User Manual for Traverso 0.49.0
Contents
1. Trave rs O Digital Audio Workstation User Manual Version 0 49 0 English Traverso Version 0 49 0 Digital Audio Workstation User Manual 2009 by the Traverso team http www traverso daw org SOME RIGHTS RESERVED English This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 2 5 Netherlands License To view a copy of this license visit http creativecommons org licenses by nc 2 5 n1 or send a letter to Creative Commons 171 Second Street Suite 300 San Francisco California 94105 USA In short you are free e to Share to copy distribute and transmit the work e to Remix to adapt the work Under the following conditions e Attribution You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work e Noncommercial You may not use this work for commercial purposes e For any reuse or distribution you must make clear to others the licence terms of this work e Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copy right holder e Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author s moral rights Contents 1 Introduction bo de oa a a 12 Motivation 2 Installation 2 1 Binaries 2 2 Compiling from Source 3 Key Actions 4 1 The Driver Backend 4 1 1 Null Driver a ee 413 Jackl 4 2 Rec2. By using additional input devices allowing to control the DAW software with real faders and buttons combines the advantages of digital and analogue systems With its concept of soft selections Traverso follows a similar approach without the need for dedicated hardware In Traverso you move the mouse over the track you want to process and press a key on the keyboard e g U for mute or O for solo Most users hit the key without looking at the keyboard The track panel is a large area which is entirely sensitive for the key actions so even if several tracks should be switched the mouse cursor can be placed anywhere on the track requiring much less aiming So what is the difference between the digital and the Traverso way From our experi ence moving the mouse on the desk in order to move the cursor on the screen is like using a remote control The mouse is moved on the desk to move the cursor on the screen Whether or not the cursor is placed on a control element an only be determined visually Pressing buttons with our fingers one for mute one for solo etc is more er gonomic and intuitive Real buttons can be found without special attention and we can feel how much the fader was moved without looking at it In Traverso we tried to imple ment an interface concept which gives a feeling as direct as analogue buttons without 1 2 Motivation requiring additional hardware control devices So once we have identified the
3. Solo Mute and Rec buttons are holding G and moving the mouse will change the gain of the entire track Instead of moving the mouse try scrolling with the mouse wheel while holding G to change the gain in very small steps These actions as you can see in the History view are also un redoable You can also select an entry in the history view to jump directly to a certain state in the history 17 5 Quick Start lt 1 0 50 dB d Figure 5 1 The cursor changes to a gain symbol during the G action Up to now we used some simple and easily memorable actions but there are of course a lot more But how to know which functions are available for a track or audio clip Fortunately there are menus available You can either use the righ mouse button to popup the menu for the object beneath the mouse cursor or use lt O gt by now you Know that this means pressing the O key The menu shows the available functions and how to perform them on the keyboard fig 5 2 Moving the audio clip can be done by pressing the left mouse button and keeping it pressed or by doing the same with the D key According to our notation scheme that would be D Left MouseButton or LMB You can move the mouse freely to position the audio clip to your own liking the view will automatically scroll if the mouse comes close to the boundaries of the view Also check out the Z and S actions to zoom and move the horizontal slid
4. 0 008 Pan 31 Capture 1 E MasterOut Resources Bin ox Sources v Sheetl v Name Length Start fe 2 Unnamed mute solo rec GAIN 0 0 05 Pan CE 0 0 41 Capture 1 E gt MasterOut lt E 3 di ALSA 44100 32 23 22 ms W 100 CPU 2 66 Correlation Meter FFT Spectrum 2 L Playback 1 Ol Mandriva 90 30 5080 200 400700 200040008000 20000 Figure 4 2 The dock windows can also be detached from the main window and moved to the second screen in a multi screen setup 4 1 3 Jack Traverso can also connect to the jack soundserver which provides advanced routing features and zero latency connections between clients If you don t want to use these features and ALSA works for you there s no advantage in using jack We recommend to use gjackctl which allows to easily setup jack for your system Start the jack daemon by pressing Start in gjackctl When it is running set the driver in Traverso s configuration dialog fig to jack and press OK The menu bar should display jack if the driver was loaded correctly Now go back to gjackctl and open the Connect dialog Important You must set up the connection manually otherwise you won t hear any sound Select the Traverso entry in the left part Readable Clients and alsa_pcm in the right part Writable Clients then press connect If a line connecting the two clients is drawn the sound system is set up correctly
5. place the work cursor before the newly recorded clips and press lt SPACE gt to start playback Once you have finished recording a track don t forget to unarm it by pressing lt A gt or unarm all armed tracks at once by hitting ZA 21 7 Mixing As most modern DAW applications Traverso uses a hirarchical routing setup fig sending the audio signal from Audio Clips to Tracks from Tracks to the Master Bus and further to the audio driver of the operating system This setup not only groups things that belong together which makes it intuitive to understand It also allows to apply effects where they are most effective in terms of user interaction and system load 7 1 Working with Audio Clips Audio Clips are the lowest level in the routing hirarchy They represent audio files read from the hard disk Audio clips always live in a track Their primary purpose is to determine what is played and where it is played A new clip is created by importing an audio file lt I gt An empty clip can be created by pressing lt I O gt insert silence but it is not possible to load data into that clip once it has been created To remove a clip press R gt Clips can be moved freely by holding D and moving the mouse If a lock symbol is drawn in the middle of the clip it is locked against accidental moving Use lt L gt to lock unlock audio clips If snapping is active lt S N gt both ends of the dragged clip will snap to the beginning of the
6. channel we want to process by hovering the mouse cursor over it we want a real world button for as many functions as possible And since our left hand could as well be ready on the keyboard instead of picking our nose we have all the 104 buttons of our keyboard at our disposal which can give direct access to a large number of actions This concept is closely related to the handling of action games e g first person shooters which are highly optimized for efficient and intuitive access to various actions moving running shooting ducking and a large number of tools To summarize the advantages of soft selections are e the distances on the keyboard are shorter than on the screen e the hit to miss ratio for key strokes is much better than for buttons on the screen e using both hands allows to work faster and relieves the mouse hand resulting in a less fatiguing working style e the remote control feeling is reduced e more actions can be reached directly requiring less and shallower menu structures e the keys can be found blindly leading to less distraction from the work flow The downside is a steeper learning curve particularly at the very beginning since the keys are not labeled with the function name Solo Mute Rec etc But you will soon internalise the commands just as you did with Ctrl C for copy and Ctrl V for paste 2 Installation The most convenient way to install Trav
