The main terminatorX configuration parameters can be set up via the Preferences dialog, which can be activated from the terminatorX menu. The new Preferences dialog features multiple tabs for several aspects of configuration.
A word on the settings in general: your settings are stored in an XML file ( ~/.terminatorXrc). So if you think you completely messed up your settings you will have to exit terminatorX - delete this file - and then re-run terminatorX with the default settings. Note: is this file is now an XML file you can edit with an editor of your choice.
This tab allows to select which audio backend terminatorX should use. Currently there are three options: the OSS (Open Sound System) backend, the ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) backend and the JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit) backend. Some of these options might not be available, if your terminatorX binary wasn't compiled to support a certain backend.
The OSS and ALSA backends have dedicated configuration tabs, JACK requires no further configuration - for more details on JACK support see Section 2.10.
Select the audio device you are going to use from the available options (or simply enter one yourself). terminatorX renders audio block-wise. In order to achieve close-to-realtime performance it is necessary to keep this blocks as small as possible. The main parameters that determine how close-to-realtime terminatorX will perform are No. of Buffers and Buffersize. The No. of Buffers parameter determines how many buffers the audio driver should use in most cases 2 should be the best setting and in rare cases 3 might give better results.
The value for the Buffersize setting will be evaluated as 2^buffersize by OSS. So if you set the value to 8 the actual buffer size will be 2^8=256 Bytes. The smaller the buffers' size the better terminatorX will perform. The default setting of 9 should be acceptable in most conditions, but if you here "clicks", or "drops" in audio output that are not related to your sample-material you will have to increase the buffer size. On the other hand if you believe terminatorX does not react fast enough you have to decrease this parameter.
Additionally you can select the sampling rate you want terminatorX to operate on - note that recording to disk will use the same sample rate.
Using ALSA for audio output allows specifing the buffer sizes in microseconds. ALSA uses a ring-buffer to process audio. The Buffer Time option lets you set the size for the complete ring buffer, while the Period Time determines how many audio samples will be transferred to the audio device per cycle. I'm not really sure on what kind of settings to recommend, however I had best results when setting the Period Time to 3rd or half of the Buffer Time.
It's advisable to set the Buffer Time to at least the double of the Period Time, but for a more detailed description check out the ALSA documentation.
Between rendering and outputting these blocks terminatorX checks for mouse motion. The problem with mice is: they don't report when they have stopped. This is why terminatorX assumes your mouse has stopped if there is no motion reported for certain amount of render/output-cycles. This value is configurable via the Stop-sense-cycles option. If you decrease your buffersize of course you shorten the cycle time as well, therefore if you here strange stop/run behaviour of the audio output while scratching after you decreased the buffer size you might have to increase the stop-sense value too.
XInput Device: WARNING: Use this option *only* if you want to use an input device other than your default-mouse for scratching. Selecting your default pointer will cause terminatorX to crash. See the "Using a turntable" section on the terminatorX homepage for details.
With Update Idle / Update Delay you can configure GUI responsiveness: Higher Update Idle will cause the wave display (position display) and flash-widgets to update less often. Higher Update Delay values will cause the parameter widgets to update less often.
Since Version 3.81 it is possible to configure the colors terminatorX' audio widgets. Simply click on the color you want to modify and select the tone you prefer.
You can now enter the soundfile editor of your choice in the "Sound file editor" field. This editor will be started when clicking the Edit-button in the main panel of the vtt-gui. If you enter for example "myeditor" terminatorX will run "myeditor sample_in_vtt.wav".
The LADSPA RDF Path defines where liblrdf will look for the RDF files for LADPSA Plugins.
If Compress set files is activated terminatorX will use zlib to compress set files. This is very usefull for sets that have many events recorded.
See Section 2.9 for more details on Restore MIDI Connections. If you disable the Ask for "Quit" Confirmation option terminatorX will no longer ask if you really want to quit.