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What is a CV port and does Qtractor support it?

Hi,

I've been learning more about how to drive automating my MIDI controllers (not the hardware, the actual plugin parameters). When I look at the a given track's automation menu and choose "Select", I see the what appears to me to be very generic options:

$PluginName $Patch Monitor
$PluginName $Patch Pan
$PluginName $Patch Volume
$PluginName $Patch Record
$PluginName $Patch Mute
$PluginName $Patch Solo

OK, so I think I'd see all of my plugin's parameters listed IF I were running the plugin from within Qtractor itself. I'm not. Instead, I'm running them from Carla and simply triggering via MIDI busses. If I look inside of Carla's generic UI for the plugin, I see a very interesting option to "Expose as CV port". Uhm, what's that? If I were to do that, can I then somehow use or access that port from within Qtractor to record my random knob changing?

Am I totally lost and maybe there's a simpler approach?

Very interested in thoughts. Thanks in advance.

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rncbc's picture

hi,

no, qtractor does not support CV automation, sorry.

and yes, you can only drive automation on regular control ports or parameters to plugins that are hosted in qtractor directly; plugins that are (sub)hosted inside carla don't get their parameters exposed to the parent host (qtractor), so that you cannot control them from qtractor automation, sorry again.

perhaps you may do some MIDI automation, via MIDI CC events, but that would have to be done on the MIDI track/clip performance data itself, not regular qtractor automation.

ps. also see CV/gate (wikipedia); JACK/LV2 CV (linuxmusicians).

Thanks for the confirmation. Yea, I continued playing around and saw I could map to a given controller id (like 11 for expression). From there, I certainly do have the opportunity to drive things by drawing appropriate MIDI data in Piano Roll (after selecting the correct controller). To be honest, it's kinda cool as it gives me that old "Cakewalk" feeling. Not a terrible thing :) :) :)

But I'm going to consider moving the plugin into Qtractor just so I can have fun twisting knobs and recording what happens.

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