7. sheet edges of other clips markers and to the work cursor If more than one clip should be moved at once use one of the following functions Selection Multiple clips can be selected by pressing lt S gt Moving actions D applied to a member of the selection apply to all clips in the selection Use lt A S gt to select one clip and de select all other ones and use lt S gt to select all clips in the sheet or to clear the selection Use lt S D gt to remove one clip from a selection Fold track Using the Fold Track action on a track CTRL D F moves all clips at and after the current position of the cursor This function can be used if the relative position of the clips should not be changed e g if a gap should be created in a track and all clips after the gap have to be moved Fold sheet Similar to Fold Track the Fold Sheet action D F moves all audio clips of the entire sheet at and after the current position of the cursor regardless of which track they live in This function can be used to keep the audio clips synchronised across the tracks when moving clips 22 7 1 Working with Audio Clips Hardware Tracks Audio Clips Figure 7 1 In a standard routing setup the signal is read by the Audio Clips from a file on the hard disk sent to the track and further to the master bus Each level applies its processing gain effects before sending the signal to the next level All these actions discusse
8. to interpret Traversos correlation meter some more theory is required The amount of correlation is represented in the linear correlation coefficient r which is calculated over an array of pairs of samples x y Eli Ep en 2 Eli 9 T r ranges from 1 0 to 1 0 A value of r 1 0 means the left and right signal are perfectly correlated The master signal would be mono in that case since there is no phase differ ence between the left and the right signal The more difference there is between the two 32 9 1 Correlation Meter AWN TWN EAU ANI DIN NININA MINN WM NA Figure 9 1 When summing up two sine waves interference can either lead to amplifica tion in phase left remain more or less unchanged uncorrelated middle or lead to extinction out of phase right channels the lower the correlation coefficient becomes In case of totally uncorrelated data which could read as no phase similarity whatsoever between the left and right channel r becomes 0 0 Such a signal produces a wide stereo image with a low risk of phase cancellations when summed to mono The difference between the signals can be further increased by one channel becoming the inverse of the other In that case r becomes 1 0 Negative r values indicate high risk for phase cancellations The correlation meter of Traverso menu Views Correlation meter uses an intuitive way to display the correlation coeffi
9. 4 1 4 Port Audio Ey Port audio is the recommended driver backend on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows 15 4 Setup mmm Ta Driver Selection oo Behavior Driver ALSA v Configure driver Appearance Duplex mode Full v Sample rate 44100 v amp Buffer latency ms 23 22 v Audio Options ALSA Device Keyboard Device Card 1 Intel v A Nr of periods v Performance Dither None v Restart Driver Figure 4 3 The audio driver backend can be selected from the menu bar Traverso sup ports ALSA jack and PortAudio and has a Null Driver as fallback solution if no working driver is available It connects to the system s native sound system CoreAudio on OS X WMME on Win dows Simply select PortAudio in the driver configuration widget the samplerate you wish to use and a latency that works for you 4 2 Recording file format From the menu Settings Recording file format you can set the file format used for recorded audio Wave has been the standard audio format in the computer world for years It is uncompressed and Traverso stores all audio data in 32 bit floating point precision no matter what bit depth the driver backend was set to Wave files however are limited to a size of 4 GB For a mono recording in 44100 Hz and 32 bit resolution this results in a maximum recording time of approximately 6 hours and 45 minutes With a stereo recording the 4 GB limit is reached after 3 hour 23 minutes While this is l
10. ager Note that Traverso depends on the Qt library version 4 3 1 or newer 2 2 Compiling from Source If you have never compiled software based on the Qt toolkit before you must install a C and Qt development environment first Some distributions provide so called meta packages which install all packages required for a certain task E g setting the package manager of Mandriva 2009 0 to Meta Packages and installing the package task kde4 devel from the category Development KDE and Qt development sets up a development environment with minimum effort If your distibution does not offer a Ot development meta package you should install at least the following individual packages and all required dependencies e gcc e g e make e cmake e libgt4 core libqt4 gui libqt4 dev Then you should install various various libraries and development packages required by Traverso libsndfile1 libsndfilel dev libsamplerate0 libsamplerate0 dev libasound2 libasound2 dev fftw3 fftw3 dev librdf0 libredlandO librdf0 dev libredland dev libwavpack1 libwavpack dev libjack0 100 0 0 libjack0 100 0 dev jackd gjackctlX liblame0X liblame dev libogg0 libogg dev libvorbis0a libvobis dev libflac dev libflac 6 libmad0 dev libmad0X The packages marked with are optional but they will add support for compressed file formats such as Ogg Vorbis MP3 or FLAC Thus if they are avalable on your platf
11. cient Instead of focusing on the numerical value it shows it s meaning in terms of stereo width fig 9 2 A gradient spreading between the left and the right speaker marked by the L and R lines indicates totally uncorrelated signals r 0 0 and thus a very wide stereo image As long as the gradient does not extend beyond the L and R lines there is no negative correlation and hence a low risk for phase cancellations However if it does extend beyond the lines phase cancellations are likely to occur if the signal is summed to mono and the stereo image sounds unnaturally wide This should be avoided by all means A mono signal on the other hand causes the gradient to collapse to a line in the center The correlation meter can also be used to balance the master output If the levels of the left and right channel are well balanced the gradient center line should wobble around the center indicator Since the gradient usually occupies the area between the L and R lines the space outside of the lines is wasted most of the time Thus the scale of the correlation meter can be changed by pressing lt M gt 33 9 Tools Correlation Meter Ex c a Stereo r 0 0 Correlation Meter Ex L c R b Mono r 1 0 Correlation Meter Ex L c R c Phase cancellation r 1 0 Figure 9 2 The correlation meter in Traverso shows the correlation coefficient of the master output signal as a gradi
