[ANN] Qtractor 0.6.5 - The Fermion Ray beta is out!

[rncbc]

Spread the word,

Qtractor 0.6.5 (fermion ray beta) is out!

Release highlights:

* MIDI clip record/overdubbing (NEW)
* Extended track multi-selection for mute/solo (NEW)
* VST-shell sub-plugins support (NEW)
* JACK transport start/stop resilience (FIX)



And still,

Qtractor is an audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt4 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.

Website:
http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

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

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

- source tarball:
qtractor-0.6.5.tar.gz

- source package (openSUSE 13.2):
qtractor-0.6.5-15.rncbc.suse132.src.rpm

- binary packages (openSUSE 13.2):
qtractor-0.6.5-15.rncbc.suse132.i586.rpm
qtractor-0.6.5-15.rncbc.suse132.x86_84.rpm

- quick start guide & user manual (see also: the wiki):
qtractor-0.5.x-user-manual.pdf

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

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:
- Connections lines now drawn with anti-aliasing; connections splitter handles width is now reduced; the MIDI connections splitter pane sizes are now saved and restored properly.
- Extended multi-selection is now featured on the track-list (main left-pane), primarily allowing for group mute/solo (and monitor) switching.
- Track-list (left pane) header column widths are now saved and made persistent across application power cycle (double-click reverts to the old original default).
- Minor fixes on the MIDI clip event list editor, also making sure the current event is visible on the piano-roll view.
- As long to prevent asynchronous mistakes to JACK transport state changes, an internal slack-delay is now introduced after self-initiated transport commands (eg. start/stop).
- The MIDI clip editor (aka. piano-roll) was missing to clear or reset the current selection when no shift/ctrl keyboard modifier is in effect.
- VST-shell sub-plugins are now supported (as suggested by abique aka. Alexandre Bique, thanks).
- MIDI clip record/overdubbing is now possible (Clip/Record on the main menu or File/Record from the MIDI clip editor.
- Make sure some audio sample file encodings (eg. old Ogg Vorbis) does not head-start on audio peak generation.


See also:
http://www.rncbc.org/drupal/node/858


Enjoy && have fun.
--
rncbc aka. Rui Nuno Capela

[glowrak guy]

The vst-shell support has enabled U-he Zebra2, Filterscape, and Uhbiks* to be opened and
used in qtractor. Great accomplishment!

Uhbik in the setup I tried, only found one instance, out of 8 uhbiks,
so some extra discovery needs to happen. Carla sees all 8, but lacks your shell support,
so they don't work.

Zebra works when running qtractor after a reboot, crashes if I start it
in a second or third third qtractor session. but it's great to be able to use it!
I noticed in htop, that 'jackdbus auto'
is always running, maybe a source of issues? Bazille also runs
after a reboot. I hope people will test these plugins, yoshimi or hexter
with filterscape make a great combo. Thanks for your work supporting
vst, and the people who use them! I'll post after testing on a better system later.
Cheers

[glowrak guy]

Th windows Filterscape installs 3 apps, FilterscapeVA, FilterscapeQ6,
and Filterscape.

Zebra2 installs Zebrify, Zebralette, ZRev, and Zebra2

Uhbik installs the 8 individual Uhbik effects.

So Zebra, Filterscape and Uhbiks showed no audio ports or parameters in Carla, while the rest of the U-he collection,
all singles, do.

I assume these multiple apps contained in one installer , and the way they are handled when installed
in mac/win, are why they needed vst shell support, but I'm not a coder. (even Sergeant Schulz knows more C)
Cheers

[glowrak guy]

I checked in the bitwig demo, where the plugin listing shows folders for Zebra2,
Filterscape, and Uhbiks, click the desired folder, then click the related .so, and the individual plugin choices appear, 4 in Zebra, 3 in filterscape, and 8 in Uhbiks.
Cheers

[rncbc]

The vst-shell support has enabled U-he Zebra2, Filterscape, and Uhbiks* to be opened and
used in qtractor. Great accomplishment!

Uhbik in the setup I tried, only found one instance, out of 8 uhbiks,
so some extra discovery needs to happen. Carla sees all 8, but lacks your shell support,
so they don't work.

for you to get proper VST-shell sub-plugin discovery in qtractor you'll have to turn off View/Options.../Plugins/Experimental/Dummy VST plugin scan option. otherwise only the first sub-instance is shown on the plugin selection listing.

though, the dummy VST scan option was needed to avoid rogue freezes/crashes caused by some older JUCE based plugins while on discovery scan. so nevertheless, turn this dummy scan option off with care: if some or any of those crappy JUCEd plugins is still lying around in the search path, you'll get random hangs, freezes and sudden crashes at best without warning.

hth.
cheers

[glowrak guy]

Thanks for the tips! Turning 'dummy' off worked, I just had
Zebralette, Filterscape, and Uhbik P on one track

But with some oddities. First, as per your advice, I removed all vsts
except u-he, and turned off the dummy option, to this result:

1. With dummy off, the links to /home/me/.vst produced by the u-he installers
no longer worked, the non-shell plugins didn't scan, and the plugins in the uhbik folder were grayed out. So I chose the folders in
/home/me/.u-he folders as the vst paths. Qtractor then froze
at each attempt to load a plugin

2. So I removed all the non-shell u-he folders from the /home/me/.u-he path
then the vst-shell plugins worked. Adding back any of the other u-he 'non-shell' vst folders to the path list, ACE, Hive, Diva etc would cause qtractor to freeze again during the plugin selection, forcing a killall and or log-out, even a power off
in one attempt (some which may be local window-manager stuff!)
So removing the 'non-shell' vst folder(s) from the 'custom' path list,
restores functionality of the contents provided in Uhbiks, Filterscape, and Zebra2.
Hope this info is useful.

