That's one of the things I like about qtractor. I can start it up without qjackctl if I want -- without selecting any patches or hooking up anything. In qtractor, all the basic connections and patching are part of the template I set qtractor to launch with (View->Options->Display->Session). Furthermore, loading a .qtr file for a song will contain the patchbay information needed to connect to the appropriate midi ports, synths& instrument definitions, plugin softsynths, etc. You conveniently click on the "input" or "output" buttons in the mixer panel,. and it'll show you the specific jack connection associated with the selected input or output. No more rats nest of connections to trace through in qjackctl -- I end up using it more now as an overview of all my connections and use qtractor to setup specific connections.

So basically, you can just launch qtractor. load your project/song, and be good to go. You don't have to load&activate a separate patchbay .xml file in qjackctl in order to connect up whatever you need connected for a particular session (and remember to associate the patchbay .xml file with your DAW session). If you want to launch qjackctl to work with qtractor, they work well together too, but if you forget to launch jack, qtractor will do it for you. It's really a nice new level of integration we're getting -- an incremental improvement over a standalone qjackctl.

-- Niels