12. cks Tracks receive the audio signal from their child clips A new track can be added by pressing lt T gt gt To remove an existing track press lt R gt All audio clips living in the removed track will also be removed While clips represent audio files or takes tracks represent entire channels or instru ments It is thus recommended to apply instrument wide effects such as gain panorama 25 Wi A i il a W un ve Figure 7 4 The effects mode of Traverso can be activated from the dropdown menu in the menu bar Gain curves are only visible in that mode Nodes can be added removed and dragged freely or effect plugins to the track and only adjust individual clips if they really only apply to the clip This keeps the project tidy and reduces system load Besides gain panorama and plugin effects tracks can be muted lt U gt or solo ed lt O gt during the mixing process Use the respective double actions lt gt to toggle mute and solo of all tracks 7 3 Plugins Traverso supports the LV2 plugin interface which is the successor of the LADSPA stan dard Plugins can be added to tracks by pressing lt F5 gt which opens a list of all LV2 plu gins installed on the system fig 7 5 Active plugins will be shown as semi transparent fields in the track view These fields have their own context menu just try it out by holding the mouse on them and pressing
13. d above are used to place the audio clip i e where it is played To determine what is played or which section of the clip the trim and split actions can be used Move the mouse cursor on a clip hold E and move the mouse horizontally to drag the edge of the clip which is nearest to the mouse position If snapping is active the edge will snap to the positions described above Clips can be split by pointing the mouse cursor to the desired position and pressing lt X gt Of course the edges of the two clip fragments can be fine tuned by holding E as describes above In addition to the position of the clip edge both ends can be shaped by using fades and gain curves 7 1 1 Fades Both ends of a clip can be faded smoothly by holding F on the left or right half of the clip and moving the mouse horizontally On the left half the key action refers to the fade in on the right half it refers to the fade out Several fade shapes are available which can be toggled pressing lt M gt on the fade curve fig 72 All shapes are based on a cubic spline curve with four knots Two knots define the bending of the non linear shapes The positions of these control knots can be modified by two values bending and strength Bending defines the direction of the tangent in the end point whereas strength changes the weight of the tangent fig 7 3 It is not possible to move the control knots freely and independently instead Traverso kn
14. draws a gradient representing the stereo field In order to explain what correlation is and why it is important we assume that a pure sine wave is played back on both the left and the right master channel When both sig nals are merged which happens if the signals are played back in mono the resulting signal is the sum of the left and the right channel Depending on the phase difference between the source signals interference effects occur That is if two positive amplitudes are summed the absolute value is greater whereas if a positive and a negative ampli tude are summed the absolute value becomes smaller In some cases this can lead to complete extinction leaving nothing but a silent signal fig 9 1 If the two audio signals contain more complex data e g music or spoken word such extinction effects also known as phase cancellations do not cancel out the entire signal but merely certain frequencies leading to a hollow or otherwise strange sound Need less to say that such effects are rather devastating for a high quality audio production Although it is indisputable that we should use our ears and listen to the mono signal in order to detect phase problems computer based audio workstations allow to provide visual feedback of the audio data in many ways which is one of the reasons for many users to prefer digital audio workstations There are several ways to visually represent the correlation but in order to understand how
15. e clips arranged within enough for a soft fade out effect Long The long mode only allows to change the control knot at the low level end of the fade This mode is often used for very smooth fade outs e g at the end of a sheet The high level end changes fastly but the low level tail is very soft The long mode often sounds more musical than a similar bended mode 24 7 2 Working with Tracks Bending Bending Strength Strength Figure 7 3 Bending and strength values can be used to alter the shape of the fade curves Demonstrated with the Long mode The fades can be edited numerically by pressing lt E gt on a clip and changing to the page Fades in the clip settings dialog 7 1 2 Gain curve Gain curves are a powerful feature to change the gain of an audio clip in the time line The curves are child elements of audio clips therefore their relative position to the audio clip will always stays the same To change to effects mode select the entry Mode Effects from the dropdown menu in the menu bar fig 17 4 To change back to edit mode Mode Edit A default curve node is added automatically at the beginning of the clip at 0 dB Additional nodes can be created by lt C gt at the position of the mouse cursor Nodes can also be dragged D and removed lt R gt These actions always apply to the node closest to the mouse cursor which is indicated by a different colour 7 2 Working with Tra
16. e thus recommended values for 34 9 2 FFT spectrum analyzer FFT Spectrum ex o 40 50 60 nm 80 E 30 40 50 6070 50 200 300 400500 700 900 2000 3000 4000 6000 8000 2000 Figure 9 3 The FFT spectrum analyzer decomposes the master output signal into its frequencies the lower and upper frequency limit The upper limit for dB values on the y axis is usually in the range from 6 to 6 dB the lower limit between 60 and 120 dB The number of bands can be chosen freely but high numbers gt 128 cause significantly higher CPU load The feature show average spectrum activates a curve which calculates the average frequency spectrum by accumulating the values as long as Traverso is playing back The curve is reset if playback is restarted or by the key action lt L gt The average curve can also be toggled by the key action lt M gt and as soon as there is average data available the curve can be exported either as raw numbers or in grace format which can be opened with the program XmGrace key action lt Return gt Parameters related to the FFT calculation can be configured in the section Advanced Options The FFT size determines the lower end of the spectrum larger FFTs extend to lower frequencies but cause more CPU load The lowest frequency captured by the FFT is calculated as Samplerate fmin FFT size The lowest frequency of an FFT of 1024 samples from an audio signal sampled a
