Howdy,
Summer is now long gone, obviously fall has already begun. As winter
looms on the horizon the year steadily marches into its due end. (oh
crap!...)
Today marks the day of this second public release while on the TYOQA
age. It also marks yet another birthday of mine. One more year's gone,
one less to go. Be happy! I hope you'd like my party as soon you get
over from yesterday's bitten fruit showtime.
Now's the time...
Qtractor 0.5.1 (bravo yankee) is out!
Yes, it's "bravo" alright, not "beta" nor anything else. Despite any
previous existing codename. Now, it's all dumb-down easy to predict any
next release codenames, a matter of convergence and fact that just
chalks one less of a burden on me :)
Believe it or not, this is the best and, allegedly, the most stable
release ever. Ain't them all? ;)
Release highlights:
* Linked (aka. ref-counted) audio/MIDI clips (NEW)
* Aux-Send pseudo-plugin (NEW)
* Direct-access plugin parameter slider (NEW)
* MIDI file player (NEW)
* Automatic time-stretching of audio clips on tempo-map changes (FIX)
* Improved native Linux VST support (FIX)
* Improved JACK-Session support (FIX)
* Improved generic plugin form (FIX)
* MIDI-fx plugin support (NEW)
* Audio bus/ports auto-connect option (NEW)
* First translation call (Czech) (NEW)
Cheers!
Website:
http://qtractor.sourceforge.net
Project page:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor
Downloads:
- source tarball:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.5.1.tar.gz
- source package (openSUSE 11.4):
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.5.1-4.rncbc.suse114.sr…
- binary packages (openSUSE 11.4):
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.5.1-4.rncbc.suse114.i5…http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.5.1-4.rncbc.suse114.x8…
- from the paleolithic shelves: user manual:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/qtractor/qtractor-0.3.0-user-manual.pdf
Weblog (upstream support):
http://www.rncbc.org
License:
Qtractor is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms
of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.
Change-log:
- More LADISH support: SIGTERM signal is now trapped for graceful
application close.
- Improved paste-repeat snap precision when dealing with large repeat
counts.
- Czech (cs) translation added, by Pavel Fric.
- Added a few snap-to-beat divisors (unusual Beat/5, Beat/7, Beat/9 and
Beat/10) for completeness sake.
- Such a simple change of mind with a visual twist: the "A" track
automation button/menu has now been
- moved to the right-most, as it belongs ;)
- Auto-connection of dedicated audio outputs is now optional for default
audio master bus, metronome, player and MIDI instrument plugin dedicated
audio outputs.
- Finally, after a pitiful large brain-dead period, generic plugin forms
are now showing all possible controllable plugin parameters featuring a
paged, tabbed dialog, whenever applicable.
- Special hack/fix for JUCE based native VST plugins, which are the most
actually found with a GUI editor, skipping explicit shared library
unloading and thus avoiding some mysterious crashes on session close
and/or application exit.
- Support for MIDI-fx plugins (native VST and/or LV2) is now implemented
and functional (intra-chain only).
- Instrument plugin bank/program selection was found broken or dead in
the water, specially on VSTi, now finally fixed again.
- VST plugin parameter value display on generic form is now back in
business (were dead regarding value changes).
- All plugin's provided GUI editors are now honored by being popped up
first, instead of the usual but good old generic plugin form.
- Long overdue implementation of a dedicated MIDI file player is now
accessible from the MIDI files widget; one can play the whole SMF or
just a single track or channel.
- Update to a newer VeSTige header, probably fixing an old 32 vs. 64 bit
mismatch.
- Avoid JACK session filenames/paths to be ever shown; also avoid all
buses ports (re)connections when JACK sessions are (re)loaded, given the
fact that session management will take care of just that; more also,
untitled/default session names are now also picked up to match current
LADISH project name, obviously given by LADISH_PROJECT_NAME environment
variable, whenever present (as suggested by Nedko Ardaunov).
- Paste-repeat floating selection has been fixed (was showing only the
last repeated selection).
- Coherence of tempo changes on audio and MIDI clips, whether automatic
time-stretching is in effect, has been slightly improved, hopefully fixed.
