Traverso 0.30.1 review
DownloadTraverso is a lightweight multitrack audio recording and editing tool, written in C++, using the Qt 4 toolkit. User Interface conce
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Traverso is a lightweight multitrack audio recording and editing tool, written in C++, using the Qt 4 toolkit.
User Interface concept:
Traverso uses a contextual interaction interface.
Instead of using (only) the mouse to operate on certain objects, the mouse and keyboard are used together to control the program.
This results in a higher flexibility to control the program compared to the 2 or 3 mouse buttons available if the mouse was used alone. The mouse only has to move on an object and all functions become available by pressing a key on the keyboard. This is more efficient and requires less interaction than selecting the object and choosing the function from a menu. Since the object under the mouse cursor is automatically selected, this concept is called "soft selection".
It differs also from the more generally known "key shortcuts" which do not operate in a context, or only on "hard selected" objects.
To help new users to learn this way of controlling an application, Traverso offers "Contextual Menus", a detailed help file, and a tutorial on the web site.
Internals:
Traverso is a native Qt program, and uses the new Qt 4.1 toolkit which makes it a lightweight, fast program which is light on system resources.
It uses the highly popular libsoundfile and libsamplerate libraries to read/write from/to audio files.
Both audio file reads and writes are done with use of lockless ringbuffers to improve real time audio processing behaviour.
Both ALSA (native) and Jack are supported, and great care is taken to make the internal sound processing routines Real Time friendly.
The audio processing is done with normalized 32 bit floats.
Where to place Traverso:
The goal of Traverso is to create an easy, fast to control and work flow based audio recording and editing application, and certainly isn't supposed to be a second Ardour/Audacity/other !
The interface concept, though not completely unknown, has been taken to a higher level then most applications have done, and as such is an experiment which so far has seen good results!
Traverso' still lacks a number of features, however major components have been created including un/redo framework, a 100% separation of Core and GUI, and solid playback/recording routines, either using native ALSA or Jack which can be switched at runtime.
Installing Traverso:
There are a packages available for a number of distributions, including (K)Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Suse.
For a complete list visit the download page at the homepage of Traverso!
What's New in This Release:
Fixed 2 possible crash bugs.
Added "merged waveform drawing for stereo tracks"
Snapping improved considerably!
Traverso builds on Mac OS X now!
some more less notable improvements
Traverso 0.30.1 keywords