17. ent between two lines representing the left and the right channel If the gradient spreads from L to R the data is uncorrelated correla tion coefficient r 0 0 and the signal has a wide stereo width top If the gradient is collapsed to a line the data is perfectly correlated r 1 0 which means the signal is mono middle If the gradient spreads beyond the L and R lines the correlation becomes negative which means there s a high risk of audible phase cancellations if the output is switched to mono bottom 9 2 FFT spectrum analyzer A spectrum analyzer using the fast fourier transformation FFT to calculate the spectral power distribution of an audio signal is standard equipment in digital audio worksta tions The FFT spectrum analyzer in Traverso can be opened from the menu Views FFT Spectrum It is a dock window which can either be docked into the main window or moved freely by dragging with the mouse The FFT spectrum analyzer monitors the stereo output channel and decomposes the sig nal into frequency bands Each band shows the highest value dBi dB jgnt in its range fig 9 3 A configuration dialog can be called with lt E gt or from the menu opened with lt Q gt or a right mouse button click The configuration dialog shown in figure allows to define the dB and frequency range to be displayed The audible spectrum ranges from 20 to approximately 18000 Hz whereas CDs range from 20 to 22050 Hz These ar
18. er By now we learned two kinds of actions the single key actions lt K gt and the hold actions K We also learned that key actions always work on the object beneath the mouse cursor But before you start exploring the possibilities of Traverso on your own let s look at some more randomly selected functions If you want to reset the gain of an audio clip or track to 0 dB point the mouse cursor to a clip and press the G key twice This works just like double clicking with the mouse In our notation scheme a double key stroke is notated as G You will see that this action first resets the gain to 0 dB and if called again toggles the gain between 6 and 0 dB This also works on the track gain 18 Project Edit View Sheet Settings Help 9m Om i Han O O O O O O EEE Sheet Unbenannt GAIN HO 0005 00 00 00 00 07 40 00 14 81 00 22 22 00 29 63 00 37 03 LERI IS ASAS AAA AEREA EE pp SI Ep ST I UI qu AAN A 1 Unnamed y acoustic full mix mp3 Gain 0 0 dB 44100 mute ff solo jj rec GAIN i 0 0 dB PAN CE 00 31 Capture 1 E MasterOut AudioClip Move Clip MouseButtonLeft DV D lt lt HOME gt gt Gain G Move Clip lt lt END gt gt Drag Edge E Copy Clip CTRL MouseButtonLeft C 2 Unnamed Edit Properties lt E gt mute solo rec GAIN ME 0 0 5 uo e PAN gt 00 Split lt X gt X 31 Capture 1 MasterOut Normalize lt N gt External Proces
19. erso is to use one of the available installers For stable versions of Traverso binary packages are available for several popular Linux dis tributions However in the fast living open source world things can change rapidly It is thus recommended to refer to the Traverso homepage 1 to find up to date information on binary packages If no binary packages are available Traverso can be compiled from the source code The dependencies are part of most linux distributions which makes the compilation relatively simple Traverso successfully builds and runs on i386 ia64 and ppc platforms 2 1 Binaries The precompiled binaries are available from the following locations Mandriva Traverso is part of the official distribution K X Ubuntu Traverso is part of the official distribution Debian Traverso is part of the official distribution Gentoo Traverso is part of the official distribution New versions of Traverso appear in the Pro Audio overlay first You ll find more info at 3 OpenSuse Packages are available from 4 Windows A binary installer is available from the Traverso homepage 1 Apple OS X Disk images for i386 and PPC platforms are available from the Traverso homepage 1 2 2 Compiling from Source This section describes how to compile Traverso from source on Linux The package names may vary from distribution to distribution but you should be able to identify the correct package with your distribution s package man
20. essing the spacebar The VUMeters will show the level of the output signal If the VUMeters are not visible show them from the menu Views VUMeters Muting the audio clip is done by pressing the U key while the mouse points to the audio clip To unmute the clip press U again To make life easier throughout this manual we use this notation for pressing the U key lt U gt So whenever you see a letter enclosed in these brackets it means press that key once If you point the cursor to the track background and press lt U gt the entire track is muted and finally the mute button lights up OK what about splitting our clip into half Point the mouse to where you want your clip split and press X the shorthand notation then will be lt X gt All of a sudden we have two clips Use the undo button in the menu bar to undo the latest action The clip will return to its previous state Changing the gain of a track or audio clip is done as follows Point your mouse to the audio clip and press and hold the G key The cursor will change to a gain symbol fig 5 1 Now move the mouse up down and see the gain value change To make live easier again the shorthand notation for keys that are pressed and held is G When releasing the G key the cursor returns to it s normal state and the new gain value will be used If you point the cursor to the background of the track e g between two clips or to the track panel on the left where the
21. evel nongnu org 38 11 Troubleshooting e Playback is not smooth and I get lots of xruns If you are using an Intel onboard sound chip you may have to set the Number of Periods to 3 instead of 2 This can be done in the Audio Driver page of the Preferences dialogue or in your jackd configuration e g qjackctl e Ican t hear anything If playback seems to be working VUMeters indicate a signal but you hear no sound check if the Null Driver is loaded If yes load a different driver e g ALSA on Linux or PortAudio on OS X or Windows and try again If you are using the jackd driver make sure the output of Traverso is connected to a hardware output This is described in chapter 4 e I can t load the driver One problem could be that the buffer size specified in the driver settings is too large for your sound card Try reducing the latency a bit It can also happen that the sound system is blocked by another application or demon If you are using KDE make sure aRTs terminates automatically after a few seconds and try to shut down any other application blocking the sound card e My mouse stops moving when I press a key In order to avoid accidental input some laptops disable the trackpad during key presses This of course spoils the concept of soft selections completely but fortu nately it can be turned off in most cases If you are using Linux the mouseemu demon handles the feature You can either turn off mouseemu by
22. feature is particularly handy for actions such as sample rate conversion DC offset removal phase inversion etc On Linux the program sox must be installed which is part of all major distribu tions and can be found in the software repositories On Windows and Mac OS X the installer takes care of all dependencies A clip editor can be opened by pressing lt E gt on the clip you want to process fig p 5 By pressing the button External Processing in that dialog the actual processing dialog will be opened fig 9 5 right Leave the program set to sox and select an effect from the Arguments box Always leave the name of the argument in the box and append your own arguments Traverso will use this first entry to label the converted file Con fused Ok let s look at an example Suppose we want to invert the phase of the file myfile wav Import it into Traverso press lt E gt on the clip and press the button Exter nal Processing in the editor dialog Leave the program name at sox and select the 36 9 3 External processing Program SOx Arguments earwax v Progress 096 Program output Figure 9 5 By pressing lt E gt on an audio clip a dialog opens left Pressing the but ton External Processing opens another dialog right which allows to apply various offline effects effect vol from the box The first argument will be set to vol automatically Accord ing to the sox ma
