fork of QAMix 0.0.7e to bring to modern QT. This is based on the last released version from http://alsamodular.sourceforge.net/

Send comments to Dirk Jagdmann doj@cubic.org

QAMix is a configurable mixer for ALSA. The interface is created while the application parses an XML file. The GUI description depends on the soundcard. Therefore QAMix derives the filename from the ALSA driver name. It first searches for the GUI description in the directory .qamix in your home directory. If no card specific file exists, QAMix looks for "default.xml" in the same directory. If this does not exist either, the directory /usr/share/qamix (specified as QAMIX_SHARE_DIR in mixer.h) is searched. You can provide a filename for the GUI description with the -g parameter. The soundcard device you would like to control is provided with the -d parameter. The default device is hw:0.

There are three GUI description files included in this tarball: deflt_mixer.xml A minimal mixer interface that should work with most AC97 compatible cards. deflt_sblive.xml A GUI interface for the SB Live card. demo_mixer.xml Identical to deflt_mixer.xml but with additional MIDI bindings for the MIDI demo with AlsaModularSynth.

While the GUI description is parsed, the application tries to create a GUI control for each element (tag: <element>) found in the description. The ALSA CTL name for this element is provided with the tag <alsaname>. With the optional tag <mixname> you can provide a differnt label for the control (e.g. if the ALSA CTL name is too long).

QAMix can be completely controlled via MIDI. Elements can have one or several MIDI tags. See below for more on this. A funny demo for this feature can be run with AlsaModularSynth:

1. Start ams with the qamix_demo.ams (included in this tarball)
2. Start qamix -g demo_mixer.xml
3. Unlock all "Lock" switches in QAMix
4. Use either KAconnect or aconnect to connect the two readable MIDI ports of AlsModularSynth with the writeable port of QAMix.

The desciption starts with the tag <mixer> and ends with the corresponding closing tag </mixer>. In the menu "View" of QAMix, the user can choose one of three different display modes of the mixer: Full, Master only and Simple. Correspondingly there are three sections in the XML file specifying the look of the respective views. The global structure of the GUI description is therefore:

<mixer>
  <full>
    ...Elements...
  </full>
  <master>
    ...Elements...
  </master>
  <simple>
    ...Elements...
  </simple>
</mixer>

Elements can either be put directly between these tags or they can be placed inside a GUI container, like e.g. <tab> or <vgroup>.

If you want to create your own GUI description file, you can have QAMix print out a default file that contains all CTL elements found for your device:

qamix -p > my_mixer.xml

This is a convenient starting point. All you have to do is to add tab and group tags and sort the elements in the order you would like them to appear in the GUI.

The control elements of the mixer.

Example:

  <element>
    <alsaname> Master Playback Volume </alsaname>
    <mixname> Master </mixname>
  </element>

The tag <alsaname> is required. The parser tries to match this with the names of the CTL elements provided by ALSA. If a corresponding ALSA CTL element is found, the mixer control is created. If no tag <mixname> is given, the alsaname is used for the label of the control. The tag <inverse/> is useful for boolean controls like e.g. "Mute". With this tag you can determine whether a checked checkbox means "on" or "off". The tag <single/> is valid only for sliders. It will generate one single slider for parameters belonging to different channels. The values for this parameter will then be equal for all channels. This is especially usefull for the "Master only" view.

Elements can have an attribute "index". This is used when there are several elements that have identical names.

Example:

  <element>
    <alsaname> DAC </alsaname>
    <mixname> DAC </mixname>
  </element>
  <element index = "1">
    <alsaname> DAC </alsaname>
    <mixname> DAC </mixname>
  </element>
  <element index = "2">
    <alsaname> DAC </alsaname>
    <mixname> DAC </mixname>
  </element>

Mixer elements can be grouped in tabs, vertical and horizontal groups. There can be several layers of groups, but only one layer of tabs. The name attribute of a tab tag is required. The tag <space/> creates an empty widget that can be used as spacer in groups.

Example:

  <tab name="Playback">
    <vgroup>
      <element>
        <alsaname> Master Playback Volume </alsaname>
        <mixname> Master </mixname>
      </element>
      <element>
        <alsaname> Master Playback Switch </alsaname>
        <mixname> Mute </mixname>
        <inverse />
      </element>
    </vgroup>
  </tab>

There are three different group tags:

• <vgroup> Vertical group
• <hgroup> Horizontal group
• <group> Horizontal group with named frame

vgroup and hgroup both take the attributes frame and width. frame can be either "plain", "raised" or "sunken". width is an integer specifying the with of the frame.

The group tag has only one attribute which is its name.

You can specify whether and how the program should display current slider values on top of each slider. The tag sliderNumbers is valid for all slider elements following the tag.

<sliderNumbers style="off" />          No numbers
<sliderNumbers style="simple" />       Simple numbers without frame
<sliderNumbers style="simple100" />    Simple numbers normalized to 100
<sliderNumbers style="frame" />        Numbers in backlit frame
<sliderNumbers style="frame100" />     As above with normalized numbers

All flavours of group tags, element tags and space tags can have the additional attribute stretch. This specifies the relative sizes in the parent container.

Example:

<vgroup stretch="3">
  <element stretch="2">
    ...
  </element>
  <element stretch="1">
    ...
  </element>
</vgroup>
<vgroup stretch="1">
  ...
</vgroup>

In this example, the second vgroup will horizontally occupy a third of the space of the first one (provided that the minimum width of its child widgets is small enough). The first element will try to take double the space as the second one.

One or several MIDI tags can be placed inside of an element description.

Example: MIDI binding for the Modulation Wheel of MIDI channel 0

<midi index="0" type="10" ch="0" param="1" sign="1" />

All 5 attributes are required.

index: Index of the control (e.g. stereo sliders have index 0 and 1) type: Type of the event: 10 = controller 13 = pitchbend 6 = note on 7 = note off ch: MIDI channel param: Controller number (for controller events) note (for note events) 0 (for pitchbend events) sign: 1 or -1.

Example: Crossfade between two sliders of a stereo control (e.g. master volume). This is a virtual pan control.

<midi index="0" type="10" ch="0" param="1" sign="1" />
<midi index="1" type="10" ch="0" param="1" sign="-1" />

If the --channel parameter is >= 0 then the individual channel settings will be overridden by the global channel parameter.