[Fedora-music-list] Musicians' Guide in Development; Testing Needed!

[Niels Mayer]

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 11:58 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
<nando at ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote:
> I would like to point out that Qtractor is oriented to stereo output.

The 'View->Buses..." menu allows configuration of multiple channels of
audio beyond two. I just configured a 12 channel track, for example.
There is a bug related to this issue, and it may indicate that it has
been tested more with stereo output and non-multichannel cards. The
gui itself permits configuration of up to 99 channels.

> A while back I tried to use for something simple, and that stopped me - I
> don't think I could get it to change the number of channels in the
> master output.

You can get it to change the number of channels, but it may crash
jackd in the process. Requiring a qtractor restart after you save the
file/template with the multichannel audio bus. This is a known bug:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=733076&aid=3021645&group_id=135501
that is still present in subversion.

After jackd crashed, I was able to save the qtractor template with a
12-channel audio template and it correctly setup that 12 channel
template next time I restarted qjackctl and restarted qtractor.
Qjackctl indicated 12 audio inputs (Master/in_*) and outputs
(Master/out_*) available in qtractor, in addition to the 2 channels of
monitor (Player/out_*). The mixer shows 12-channel metering, etc.
Clearly there is support for multichannel audio.

 The bug only seems to be invoked on bus creation with multichannel
sound cards. And not stereo cards.

> Ardour is more complex but you get a return from the investment of
> learning it (as usual).

I don't think it's fair to compare a bug in an "alpha" (<0.5)
opensource software package with a many-years-old project nearing
3.0... But yes, ardour is very comprehensive -- and totally confusing
and overwhelming to the novice.

> Qtractor used to be in Planet CCRMA, I stopped offering it when it
> appeared in rpmfusion.

Makes sense. No point in duplicating effort.

-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com