living hell now, i guess :)

Well, that's what options are for I guess :) always makes me dreamy, the way some bizzare configuration options imply very different workflows... Hence, different music I guess...

>> re. currently selected track mixer strip...
> - that's of course a very good point; unfortunately i'm not that found to make it a top priority atm. there are plenty other good UI ideas on other s/w in the world out there. i just don't have the time nor life to evaluate all of them. i'm sure you get the picture ;)

I sure do, and please note that it's a strictly fancy, almost cosmetic feature, and yes, I do get at least an idea of the amount of work that represents. About that, I must say I'm quite amazed, because what we have right now in 2016 with Qtractor, we pretty much had it back in 2008 when I first discovered it. The interface, the menus, the look and feel, nothing has really moved a lot, just small touches, and that says a lot in my book about the perrenity (oh apparently that word doesn't exist in english, dang. "Sustainability", says google. Let's go with that) and planning of the project. I'm sure you'll say it's mostly by accident and luck, or something like that :) yeah, right.

>> re. move the playhead in one, single action
> - did i ever say that SHIFT+click on the time-ruler will do just that? including the thumb-view or in the midi clip editor canvas?

You did! I forgot, sorry. This is exactly what I need, forget about everything else on that matter.

> else, on any empty time-line space in the main tracks view? i rest my case here :)

Yes! Well, it's just peachy now ; that shift-click is super cool, sorry for forgetting this crutial bit of ergonomics. Now to my defense, I seem to recall (but I'm not sure of that either) proposing an inline, status-bar help system, similar to the one in Inkscape, a software that I use a lot and that bears a lot of similarities to Qtractor, or any DAW for that matter: The balance between complexity and ease of use. Wait no, a DAW is even more complex. Now this is one of the things I'd love to do for Qtractor. And that includes tooltip messages, too. And ultimately the Wiki. An all-encompassing Qtractor documentation project. Let's talk about that at LAC if I may.

>> re. Ableton Live approach (generic plugin control pane)
> - that's yet another good (alien;)) idea just lacking an implementation/reproduction--anyone willing to take the call and step in? :)

This one too I'd love to undertake, but clearly this is waaay above my paygrade, you should see my crappy code to understand what I mean :) but I can do mockups?

yPhil's picture

Those last two tips: Ctrl+Drag to dup clips, and shift-click to move the play-head around WHOA this is it, I gave the birds a triple dose of seeds ; Life is moving faster than ever in the Q lane :)

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