(I also figured out stopping qjackctl sped up the 'killall qtractor' command,
and will try lxde/openbox/cinnamon as time allows.)
Cheers

edit: I installed lxde, and the graphics issues are improved, I can sometimes
load three u-he plugins, but still some sudden crashes with certain combinations,
(perhaps too limited a computer) but I'm gonna look at qt to see
if it is playing with a full deck...in general, the Uhbiks and Filterscape are
very nice with Hexter, amsynth, Whysynth, Yoshimi etc
And Zebra is very nice with Rakarrack...

[rncbc]

2. So I removed all the non-shell u-he folders from the /home/me/.u-he path
then the vst-shell plugins worked. Adding back any of the other u-he 'non-shell' vst folders to the path list, ACE, Hive, Diva etc would cause qtractor to freeze again during the plugin selection, forcing a killall and or log-out, even a power off
in one attempt (some which may be local window-manager stuff!)
So removing the 'non-shell' vst folder(s) from the 'custom' path list,
restores functionality of the contents provided in Uhbiks, Filterscape, and Zebra2.
Hope this info is useful.

i can confirm the dang freezing behavior

as a matter of fact, it will freeze in an infinite loop for ALL regular non-shell VST plugins *iif* the "Dummy VST plugin scan" option is OFF.

fixed already on git (master) 276b0f aka. qtractor v0.6.5.1

in the mean time, the "dummy VST scan" option is still marked as RECOMMENDED ON! alas, you will only get the 1st sub-plugin on those VST-shell types (eg. Zebra2, Uhbik, Filterscape), but on the safe side, you'll get to run every other VST, including Diva, etc. btw. Diva seems to be one example of ill-behaved on non-dummy scanning as bad as those JUCE plugins i've ranted about. it seems the cause for all this behavior is related to some VST types with a GUI just doesn't cope nicely and cleanly with an actual inventory/discovery scanning, which implies an open/close quick succession while the dang plugin tries to open its full-fledged GUI framework and paraphernalia in the background for nothing. :/

thanks for the info. hth.
cheers
byee

[glowrak guy]

Just tested 6.5 on a system with official nvidia 3D driver, and graphic performance
was improved drastically, had zebra, zebralette, filterscapeVA, and filterscape
all bunched up in one screen, sharing the popcorn! I'd guess that this nvidia driver
frees up a ton of cpu. This is on pclinuxos, the maintainer of which, is very crafty at this 3D

I'll do more testing after the 'futball' game

[rncbc]

I'll do more testing after the 'futball' game

consider grabbing the latest git head (master; qtractor v0.6.5.2 attotw.)... VST search path recursive scanning is now in effect, so that you shall drop "~/.vst/uh-e" from your custom VST search path list.

hth.
cheers

[glowrak guy]

Thanks for working on this. I'll wait til there's an rpm,
since the plugins work, and others can be used in Carla if desired,
and I need to work more on the relationship
between the white and black keys.
Cheers

[rncbc]

Thanks for working on this. I'll wait til there's an rpm,

you can try my opensuse build service repositories including debian, ubuntu and fedora targets:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/rncbc/

hth.
cheers

[RockHopper]

you can try my opensuse build service repositories including debian, ubuntu and fedora targets

Hi rncbc, a while back I was thinking of using OBS for packaging Shuriken but didn't know much about it. I'd really appreciate it if you could share any tips, pitfalls to watch out for, etc. http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13017

[rncbc]

Hi rncbc, a while back I was thinking of using OBS for packaging Shuriken but didn't know much about it. I'd really appreciate it if you could share any tips, pitfalls to watch out for, etc. http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13017

quickie reply:
first you'll have to sign-up on http://build.opensuse.org and create a home project.
second you start adding packages for build under your home project; add target repositories at will;
check whether the dependencies for your package(s) already provided by the target repos (aka. distros); if not, you'll have to add/create them as your packages for build as well;
basically, you need to add the source tarball and respective specific files (.spec for RPM based targets, .dsc et al. for DEBs, etc.)
anyway, don't skip over the OBS documentation.

hth.
cheers

[RockHopper]

Thanks for the quick reply! It doesn't sound too different from Ubuntu Launchpad. I'll make sure to check out the docs

[glowrak guy]

Thanks for working on this. I'll wait til there's an rpm,

you can try my opensuse build service repositories including debian, ubuntu and fedora targets:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/rncbc/

hth.
cheers

Tried both suse and fedora 6.5.2 rpms, and neither worked to expose the shelled vsts, with dummy on,
segfaulted with no terminal output, whenever a non-shell U-he plugin was added to the path:
/home/me/.uhe/ACE
/home/me/.u-he/filterscape

Worked as before, with only filterscape, uhbiks and zebra paths enabled,
and dummy off, all the shelled plugins appeared for selction, and worked.
With dummy on, all plugins work, but none of the shelled plugins are exposed for selection.
I was careful to reboot, delete old config file etc. Also tried the installers default path again,
and the links from the plugin folders in .u-he to .vst still are not recognized.
Cheers.