23. fter an initial learning phase because something that breaks with existing standards requires time and effort to adopt and it takes even more time to overcome long trained habits But let s have a look at the different working styles with a trivial example Suppose we want to do something as simple as switching Solo or Mute of a track on and off The analogue way In an analogue recording studio with a mixing desk you have lots of channels and each channel has lots of buttons faders knobs etc To toggle Solo or Mute you identify the channel strip on the mixing desk and press the corresponding button If you want to do the same with several channels you can quickly press many buttons in a row The fact that there is a dedicated button for each and every function which is not always trivial to find depending on the size of the desk makes it easy to switch the button but results in mixing desks being huge and complicated electronic devices The Digital Way On a conventional digital audio workstation DAW you identify your channel and press the corresponding solo or mute button with the mouse Depending on the user s skills and the size of the button and screen this can already be a minor challenge Switching several channels in a row however is very slow and inefficient because hitting the button requires careful positioning of the mouse cursor each time The Traverso Way Soft Selection
24. ibutions it is thus recommended to install it via the distribution s package manager The Windows and Mac OS X installer takes care of installing cdrdao for you so if you are on one of these platforms you skip this section tux linux 7 S cdrdao Cdrdao version 1 2 2 C Andreas Mueller lt andreas daneb de gt SCSI interface library C Joerg Schilling Paranoia DAE library C Monty Check http cdrdao sourceforge net drives html dt for current driver tables Usage cdrdao lt command gt options toc file command Installing cdrdao on Linux is straight forward since it is part of all major distributions Use your distribution s package manager search for cdrdao and install the binary pack age 8 2 Tracks and Markers There are basically two ways of defining tracks for a CD Each sheet can be a track or the entire CD can be arranged in the timeline of a sheet and tracks are defined by markers Combinations of the two ways are also possible Let s have a closer look at these two concepts 28 8 2 Tracks and Markers 1 Track 1 Yr WEnc 00 00 00 01 00 00 02 00 00 an 03 00 00 04 00 00 05 00 00 206 00 00 07 00 00 08 00 00 09 00 00 10 17 Run mp3 Gain 0 0 dB 44100 06 AFine tLovermp3 Gain 0 0 dB 44100 Hz Figure 8 1 If a CD is arranged in one sheet markers can be used to define CD tracks Always keep the ones at position 00 00 00 and at the end 8 2 1 A Sheetis a CD Track A
25. lt Q gt or lt Right Mouse Button gt Pressing lt E gt will open a generic dialog which allows to adjust the plugin parameters Plugins can also be bypassed lt B gt and removed lt R gt Version 0 40 x inserts all plugins post fader More flexible solutions will follow in upcoming versions 26 7 3 Plugins Plugin Selector Track 1 Unnamed CIS CA CTA o 4 pole allpass _ iAllpass Simple amplifier Amplifier Frequency tracker Analyser Glame Bandpass Filter Bandpass Glame Bandpass Analog Filter Bandpass Multivoice Chorus Chorus Comb Filter Comb gt SE4 Compressor SC4 Compressor SC Compressor Dyson compressor Compressor Matrix Stereo to MS Converter Matrix MS to Stereo Converter Reverse Delay Ss max Delay L C R Delay Delay Fractionally Addressed Delay Line Delay Delayorama Delay Simple delay line noninterpolating Delay Simple delay line linear interpola Delay Figure 7 5 Plugins can be added to a track by pressing lt F5 gt Mono Mono Mono Mono Mono Mono Mono Stereo Stereo Mono Mono Stereo Stereo Mono Stereo Mono Mono Mono Mono 27 8 Laying out a CD 8 1 Requirements This chapter describes how to arrange and write a Red Book compatible audio CD Traverso uses cdrdao to actually write the CD so this program must be installed on the system cdrdao is available from the official repositories of all major and up to date Linux distr
26. mouse and keyboard are used to control the program This results in a higher flexibility and much faster control of the program when compared to the traditional mouse based approach It even goes far beyond the possibilities offered by conventional key shortcuts The mouse only has to be placed on an object and all functions become available instantly by pressing a key on the keyboard Since the object under the mouse cursor is automatically selected this concept is called soft selection 1 1 License Traverso is free software you can redistribute it and or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation either version 2 of the License or at your option any later version This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful but WITHOUT ANY WAR RANTY without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE See the GNU General Public License for more details You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program if not write to the Free Software Foundation Inc 51 Franklin Street Fifth Floor Boston MA 02110 1301 USA 1 2 Motivation One of the motivations to introduce the concept of soft selection was our belief in the superiority over the traditional point and click concept in regard to efficiency speed 1 Introduction and ergonomics The full potential of soft selections develops a
27. n shows how the different categories of key actions are notated and how they are performed Single Key Action lt K gt Press and Release This reads as Press and Release a Key just like typing in a letter K is the key to be used Note Even though capital letters are used to write down these actions you should just press the K key and never use shift or caps lock unless it is explicitly mentioned For exam ple lt F gt means press and release the F key Single Key Action K Press and Hold This reads as Press and Hold the Key In a text editor you would get lots of kkkkkkkkkkk Again K is the letter associ ated with this action For example D means press and hold the D key Hold keys in itself don t do anything However if a hold key is active and you move the mouse an analogue action can be performed like moving an audio clip Single Key Action K gt Press and Release Twice It reads as Press and Release the key twice Like typing in one letter twice rather fast like a double click For example lt G gt means press and release the G key twice Double Key Action lt K K gt Press and Release This reads as Press and Release 2 keys at once One of the more difficult actions For example lt FG gt means press and release both the F and G key at the same time 11 3 Key Actions Double Ke
28. nnah nongnu org bugs group traverso o http sox sourceforge net 10 http www traverso daw org forum index php 41
