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The Twelfth Tight

Another weekend, another alpha-decay burst coming out from this lone star. Or else. Alpha, because Qtractor is still on such a phase of development. Decay, well, it should apply to bug counting, sure, that's it. However, as all things in software life-cycle, major bugs only get noticed right after the release party. So there it goes, bug hunting season is now open again:

Qtractor 0.0.8.762 (twelfth tight) has been pre-released!

Downloads are ready from the official site:

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

As usual, the complete change-log since last pre-release is due here:

  • Bus context menu is now accessible from respective mixer strip.
  • Fixed a subtle crash-suicide issue when invoking the bus dialog
    with a double-click over the corresponding mixer bus strip; also
    fixed the sloppy ganguing mistake when changing mixer bus gain
    (volume) and panning values.
  • MIDI Omni mode (sort of) makes its entrance as a new MIDI track
    property, meaning that is now finally possible for the capture of
    any unfiltered MIDI channel event, without regard to the current
    channel assignment, which still applies for playback purposes.
  • Audio (pass-)through has been also implemented, now being a common
    and consistent property of both audio and MIDI buses, provided
    those are set in duplex mode (input and output).
  • Re-touched follow-playhead and continue-past-end tool icons, again
    to be a bit softer and not so bright as to hurt someones eyes.

Cheers && Enjoy.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

Comments

Hi Rui,

I installed this on Fedora 8. The install worked fine, but MP3 support was not included as the configure process said that the "mad" library was missing. I have the Fluendo MP3 playback codec installed, so I'm assuming the configure script looks for an encoder, not decoding only, or does it only look for one particular library?

Any plans to provide support for Pulse Audio?

Cheers,

Malcolm.

rncbc's picture

You need (lib)mad-devel, to build qtractor with mp3 audio file support:

http://www.underbit.com/products/mad/

Can't say its alright, but I've found some Fedora8 packaging from here:

http://dl.atrpms.net/all/libmad0-0.15.1b-3.fc8.i386.rpm
http://dl.atrpms.net/all/libmad-devel-0.15.1b-3.fc8.i386.rpm

This is a decoder-only library. Qtractor has no mp3 encoder support and probably won't ever, unless someone volunteers with the code and the money (see Thomson's patent, mp3licensing.com).

I have no insider information, but it has been told that Pulse Audio has JACK as one of its backends, or at least it has been thought to have one. Maybe with some kind of indirection, like pulseaudio -> gstreamer or xine -> jack sink ? I can't really help you on this. I have no traits for Pulse Audio here, really sorry.

Hint: if Pulse Audio does not have a JACK backend it probably must or should have a native ALSA one. Maybe you can get by messing around with the infamous dmix plugin?

Try this one example as your .asoundrc file:

pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "plugdmix"
}

pcm.plugdmix  {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 1024
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"
        period_time 0
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 4096
        rate 44100
    }
    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
    }
}

pcm.dsp0
{
    type plug
    slave.pcm "plugdmix"
}

ctl.plugdmix {
    type hw
    card 0
}

and then start JACK with plugdmix as it's device name, like this:

  jackd -R -dalsa -r44100 -p1024 -n2 -D -Chw:0 -Pplugdmix -i2 -o2

Or with equivalent settings in QjackCtl ;)

Server path: jackd
Realtime: yes (-R)
Driver: alsa (-dalsa)
Sample Rate: 44100 (-r44100)
Frames/Period: 1024 (-p1024)
Periods/Buffer: 2 (-n2)
Audio: Duplex (-D)
Input Device: hw:0 (-Chw:0)
Output Device: plugdmix (-Pplugdmix)
Input Channels: 2 (-i2)
Output Channels: 2 (-o2)

Ah, of course, this is assuming your first sound-card in regard to ALSA is the one to take the trouble (hw:0).

Cheers.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

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