[ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

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rncbc
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[ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by rncbc »

Ahoy!

Stepping up to Summer'15 release frenzy stage scene, in its fourth and hopefully last act,

Qtractor 0.7.0 (muon base beta) is out!

Image

Qtractor is an audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt framework. 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 Linux desktop audio workstation GUI, specially dedicated to the personal home-studio.

As a major highlight to this release, there's the advent of regular MIDI controllers mapping/assignment to main application menu command actions, just like normal PC-keyboard shortcuts, is being introduced (cf. main menu Help/Shortcuts...).

Have a hotta Summer'15 ;)

Enjoy.


Website:
http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

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

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

- source tarball:
qtractor-0.7.0.tar.gz

- source package (openSUSE 13.2):
qtractor-0.7.0-18.rncbc.suse132.src.rpm

- binary packages (openSUSE 13.2):
qtractor-0.7.0-18.rncbc.suse132.i586.rpm
qtractor-0.7.0-18.rncbc.suse132.x86_64.rpm

- wiki (help wanted!):
http://sourceforge.net/p/qtractor/wiki/

Weblog (upstream support):
http://www.rncbc.org

License:
Qtractor is free, open-source Linux Audio software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.

Change-log:
- Complete rewrite of Qt4 vs. Qt5 configure builds.
- Revised MIDI Controlllers catch-up algorithm.
- Mixer multi-row layout gets a little bit of a fairness fix.
- Non-continuous MIDI Controllers now have their Hook and Latch options disabled as those are found not applicable,
- As an alternative to PC-keyboard shortcuts, MIDI controllers are now also assignable and configurable for any of the main menu command actions, all from the same old configuration dialog (Help/Shortcuts...).
- Fixed missing Track and Clip sub-menus from Edit/context-menu that were found AWOL ever since after the Lazy Tachyon beta release (> 0.6.6).
- An off-by-one bar position (as in BBT, bar, beat and ticks) has been purportedly fixed as long as LV2 Time/Position atom event transfer goes.
- French (fr) translation line to desktop file added (patch by Olivier Humbert, thanks).
- A new top-level widget window geometry state save and restore sub-routine is now in effect.
- Improved MIDI clip editor resilience across tempo and time-signature changes.
- Keyboard shortcuts configuration (Help/Shortcuts...) now lists complete menu/action path where available.
- Fixed in-flight VST plugin editor (GUI) resizing.
- Added support to LV2UI_portMap extension, found really handy for the cases where you have multiple plugins with different port configurations and a single common UI to drive them all (pull request by Hanspeter Portner aka. ventosus, thanks).

See also:
http://www.rncbc.org/drupal/node/917


Enjoy && keep the fun.
--
rncbc aka. Rui Nuno Capela
Last edited by rncbc on Tue Sep 01, 2015 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by danboid »

0.7.0!

If it'd been up to me, I would've gone 0.7 with the previous release due to:

* It's live: audio track export (cf. Track/Export Tracks/ Audio...) has been deeply refactored to finally include MIDI track/instrument plugins rendering (aka. freeze) on selected audio output buses on mix-down.

Which is the best thing to happen to qtr since TYOQA so I'd say that feature was more worthy of a minor version bump. It seems to work well and not having to mix down MIDI instrument plugin using tracks saves a helluvalorra hassle, tracks and disk space.

Thanks Rui!
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by rncbc »

danboid wrote:0.7.0!

If it'd been up to me, I would've gone 0.7 with the previous release due to:

* It's live: audio track export (cf. Track/Export Tracks/ Audio...) has been deeply refactored to finally include MIDI track/instrument plugins rendering (aka. freeze) on selected audio output buses on mix-down.

Which is the best thing to happen to qtr since TYOQA so I'd say that feature was more worthy of a minor version bump. It seems to work well and not having to mix down MIDI instrument plugin using tracks saves a helluvalorra hassle, tracks and disk space.

Thanks Rui!
and thanks to ya Dan,

as for assessing the audio track export function as it were kind of experimental thing since that last lepton acid ;)

cheers
on the double!
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by thebutant »

I love qtractor so much.
It's the most used tool on my computer, my absolute favourite program.

There is 1 thing I dream of in an upcoming upgrade. 1 thing that would make qtractor so much more reliable, and save me loads of time:

If the automation nodes didn't move when you go out and back in again in a project. Not all of them do, but for instance Calf filter, GLAME filters and quite some others. In some larger projects I now make lists to remember where the lowpass filter should have this value, the highpass filter that value and so forth.
If this issue was fixed, I'd be really happy.