29. nual setting the volume to 1 0 inverts the phase so enter 1 0 after vol without the guotes Then press Start and wait until the process has finished Traverso will automatically replace the clip with the converted version which has the file name myfile vol 1 0 wav This file will be placed in the audiosources directory inside your project directory no matter where the original file was located The origi nal file will thus never be overwritten More information about the sox effects can be found in the man page which can be opened by entering man sox in the address bar of konqueror or man sox into a terminal 37 10 Getting Help There are several internet resources which can provide help if you struggle with Traverso The best place to ask questions get into contact with other users and the developers or give feedback is the user forum on the Traverso homepage 10 All users or people interested in our project are invited and encouraged to subscribe to the forum and help building up a community The more feedback there is from the users the better the developers can improve the usability and feature set 10 1 Getting involved The Traverso team highly appreciates any kind of contribution If you are C coder artist musician translator or bug hunter who wants to help making Traverso the best multitrack application ever please offer your help on the developer mailing list traverso d
30. o the audio clip 3 Time line Key actions apply to markers in the time line 4 Dock window Dock widget 5 Fade out 6 Work cursor 7 Play head 8 Sheet area 9 Transport console 10 Command history 4 1 2 ALSA 5 If ALSA is selected Traverso communicates directly with the ALSA layer which is only possible if no other application occupies the sound system So before selecting ALSA as your driver make sure to stop playback of all other sound applications Also check the KDE Gnome system tray for minimized instances of amarok XMMS etc Back in Traverso s driver configuration dialog set the driver to ALSA the rate to 44100 and leave the latency at the default value Then press OK and check if the entry in the menu bar switches to ALSA If it refuses to load the new driver your sound card may still be occupied by another application so check again if you correctly stopped all multimedia applications and make sure that the sound daemon e g aRTs shuts down automati cally when not used Then try again to set the driver to ALSA If it was accepted as a valid driver the sound driver is set up correctly 14 4 1 The Driver Backend History Project Edit View Sheet Settings Help lt empty gt fe Wir Remove Cli O th ld B LG Ey A q pls kJ E O O O o METE Fade Out EFA Sheet Unbenannt GAIN i 005 00 00 00 00 07 40 00 14 81 00 22 22 00 29 63 00 37 03 a 1 Unnamed acoustic full mix mp3 G in 0 0 dB 44100 GAIN i
31. of copies 1 S Sample Rate 44 100 Hz w Conversion quality High v Simulate Speed auto v Status Export status Information 096 096 Start Writing Close Start Export Close Figure 8 3 lt F8 gt opens a dialogue that allows to burn the current sheet or the entire project on a CD left lt F9 gt opens an export dialogue which writes the current sheet or the entire project to the hard disk right compiled without support for it Some distributors prefer not to include support for certain compressed formats due to legal reasons In that case you either have to live with it or you have to compile Traverso yourself with support for the reguired codec Note for OS X users CD writing support is still experimental You can choose between several burning devices IODVDServices IODVDServices 2 IOCompactDiscServices IOCompactDiscServices 2 These are hard coded so you probably don t have all of them installed IOCompactDiscServices should only be used for old drives without DVD reading support If you have multiple DVD drives use IODVDServices or IOD VDServices 2 to access the first and the second drive In most cases IODVDServices will be the only working solution 31 9 Tools 9 1 Correlation Meter The correlation meter monitors the stereo output of Traverso and displays the correla tion coefficient of the left and the right channel signal Unlike many other correlation meters it interprets the coefficient as a measure for stereo width and
32. ong enough in most cases it becomes a serious limitation when recording with higher sampling rates In case of a stereo 192 kHz 32 bit recording the recording time is limited to 46 minutes The 4 GB limit can be avoided by using the Wave 64 format instead which is a true 64 bit file format that can write files much larger than 4 GB The third format WavPack uses a lossless compression algorithm to shrink your files without affecting the guality of the audio data However since the encoding is done in real time more CPU power is reguired while recording If you are short of disk space but have a decent CPU this format is a good choice 16 5 Quick Start The default project automatically created by Traverso contains six empty tracks and is called Untitled So how should we get started Let s just start Traverso and import a file to work on You will need an audio file or better a couple of them in a format supported by Traverso You can import them from any location on your hard disk or place them in your Traverso project directory and further in Untitled audiosources to keep you directories tidy Back in Traverso press the I key on an empty track navigate to the au dio files in the file dialog and select one of them It will be placed in the track and after a couple of seconds the wave form will be drawn it takes a few seconds to calculate the wave form the first time We start listening to our imported audio file by pr
33. ording file format 6 7 8 Recording 6 1 Creating a new project 6 2 Setting up the driver 6 3 Recording Mixing 7 1 Working with Audio Clips tras be ee he A AF ACH O 711 Fades 712 Gaincurvel 7 2 Working with Tracks Laying out a CD 8 1 Requirements 8 2 Tracks and Markers 8 2 1 A Sheet isaCD Track 822 CD in a timeline 11 13 13 13 14 15 15 16 17 20 20 20 20 22 22 23 25 25 26 Contents 9 1 Correlation Meter 9 2 FFT spectrum analyzer 4404 424 RR GR EY Ro DY UR ee HR 9 3 External processingj se hats GAU DAD EG ee EG Hee RAT 10 Getting Help 10 1 Getting involved 11 Troubleshooting 32 32 34 36 38 38 39 1 Introduction Traverso is a multitrack audio recording and editing program for GNU Linux with spe cial emphasis on an intuitive clean and above all efficient user interface The program currently supports recording of any number of audio tracks only limited by hardware capabilities basic mixing features writing to CD and rendering of the project into var ious standard audio file formats The audio engine uses 32 bit floating point precision for all calculations to preserve the highest possible audio quality even after extensive processing The user interface uses a contextual interaction concept instead of relying on the mouse to operate on graphical objects combinations of
34. orm it is recommended to install them as well In case you have version 3 of the Qt development packages installed you must make sure that the tools of version 4 are used If you don t know how to achieve that please 2 Installation ask for help in a distribution specific forum as there is no distribution independent solution Now your system is ready to compile Traverso from source Download the source code archive of the latest stable release of Traverso from 1 and store it in your home direc tory Extract and compile it with the following commands tar zxvf traverso x x x tar gz cd traverso x x x cmake Ur Ur Ur Ur make j 2 This will take some time and if you followed the instructions above carefully it should run through without errors When the make process has finished and you get back to the command line prompt start Traverso by typing bin traverso If this doesn t work and the compilation fails check again if you followed the instructions above correctly If you can t find a solution refer to chapter 10 for further information on where to ask for help or ask in your distribution s user forum 10 3 Key Actions If the mouse points to a graphical object some key command has to be performed for example to mute an audio clip or modify the gain of a track A key command is a single key press a combination of key presses or a key hold action in combination with a mouse movement The following descriptio
