[LAA] Qtractor 0.1.1 (futile duchess) released!

Rui Nuno Capela rncbc at rncbc.org
Sat Feb 16 09:54:52 EST 2008


After some time in quarantine, meaning that it just passed almost 40
days since its last public appearance, the frivolous debutante has
matured a bit but not that much. Truth is, it is not quite healed and in
fact, it is getting seriously bloated ;)

  Qtractor 0.1.1 (futile duchess) has been released!

Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-­track sequencer application, written in
C++ around the Qt toolkit. Its primordial 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 Desktop Audio/MIDI Workstation GUI specially
dedicated to the personal home­studio. It sits confortably tagged as for
the techno-boy bedroom home-studio. There's no genre segregation here,
it also applies to techno-girls ;).

Now seriously, it even has its own Wikipedia entry already:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qtractor.

Back to business, these are the major highlights for this release:

- Draft user manual, contributed by James Laco Hines.
- Native Linux VST plug-in support.
- Initial DSSI plug-in support (audio effects only atm.)
- User configurable keyboard shortcuts.
- JACK server auto-start.
- Clip fade-in/out relative resizes.
- Auto time-stretch now optional.
- MIDI capture/record input quantize.
- Major plug-in infrastructure rewrite.
- Seamless plug-in drag-and-drop.

Check it out, from the official project web site:

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

Direct link for the source tarball download:

  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.1.1.tar.gz

The new user manual draft is also made available:

  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.1.1-user-manual.pdf

Literal change-log follows. since the last 0.1.0 (frivolous debutante)
alpha release:

- After some great user demand, keyboard shortcuts are finally
  configurable, as found provisionally under Help/Shortcuts...,
  for the main application menu and for the MIDI editor as well.

- Debian package gets SSE optimization disabled as default.

- At least some transport actions get to be non auto-repeatable
  when pressed for much too long, as Play and Record, avoiding
  the tumbling imposed from the keyboard.

- For the first time ever, jackd auto-start is now allowed (!).

- OSC service support through liblo gets optional at configure
  time, now leading the way to proper DSSI plug-in hosting.

- All plug-in widget controls count are now capped to one hundred.

- Plugin paths setup is now made available on the options dialog,
  overriding each of respective default settings, as implicit from
  the LADSPA_PATH, DSSI_PATH and VST_PATH environment variables
  (see View/Options.../Display/Plugin Paths).

- Clip fade-in/out lengths are now kept relative to tempo changes
  and also to clip offset and length changes (clip resizes).

- Automatic time-stretching for all audio clips when session tempo
  changes, may now be disabled/enabled as a global session option
  (see View/Options.../Audio/Playback/Automatic time-stretching).

- Double-clicking on an empty area (de)selects all clips on track.

- MIDI capture (record) quantization is now an option, possibly
  handy for some jerky performance musicians, as the one found
  in myself ;) (see View/Options.../MIDI/Capture/Quantize).

- The global options dialog (View/Options...) has seen its Display
  tab page being moved back and to the right.

- Major rewrite of the plug-in infrastructure, adding primordial
  support for DSSI and native VST plug-in flavors.

- Drag-and-drop of plug-in instances are now allowed intra- and
  inter-mixer strip chains, either on tracks or buses.

- Turning track record off while recording is rolling was leaving
  the session in a inconsistent recording status, now fixed.

- A random but instant crash upon audition/pre-listening player
  onset was hopefully fixed.


Cheers && Enjoy
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela



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