But thanks a lot for this great piece of software!
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by rncbc »

thebutant wrote:I love qtractor so much.
It's the most used tool on my computer, my absolute favourite program.
thanks.
thebutant wrote:There is 1 thing I dream of in an upcoming upgrade. 1 thing that would make qtractor so much more reliable, and save me loads of time:

If the automation nodes didn't move when you go out and back in again in a project. Not all of them do, but for instance Calf filter, GLAME filters and quite some others. In some larger projects I now make lists to remember where the lowpass filter should have this value, the highpass filter that value and so forth.
If this issue was fixed, I'd be really happy.
not sure whether the culprit is, but i have this hunch it's all about that old & infamous MIDI CC 7bit resolution concept: by default, qtractor automation data series are/were stored as plain MIDI CC values externally (7bit).

so, maybe, next time you try, try turning View/Options.../Plugins/Experimental/High resolution plugin automation on (qtractor >= 0.6.0).

to be on the safe side, remember to backup/save your (prior) existing sessions preferably as to .qtz suffix (archive/zip), before you turn that global configuration on; then compare.
thebutant wrote:But thanks a lot for this great piece of software!
thanks again--rest assured this is the kind of payback i cherish the most:)

hth.
cheers
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by thebutant »

And after a couple of days trying the high resolution plugin automation, it seems my life just got a little easier.
No issues so far, no nodes moving from one session to the next.

Thank you so much! :D
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by glowrak guy »

'file not found error' from the 64 bit suse rpm link

(Just the link is broken, downloaded OK from the sourceforge path)
Cheers
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by rncbc »

glowrak guy wrote:'file not found error' from the 64 bit suse rpm link

(Just the link is broken, downloaded OK from the sourceforge path)
Cheers
oops. stupid typo in the filename: was .x86_84.rpm instead of .x86_64.rpm

corrected. thanks.
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by thebutant »

One thing I noticed:

In earlier versions (at least I remember up to 0.6.6), when exporting a project, right after it was exported, the mixer would show each track's loudest point. It would hang there for a couple of seconds and display whether a track was quiet, loud, peaking etc.

In 0.7.0 this feature is gone. At least for me. Maybe it was a bug in the first place, I don't know, but I found it kind of useful. It often revealed peaks for me, and I would take an extra check to fix them.

Any reason it's gone?
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by caonoize »

Here's an oddity I'm running into. When the session file is given on the command line, qtractor shows 120bpm as the tempo regardless of the file's tempo. It plays correctly though.
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by rncbc »

thebutant wrote:One thing I noticed:

In earlier versions (at least I remember up to 0.6.6), when exporting a project, right after it was exported, the mixer would show each track's loudest point. It would hang there for a couple of seconds and display whether a track was quiet, loud, peaking etc.

In 0.7.0 this feature is gone. At least for me. Maybe it was a bug in the first place, I don't know, but I found it kind of useful. It often revealed peaks for me, and I would take an extra check to fix them.

Any reason it's gone?
yes, since v0.6.7 that audio track export also renders MIDI track plugin instruments (cf. [ANN] Qtractor 0.6.7 - The Lepton Acid beta release!).

since then, those peak meter levels popping up at the end of the export process were intentionally shut out. those were considered just that, remnant ghost peak levels--only in some special situations they may correspond exactly to the maximum peak level attained on each export stripe, however that would depend on whether the screen has (never nor incidentally) re-freshened up during the export process.

so, bottom line goes like this: the peak you've been watching were nothing but a curious visual glitch and tbh. they may refer only to the latest part of the exported material, the extent of which is undefined. only by chance (or to rather short time) could it be considered a relevant statistical result of the whole exported range.

hth.
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by rncbc »

caonoize wrote:Here's an oddity I'm running into. When the session file is given on the command line, qtractor shows 120bpm as the tempo regardless of the file's tempo. It plays correctly though.
good catch! will look into it.

q. does the time ruler, on top of the main canvas view, also shows 120bpm at the beginning (bar=1) or does it show the correct tempo as it would (if loaded from menu File/Open...)?

[EDIT:] a. yes. main tempo display would show it wrong until content changes. anyway. it's now fixed, on git master [7b0574] aka. qtractor v0.7.0.22+, thanks.

seeya
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Re: [ANN] Qtractor 0.7.0 - The Muon Base is out!

Post by thebutant »

rncbc wrote:so, bottom line goes like this: the peak you've been watching were nothing but a curious visual glitch and tbh. they may refer only to the latest part of the exported material, the extent of which is undefined. only by chance (or to rather short time) could it be considered a relevant statistical result of the whole exported range.
Great answer. Thank you!
Now I'm not sorry it's gone anymore. :wink:
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