35. ows several modes which are relevant for fade shapes fig 7 2 Linear Linear fades are a straight line between the start and end point The control knots can t be changed Linear fades tend to sound rather abrupt at the low level end of the fade and are thus not the preferred mode for long fade outs e g at the end of a sheet 23 7 Mixing o Linear Bended S Shaped Long Figure 7 2 Different fade shapes are available in Traverso Fade curves are defined as splines with two control points circles which can be modified by the values bend ing and strength S shaped The S shaped mode starts with a horizontal tangent is steep a the center and passes into a horizontal tangent again The beginning and end are very smooth but the center part can sometimes change too quickly in short S fades The strength parameter can be used to soften the center part and make the volume change less obvious The bending factor should usually remain between linear and horizontal tangents however vertical tangents can be used for effects Bended The bended mode acts similar to the S shaped mode but the control knots point to the same side This mode can be used to achieve a very fast volume drop at the beginning of the fade out and very soft towards the end Both control parameters are useful to find the best balance between a beginning that is not too fast and an ending that is still slow audio signal from th
36. re 8 2 The marker dialogue opened from Sheet Marker Editor allows to add CD text modify the markers and export the table of contents as an HTML file Once the CD is laid out to your satisfaction press lt F8 gt or go to Project CD writ ing to open the CD writing dialogue fig 8 3 Now you must decide if you want to burn the current sheet using markers to define CD tracks or the entire project each sheet becomes a track If you check Export to disk only no CD will be written but only a toc file and wav files for cdrdao In order to export the sheet or project to the hard disk press lt F9 gt or select Project Export from the menu This opens another dialogue fig 8 3 where you can select a file format and adjust various parameters Traverso supports most of the common and popular file formats including Wave AIFF FLAC WavPack Ogg Vorbis and MP3 If one or more file formats are not available on your system Traverso was probably 30 8 2 Tracks and Markers General Options e Export current Sheet Export all Sheets a i E Export directory c multimedia traverso projekte test Export AS General Options e Write current Sheet Write all Sheets Format Options Calculate and apply normalization Encoding Export wav and toc files only don t write CD File Type WAV 5 Me Channels Stereo w Bitdepth 16 v Burning Device HL DT ST GWA4080MA dev scd0 vw 5h Sampa Ria Number
37. re at position 00 00 00 and at the end of clip 2 The latter one is labelled End and it marks the end of the CD You can shift it a bit further back if you don t want the CD to stop right there remember you can have reverb tails extending beyond the last audio sample which you don t want to cut off 29 8 Laying out a CD These triangles are CD track markers and they can be moved added and deleted freely press lt Q gt on the timeline to list all available functions However it is also possible to create setups which don t make sense E g only having one track marker in the timeline In such cases Traverso tries to guess the most sensible solution and adds markers on the fly at positions it considers appropriate which is usually at position 00 00 00 and after the last sample of the sheet containing audio data Traverso also supports CD text which can be entered in the marker dialogue Sheet Marker Editor fig 8 2 It is also possible to export the table of contents of the CD as an HTML file from this dialog Album wide CD text can be entered in the project settings opened from Project Manage Project in the tab CD Text Position Title 00 00 00 00 Track 1 00 00 13 01 Track 2 00 00 30 00 End Options Position MM SS 75ths 00 00 13 01 ISRC Copy protection Pre Emphasis CD Text CD Text optional Title Track 2 Performer Composer Remove Export Ok Cancel Wy Figu
38. running the command sudo etc init d mouseemu stop and check if the problem is solved or you can edit the configuration file etc defaults mouseemu and change the value 300 in the line TYPING BLOCK typing block 300 to 0 If there is a comment sign at the beginning of the line remove it Then restart mouseemu by typing sudo etc init d mouseemu restart If you are using OS X disable the feature ignore accidental trackpad input in the system settings 39 11 Troubleshooting 40 e Traverso can t set the audio thread to real time priority Some Linux distributions don t allow to set the priority of the audio thread to real time However a too low priority can lead to xruns and dropouts dur ing recording and playback To avoid this add the following lines to the file etc security limits conf or if the lines are already there change the numbers accordingly audio rtprio 90 audio nice 10 audio memlock 3000000 Then restart your computer Bibliography ao pa d d CC RR CR O http Www traverso daw org 2 deb http Www traverso daw org binary i386 Y http proaudio tuxfamily org wiki T http packman links2linux org package traverso q http www apple com downloads macosx unix open source macports html 6 http lists gnu org archive html traverso devel N http savannah nongnu org support group traverso Oo http sava
39. s you may have noticed Traverso allows to have several sheets in a project Some people like this feature as one can combine all sheets of an album in one project and still focus on one sheet at a time If you want to write a CD containing all sheets of your project make sure you check the All sheets button in the export dialogue Each sheet will be rendered to a track from position 00 00 00 up to the end of the last audio clip and consequently each sheet will become a track on the CD 8 2 2 CD in a timeline Sometimes it is important to fine tune the transition from one track to the next e g by adding a little bit of silence in between or by fading the previous track into the next one In that case it can be easier to arrange the entire CD in one timeline and split it into tracks using markers Let s look at an example in order to show how this works Look at figure 8 1 if you get lost with the explanations Open or create a project with only two audio clips Suppose we want clip 1 to be track 1 on the CD and clip 2 will be track 2 Position them on the first and maybe second track starting at position 00 00 00 as you want to hear them on the CD Leave some silence between the end of clip 1 and the beginning of clip 2 To get Traverso to start a new CD track there position the mouse cursor on the gap between the two clips and press lt M gt This adds a small triangle to the timeline at the position of the mouse cursor and two mo
