[LAU] qtractor questions

[Rui Nuno Capela]

On 03/22/2010 07:18 PM, rosea grammostola wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Rui Nuno Capela <rncbc at rncbc.org
> <mailto:rncbc at rncbc.org>> wrote:
> 
>     On 03/22/2010 10:07 AM, rosea grammostola wrote:
>     >
>     > Some questions about qtractor:
>     >
>     >     * You can't render the midi track to wav? How do you get an whole
>     >       session into an audio file?
> 
>     midi is meant to be rendered by a sound generator module, a synth, a
>     sampler, a stand-alone or an instrument plugin (dssi, vsti or lv2); you
>     can drive external midi outboard equipment as well, which in fact was
>     and still is the primordial goal of a midi sequencer like qtractor.
> 
>     qtractor does not include/integrate any midi sound generator per se, so
>     you cannot render midi tracks directly to audio files. but you can
>     record/bound the sound modules output back into qtractor, ardour or any
>     other jack enabled hard-disk recorder if you prefer.
> 
>     qtractor exports audio tracks as audio files; similarly it exports midi
>     tracks as standard midi files, nothing else ;)
> 
> 
>     >
>     >     * Why are there no new audio tracks showing up in Jack when
>     you add
>     >       a new audio track, like ardour has? Wouldn't this make it more
>     >       easy to use it with other apps (for example ardour)?
> 
>     qtractor is not ardour (tm) -- internal signal flow models are not the
>     same, not even close ;)
> 
>     re. qtractor, each "input bus" feeds a track on recording; each track
>     feeds an "output bus" for mixdown/merging on playback; it is these "bus"
>     devices that are exposed as jack audio ports or alsa-seq ports (midi)
>     from or to the outside world.
> 
>     again, buses in qtractor are not the same as buses in ardour. in
>     qtractor, buses are what you ever see in the jack graph. you never see
>     tracks ;)
> 
> I don't understand it totally. Let assume I have to midi tracks in
> qtractor and I want to record those to two audio tracks in qtractor. But
> there is only master_in1 and master_in2.
> 
> When I add an audio track, I can only choose for master_in. Also for new
> audio track number two, master_in. How to route output of synth 1 to
> track1 and synth 2 to track 2?
> 

you create more buses. at least one more in addition to master which is
indeed stereo (2channels) and created by default ootb. you can setup
your workspace as with many ins and outs you need and make it a template
for all your future new blank/scratch sessions.

so, recipe is: create one additional bus, call it master_2 for instance
and assign it as input for audio track_2; audio track_1 stays on Master
for input. now you connect synth_1/outs to Master/ins and synth_2/outs
to master_2/ins. voilá :)

remember now that qtractor session templates may get very handy here,
for not having to be doing this all the time, as it also includes
connection recall. alas, it won't start your external synths
automatically, you'll have to do that manually, business as usual,
qtractor will wait for them appearing on the radar to reconnect. yep,
qtractor is not a full-blown session manager, i know. let's leave that
for someone else ;)

cheers
-- 
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc at rncbc.org