- Bold attempt to get linked (aka. ref-counted) audio and MIDI clips
into practice (EXPERIMENTAL).
- Main track view now showing all clips above the grid.
- Added support for both new and older (deprecated URI) lv2_external_ui
extension (by Nedko Ardaunov).
- Following yet another great idea, and implementation, by Holger
Dehnhardt, who already brought us the new aux-send insert plugin, thanks
again, the so-called direct access control option is now featured for
any plugin parameter right from plugin listings eg. mixer strips.
- General resource consumption and management has been slightly
improved, due to internal buses allocation optimization.
- Fixed nasty crash-bug that was severely affecting all sessions that
had at least one insert (pseudo-)plugin on any audio input bus.
- All automation curve nodes are now relocated whenever disparate
session sample-rate is detected on load.
- New aux-send/insert pseudo-plugin is now introduced, allowing to route
any track audio output to any other audio output bus besides the nominal
one -- thanks to an original implementation from Holger Dehnhardt.
- New immediate edit/loop-range settings from current clip extents,
accessible on the main menu (Clip/Range Set, Loop Set) and from MIDI
clip editor menu as well (File/Range Set, Loop Set).
- MIDI Names XML files (*.midnam) may now be imported into MIDI
instrument definitions. (EXPERIMENTAL)
- Avoid cursor reset while editing MIDI events list (fixes bug #3380259,
reported by Frank Neumann).
- Just some typos fixing (patch #3378382 by c-korn).
- Track view automation curve editing mode has been slightly fixed, now
allowing for other previously existing point-and-click mouse operations.
- Default automation curve mode is now preserved (following a suggestion
by Alexandre Prokoudine, thanks).
Enjoy!
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc(a)rncbc.org
Apart from the usual jackdbus addition, this release contains fix for
xrun reporting.
This release provides both the new jackd.py (D-Bus bound and available
in the vanilla tarball) and jackdbus.
Tarball containing D-Bus patched jack 0.121.3 is available here:
http://nedko.arnaudov.name/soft/jack/dbus/http://nedko.arnaudov.name/soft/jack/dbus/jack-audio-connection-kit-dbus-0.…http://nedko.arnaudov.name/soft/jack/dbus/jack-audio-connection-kit-dbus-0.…
A patch against vanilla 0.121.3 is available here:
http://nedko.arnaudov.name/soft/jack/dbus/jack-audio-connection-kit-0.121.3…http://nedko.arnaudov.name/soft/jack/dbus/jack-audio-connection-kit-0.121.3…
After applying the patch you have to run autoreconf.
D-Bus modifications add optional autodetected support for the D-Bus
based server control system.
D-Bus is object model that provides IPC mechanism. D-Bus supports
autoactivation of objects, thus making it simple and reliable to code a
"single instance" application or daemon, and to launch applications and
daemons on demand when their services are needed.
* Simplified single thread model for control and monitor
applications. Various D-Bus language bindings make it trivial to
write control and monitor applications using scripting languages like
Python, Ruby, Perl, etc..
* JACK has log file (~/.log/jack/jackdbus.log) that is available for
inspection even when autoactivation happens because of first JACK
application is launched.
* There is real configuration file used to persist settings that can be
manipulated through configuration interface of JACK D-Bus object.
* Improved graph inspection and control mechanism. JACK graph is
versioned. Connections, ports and clients have unique (monotonically
increasing) numeric IDs.
* High level abstraction of JACK settings. Allows applications that can
configure JACK to expose parameters that were not known at compile
(or tarball release) time.
Currently there are some minor differences between jack1 jackdbus and
jack2 jackdbus:
* There is no parameter constraints support (no enums and no ranges)
* Settings file (in ~/.config/jack/) is conf-jack1.xml instead of
conf.xml, because jack1 and jack2 settings and not really compatible.
When configured with D-Bus support, jack_control is
installed. jack_control is simple commandline interface for jackdbus.
Other tools that can communicate with JACK through D-Bus:
* LADItools (tray icon, configuration, etc.)
* Patchage (and lpatchage too)
* LASH 0.6.x
* ladish
* QJackCtl
--
Nedko Arnaudov <GnuPG KeyID: 5D1B58ED>