40. setups for the main window can occupy one screen and the dock windows can be moved to the second screen fig 4 2 4 1 The Driver Backend Four driver backends are supported to date The Null driver ALSA the jack sound server and Port Audio on Windows and Mac OS X Let s have a look at all of them what the advantages and disadvantages are and how to set them up correctly The currently loaded driver is displayed in the menu bar 4 1 1 Null Driver d dy The Null driver is a fallback solution which is set if no other driver is available but you won t hear any output as long as the Null Driver is loaded Hence there s hardly a situation where you want to load it manually To select a valid driver click on the Null Driver label in the menu bar to open a configuration dialog fig 4 3 13 4 Setup 0Xx Project Edit View Sheet Settings Help Hee On SP m 1 Unnamed a i ix 40 m Remove Clip mute solo jj rec l Fade Out length GAIN M O 00d5 PAN CC 00 31 Capture 1 E MasterOut 1 2 Unnamed mute solo J rec GAIN MN O 00dB PAN E 0 31 Capture 1 MasterOut v as a lt E i History Resources Bin Meters O ALSA 44100 32 23 22 ms R 78 ip CPUT56 15 94 GB Figure 4 1 Interface elements of Traverso 1 Track panel If the mouse cursor is hovering over this area all key actions apply to the track beneath it 2 Audio clip Key actions apply t
41. sing lt EP gt Gain Reset lt lt G gt gt Normalize Reset lt lt N gt gt Remove Clip lt lt R gt gt Lock lt L gt Reset Audio File lt MouseButtonLeft gt lt E 3 Fade In Out gi ALSA 44100 32 23 22 ms Selection Sheet Track Figure 5 2 Pressing lt Q gt or the right mouse button on an audio clip shows a menu with all available actions 19 6 Recording 6 1 Creating a new project To make some test recordings we first create a new project Start Traverso and select New Enter a name set the number of sheets to 1 the num ber of tracks to 2 and leave the rest empty Then press OK to create the project and show it s first sheet Note All recorded audio data will be stored in project_dir project_name audiosources so if you followed our advice and selected a project directory on a partition with lots of free space you shouldn t run out of disk space now 6 2 Setting up the driver To set up the driver backend open the preferences dialog by clicking Settings Pref erences Which driver is appropriate for your system is described in chapter 4 In the driver configuration one can choose the sampling rate and Traverso always uses the sampling rate of the driver backend for its recordings Traverso s audio engine works entirely in 32 bit floating point precision and you can chose from the menu Settings Recording file format whether the data should be s
42. t 44100 Hz is thus 43 1 Hz Increasing the FFT size to 2048 samples increases the range to 21 5 Hz The highest frequency captured by an FFT is fmax 0 5 Samplerate For audio data sampled at 44100 Hz the upper limit is thus fixed at 22050 Hz The windowing function is highly FFT specific and it is beyond the scope of this docu ment to explain it in detail Users who don t have a particular reason to use a different function are adviced to use the Hanning window 35 9 Tools SpectralMeter Configuration Frequency Range Upper Limit 22050 Hz Lower Limit Upper dB value Lower dB value Number of bands Show average spectrum Advanced FFT Options FFT Size 2048 Windowing function Hanning Figure 9 4 A configuration dialog called with lt E gt allows to configure many parame ters of the FFT spectrum analyzer Note For very large FFT sizes the update rate of the spectrum analyzer becomes low This is not necessarily caused by CPU overload although CPU load becomes higher for larger FFT sizes but by the fact that it takes some time to fill the buffers with such large amounts of data The widget waits until the buffers are full before updating the display 9 3 External processing Traverso allows to process audio clips offline by using external programs such as sox 9 which expands the set of available effects even more This
43. tored in a standard Wave format in Wave 64 or in WavPack The bit resolution will always be 32 bit floating point 6 3 Recording Make sure a sound source is connected to the line in bus of your sound card and also make sure it really is playing back In Traverso hit lt B gt on the first track and select Capture 1 as input bus then hit lt A gt to arm the first track As soon as the track is armed you should see the VUMeter indicating an input signal on Capturel If not the problem is most probably to be searched outside of Traverso If you are sure your cable connections are correct open KMix or a similar mixer applet to configure your sound card As shown in figure 6 1 the Line and Capture channels had to be armed and un muted on our test system before the line in signal got through to Traverso When you are ready to record press the Record button in the title bar or hit CTRL lt SPACE gt to start the recording and hit lt SPACE gt to stop recording That s 20 6 3 Recording Datei Einstellungen Hilfe Aktuelle Lautstarkeregler Schalter o o e eq eu q O Depth Phone Capture os Wu w E D o oi ai we o E m 3D Control ev Video ev Ensonig AudioPCl Figure 6 1 KMix can be used to configure the sound card Make sure the correct in put channels Line and Capture are un muted and set for recording green and red buttons it In order to rehearse the recording
44. y Action K K Press and Hold It reads as Press and hold 2 keys at once For example F G means press and hold at the same time both the F and G key The same idea applies as for the Single Key Action Press and Hold however you have to press and hold 2 keys This is a bit more difficult to do than with a Single Key Action and is meant for more advanced usages users Double Key Action lt K K gt Press and Release Twice It reads as Press and Re lease the 2 keys twice A difficult action to learn Two keys have to be pressed and released at the same time twice rather fast after each other For example lt FG gt means press and release both the F and G key at the same time twice This key command isn t used much actually due the fact that it s rather hard to perform But this makes it an ideal candidate for destructive actions The cursor indicates which type of object is going to receive the key action by displaying a letter next to the cursor symbol Hovering over a track it displays a T over a clip a C over a fade an F and over a plugin a P fig 5 1 If the key action is not known by the active object the action is forwarded to the next object beneath the active object For example in case of D on a fade the action is sent to the fade s audio clip From the menu Settings Preferences in the page Keyboard you can export or print the current keymap b
45. y pressing the buttons Export Keymap or Print Keymap This allows to have an up to date keymap always at your fingertips A A A A Figure 3 1 Depending on the type of object beneath the cursor a letter is shown next to the arrow From left to right Track Clip Fade Plugin 12 4 Setup This chapter assumes that you have Traverso 0 49 0 or later installed on your system If not yet so please refer to chapter 2 for instructions on how to install the programme Start Traverso from the application menu or by hitting Alt F2 and entering traverso in the command dialog The first thing you will see is a file dialog asking you for the project directory If you don t have one yet create a new one This directory will contain all projects including the audio files So be aware that if you want to do some serious audio work you will need lots of hard disk space Change into the directory and press OK After confirming your selection the Traverso main window will be shown It con tains different regions which are sensitive for soft selections The nomenclature used in this manual is shown in figure 4 1 Traverso uses dock windows for its tool dialogs which allows to re arrange the layout to your own liking Just grab each one by the title bar and drag it to a new position You can even stack the dock widgets on top of each other or detach from the main window and move freely The latter is particularly handy with dual screen
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