rncbc.org announces Qtractor 0.5.8 - The India Romeo release

rncbc.org has announced the release of Qtractor 0.5.8.

Changes:

• Dropped old audio ramping spin-locks as its glitching reduction weren't that effective anymore.
• Audio bus and track gain may now be set for amplification again, from +0dB up to +6dB, while using the Mixer strip sliders/faders (an old function found missing ever since pre-TYOQA).
• Basic LV2 X11 UI support has been added through libSUIL but only really effective if plugins doesn't support the LV2 External UI extension in addition which takes precedence on any case.
• Improved precision tolerance on the Tempo Map / Markers dialog.
• Reinstated and fixed (old) warning and impending re-conversion on loading session files which the original sample-rate differs from current audio device engine (aka. JACK).
• LV2 Plugin State/Preset name discrimination fix (after a ticket by Jiri Prochaszka aka. Anchakor, thanks:).
• Linked/ref-counted audio clips must not overlap and now must have a buffer-size worth of a gap between each other.
• Something fishy has been detected in the SSE (not so) optimized code from SoundTouch's-inspired WSOLA time-stretching.
• Splitting clips apart is now easier than ever: a brand new entry enters the main menu scene: Edit/Split (Ctrl+Y) splits up clips according to current range/rectangular selection.
• Audio clip offsets are now properly corrected when time-stretching is applied via Shift/Ctrl+dragging any of the clip edges.
• One semi-colon typo was hiding proper discrimination of peak files used to draw distinct waveforms of time-stretched audio clips.
• Track automation curves are now also affected by Edit/Insert/Range commands.
• Finally, some visual feedback is shown while audio track export is running, in he form of a main status progress bar.
• New user option: save backup versions of existing session files.
• Default session directory now set to regular file's path on load.
• A convenient minimum slack duration has been fixed for MIDI SysEx messages.
• LV2 Time/position information is now asynchronously fed back into their parameter (control input) ports when designated.
• LV2 State is now properly restored for plugins inserted on buses, probably solving the Calf Fluidsynth SoundFont information missing on buses ticket, reported by Albert Graef, thanks.
• Fixed an immediate null pointer crash on creating a parentless new group while on the files organizer widget.
• Preparations for future Qt5 migration.

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.

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