The turntable GUI contains multiple controls and the realtime displays for each turntable. To save some space on your desktop and to give terminatorX the traditional audio-application look, terminatorX features "knob"-widgets. These widgets work pretty straight-forward: click somewhere within the widget and keep the left mouse-button pressed. Now move the mouse up and down or left and right to increase/decrease the control's value. All those widget are coupled with a text entry field since 3.70, which allows you to enter values directly.
A turntable is visualized by two panels: the control and the audio panel. These are no longer combined for better layout management.
Sometimes you might find a certain audio or control panel unnecessary - simply eating up space. Since release 3.73 it is possible to minimize audio and control panels to the panel bar with the tiny button with a blue bar icon in the upper right edge of each panel. This bar works just like GNOME's window list or KDE's kicker: When a panel is minimized a button in the bar will appear, representing the minimized window. On clicking this button the button will be removed and the minimized panel is displayed again. When no panels are minimized the panel bar automatically disappears to save display space.
The complete audio-file loaded into a turntable is displayed in the green-on-black audio-widget. When playing terminatorX will indicate the current position within the sample with a red cursor (a blue/green cursor indicates the turntable is muted).
Additionaly there are some controls above the audio-display:
Turntable Label
This label indicates the turntables name. The name can be set via the control panel
File Button
This button holds the name of the audio-file currently loaded. When there's no sample loaded the button will read "NONE" to indicate the current status. Click on this button to get a menu from which you can load/reload a sound file or run an external soundfile editor. Alternatively you can drag'n'drop files over the audio-display to load them.
The File Button Menu
Load File
Choose this menu entry to select a soundfile from the file-selection dialog that will pop-up.
Reload File
Choose this menu entry to re-read the audio-file.
Edit File
This menu entry will run the external audiofile-editor (that can be specified via the options-dialog) with the current audio-file as a parameter. Choose reload after editing and saving the file.
Mouse Mapping
terminatorX allows mapping misc parameters to the mouse axis of your choice. These mappings will be activated in grab mode, so if you move your mouse in X or Y direction in grab mode the parameters you selected from this menu will be affected (for this turntable). Since Version 3.70 this mappings are no longer hardcoded to built-in controls but available for all parameters that qualify as "mappable". Note that this includes plugins' controls as well.
These controls are now grouped within functional panels. The number of panels depends on the number of plugins loaded. terminatorX allows hiding the controls not required via the yellow triangle button. To un-hide just click the button again. The first panels are the standard controls for a turntable, then follows the dynamic FX-section and below that follow the pitch and volume controls.
Name Field
The main panel features a text entry field that allows setting a name for the related turntable. The Labels for the controls and the audio-display will update accordingly.
Delete Button
Pressing this button remove the tunrtable from the current setup. Note that all sequencer events recorded for this turntable will be erased, too.
The trigger panel holds all controls related to triggering the turntable. For more details on synchronization see Section 2.3 (synchronization).
Trigger! Button
Pressing this button triggers the turntable now. With the audio engine enabled this will cause the turntable to start playing back audio from the beginning of the sample.
Stop Button
Guess what, this stops this turntable's audio-playback.
Master Button
Enabling this button makes this turntable the sync-master. Note that only one turntable at a time can be the sync-master.
Client Button
This button marks the turntable as sync-client, so it will be triggerd with the master automatically.
Sync-Cycles Selection
The sync cycles determine how often a sync-client should be triggered. With a setting of zero the sync-client will be (re-)triggered with every trigger of the sync-master. A setting of 1 will (re-)trigger the client every second master-triger and so on.
Below the effect queue a turntable shows some more controls:
Pitch Control
The pitch control allows setting the default playback speed for that turntable (the "motor" speed). Negative values will result in the sample being played backwards.
PAN Control
This parameter allows setting the position of the turntable's main signal within the stereo panorama.
VU Meter
The displayed signal shows the turntable's current signal not including the echo-signal which is mixed separately.
With release 3.70 the effects are no longer hardcoded into the turntable. The effects are now arranged within an per-turntable effect-queue. The effect sequence is configurable by the user. To move an effect to higher position within the queue, press the blue upward arrow button. This will cause the effect to be renderd before the following effects. The blue downward arrow button will move the effect down by one position. It will then be rendered after the preceding effects.
There are two types of effects: the traditional built-in effects (Lowpass and Echo) and LADSPA plugins. The built-in effects are always available and cannot be removed (but disabled). There can be only one instance of a built-in effect. The LADSPA plugins on the other hand may be instanciated multiple times and can be removed from the effect queue. Press the blue cross button to achieve this.
Now since release 3.71 the built-in echo effect is treated differently from other effects. Where all other effects feed their signal back into the effect queue the echo effect doesn't touch the input signal. It's echo-signal is mixed seperately from the turntable's main signal to allow a different panning value for the echo-signal. This mode of operation does have some side-effects: imagine a lowpass filter with a position after the echo effect in the effect queue. This will result in the turntable's main signal being lowpassed but it will leave the echo-signal un-lowpassed.
Some may call this behaviour a bug - whereas I would consider it a feature ;). Anyway if the above description didn't clear things up maybe the displayed figure does. It shows a schematic effect queue with the built-in effects and two LADSPA effects enabled. Now with this setup you will not hear anything from the second LADSPA effect in the echo-signal.
For more information on a LADSPA plugin, press it's panel's label and a small info box will pop up.
FX Button
Press this button to load a LADSPA plugin into the effect queue of the turntable. A menu holding the available (terminatorX-"compatible") LADSPA-plugins will pop up. The plugins are grouped within submenus according to the modules the plugins are contained in. Simply select the plugin you want to load from this menu and a panel for it will pop up at the end of the effect queue.
Note that due to the wide parameter ranges some LADSPA plugins have they sometimes might be hard to control with the knob widget. In these cases you might want to use the text field to enter values. For more details on Plugins see Section 2.7 (LASDPA).
terminatorX features a builtin resonating lowpass filter that can be configured with this panel.
Enable Button
Activating this button will enable the lowpass filter for this turntable.
Input Gain Control
With this parameter you can amplify the signal that goes into the lowpass filter if required.
Frequency Control
Use this parameter to set the cutoff frequency for the lowpass filter. Minimum: 0=0Hz, Maximum: 1=22KHz.
Resonance
Use this parameter to set the resonance-value. Minimum: 0=no resonance, Maximum: 1=max resonance.
Additionaly terminatorX features a built-in echo effect. It can be configured with this panel.
Enable Button
Activating this button will enable the echo effect for this turntable.
Duration Control
Use this parameter to set the length of the echo. The duration parameter scales to the actual sample length: so if you set it to 0.5 you will hear the echo when the red playback cursor is half way through the sample. This is true for samples that are shorter than terminatorX' maximum echo buffer size only.
Feedback Control
Set the echo's feedback amount with this parameter.
Volume Control
This parameter can additionally amplify the echo signal. Unlike the feedback parameter above this parameter has no influence on the signal fed back into the echo-buffer, it effects merely the playback volume of the echo signal.
Pan Control
The echo effect differs from other effects as it's output signal will be mixed seperately. The main goal here is to allow positioning the echo signal at a position in the stereo panorama that differs from the main panning positon of the turntable to achieve a somewhat spacial effect. The easy example is: turntable's panning left, echo's panning right. As both pan parameters are sequencable you can create nice motion effects from this starting point.