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Feature Request: Extend audio auto-connect option

Hello,

I always route my audio buses to a the inputs of a bus called MixFinal. That bus then goes to the inputs of Master. Every time I create a new bus (very often), I have to go through the routing thing. It's a work flow I've learned to deal with but I'm wondering if it would be possible to extend the "auto-connect" feature. if memory serves, all this does is route the outputs of the bus to System (which I never use). In other words, that feature's behavior appears to be hard-coded. It would be sweet if there were a global option added to specify where that "auto-connect" feature would route to. Thinking about it a bit more though, global might not make sense since it wouldn't be reasonable to assume a particular destination exists. However, perhaps this could be driven at a project level? That would allow for the following for every new project:

1. Create buses (probably already done when a new project is started from a template)
2. Specify project level destination for "auto-connect" (this is probably also template friendly)

Now every time a new audio bus is created and the "auto-connect" checkbox is enabled, the output is routed according to what's been defined in step 2 from above.

This would really help in terms of overhead and allow users to work more efficiently. I hope this idea is considered :)

Thank you

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rncbc's picture

hi, I do see your point, but let's get real for a minute: those "system::playback_1,2,..." will always be there for sure, as reported by the JACK sub-system as "physical" output ports, meaning they are the main sink to the D/A outputs--these might be wired to the speakers, but not necessarily, it could be to some mixing-desk, or whatever...).

this is all to say that, having the options to auto-connect to something else, actually depends on your JACK sub-system setup, graph and what else you got there _at the time_ you would try to choose... now you may have a very static, stable studio setup on your machine any time; unfortunately that 's tnot the general case at large :/ so it would be kinda hard to make it work for everyone, all the time, I guess.

I'd say, yes it's feasible, no question about that, but I think the cost (my time) outweighs the benefit (your time) here. Unless of course you have the willing to propose some nice code to it... it's not really rocket science you know? it would be a great coding exercise ntl.

cheers

Fair point. After all, that's the win/win of Free Software :)

Since those connections are visible outside Qtractor you could use other tools like jack-plumbing or Qjackctl to make those connections based on rules that you set.

Not sure if Qtractor will save those connection in a session file.

rncbc's picture

re. Not sure if Qtractor will save those connection in a session file.
it only saves the connections to and from it, in the session/template file!

so, one idea is actually turn off Auto-connect option on every audio bus and stick with the ones that are actual and currently connected at the time you hit Save.

hth.
cheers

Yes, that's what I do. I always have "auto-connect" disabled in order to avoid the hard-coded behavior. I was simply pointing out the benefits of allowing the user to specify the behavior on a project level. The request had nothing to do with saving state (we can do this either with Qtractor itself or whatever we're using to persist our session state). It was about the behavior of using auto-connect when a new bus is created.

All the best

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