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1 schoenebeck 2811 <html>
2     <head>
3     <meta name="author" content="Christian Schoenebeck">
4     <title>Release Notes LinuxSampler 2.0.0</title>
5 schoenebeck 2813 <navpath>LinuxSampler 2.0.0</navpath>
6 schoenebeck 2811 <meta name="description" content="Release notes for LinuxSampler 2.0.0.">
7     <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://doc.linuxsampler.org/css/preview.css">
8     <script type="text/javascript" src="http://doc.linuxsampler.org/js/preview.js"></script>
9     </head>
10     <body>
11     <h1>LinuxSampler 2.0.0</h1>
12     <p>
13     Unbelievable six years have passed since the last release of LinuxSampler.
14     A load of things have changed in silence, which I want to summarize for
15     you in this article.
16     </p>
17    
18     <h3>New Sampler Engines</h3>
19     <p>
20     The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes during that long
21     period. The sampler engine code base has been unified to a set of common,
22     abstract base classes which cleared the way for two new sampler engines:
23     <ol>
24     <li>The <b>SFZ2</b> format engine (.sfz).</li>
25     <li>The <b>SoundFont 2</b> format engine (.sf2).</li>
26     </ol>
27     So LinuxSampler is not limited to just the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format
28     (.gig) anymore.
29     </p>
30    
31     <h3>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</h3>
32     <p>
33     Another major new feature is the brand new support for so called
34     <i>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</i>, which are small programs that may be
35     bundled with sound files to extend the sampler with custom behavior for
36     individual sounds. You may know such instrument scripts from commercial
37     software samplers. At the moment this scripting feature is yet limited to
38     the Giga format engine. <a href="instrument_scripts.html">Find out more ...</a>
39     </p>
40 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="../../gigedit/scripts/gigedit_script_editor.png" caption="NKSP Instrument Script Editor of Gigedit">
41 schoenebeck 2811
42     <h3>LSCP Shell</h3>
43     <p>
44     Also noteworthy is the new command line application <i>lscp</i>, which is
45     a text based shell for controlling the sampler from the command line,
46     providing colored output, type completion, help text while typing LSCP
47     commands and other convenient features for terminal enthusiasts who want
48     to use the sampler without GUI frontend applications.
49 schoenebeck 2813 <a href="lscp_shell.html">Find out more ...</a>
50 schoenebeck 2811 </p>
51     <img src="../../lscp_shell/lscp_shell.png" caption="LSCP Shell">
52    
53     <h3>Internal Effects &amp; Extensions to LSCP</h3>
54     <p>
55     You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler. The
56     <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html">LSCP network protocol</a>
57     (<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/lscp-1.7.html">v1.7</a>) has
58     been extended to manage such effects respectively. Effect chains may be
59     built, and the individual sampler parts may be routed to an individual
60     position of effect chains. At this point only LADSPA plugins are supported
61     yet. However the sampler's effect subsystem uses an abstract interface,
62     which allows easy integration of other effect systems. Also new with
63     latest LSCP version is the ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP command.
64     </p>
65    
66     <h3>New GigaStudio format features</h3>
67     <p>
68 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_imidi_rules.png" caption="MIDI rules editing with Gigedit">
69 schoenebeck 2811 You may have heard that the GigaStudio software has seen its last version
70     with GigaStudio 4. Tascam officially discontinued this product, its
71     intellectual property has been sold several times among companies and
72     there is currently no way to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore. However
73     the GigaStudio format is still under active development with LinuxSampler.
74     We not only added support for the latest features introduced with
75     GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to trigger notes by
76     MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for the first
77     time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one of it
78     is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
79     minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
80     supported by GigaStudio before. So you can now use any MIDI CC for EG1
81     controller, EG2 controller and attenuation controller.
82     </p>
83    
84     <h3>DAW Plugin Enhancements</h3>
85     <p>
86     The sampler's host plugins have also seen some enhancements: the LV2
87     plugin now stores and restores the sampler's overall state with the song
88     of your DAW application, the LV2 and AudioUnit plugin's outputs
89     were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by some users and
90     the VST plugin now uses the sampler's MIDI instrument mapping system to
91     show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among them.
92     And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
93     </p>
94    
95     <h2>Gigedit 1.0.0</h2>
96     <p>
97 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_format_extension_warnings.png" caption="Suppress warnings about custom Giga format extensions">
98 schoenebeck 2811 Also <i>Gigedit</i>, our instrument editor for the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
99     format, had been enhanced quite a lot during the last six years. As
100     mentioned above, we introduced our own extensions to the Giga format.
101     Obviously all those extensions will not work with any GigaStudio version,
102     they only work with a recent version of Gigedit and LinuxSampler. Gigedit
103     will inform you whenever you are using such kind of custom Giga format
104     extension, so that you are always aware in case your changes to sounds are
105     not cross/backward compatible with the GigaStudio software. You may also
106     disable those warnings on the settings menu.
107     </p>
108    
109     <h3>Multi-Selection of Dimension Zones</h3>
110     <p>
111 schoenebeck 2813 Until now you were only able to edit either exactly
112     one dimension region or all dimension regions simultaneously with gigedit. With this
113 schoenebeck 2811 release you may now hold the Ctrl button and select a specific set of
114     dimension region zones in the dimension region selector area (on the very
115     bottom of the Gigedit window) with your mouse. All synthesis parameters you
116     then change, will all be applied to that precise set of dimension region
117     zones.
118     </p>
119 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_multi_zone_selection.png" caption="Multi-zone selection with Ctrl key">
120 schoenebeck 2811
121     <h3>Improvements to Dimension Management</h3>
122     <p>
123     Also managing dimensions have been improved: previously to change the
124     amount of zones of a dimension you had to delete and recreate the
125     dimension. Which was not just inconvenient, but you also had to redefine
126     your synthesis parameters from scratch. Now you can just open the
127     dimension manager dialog and increase or decrease the amount of zones of
128     a dimension with few clicks. Same applies to the dimension type: you may
129     now simply open the dimension manager dialog and alter the type of a
130     dimension with few clicks.
131     </p>
132    
133     <h3>Monitoring Sample References</h3>
134     <p>
135 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_sample_references.png" caption="Show all references of selected sample">
136 schoenebeck 2811 When working on complex Giga sounds you certainly noticed that one could
137     easily get lost about which samples are exactly used by which
138     instrument or even whether a sample is actually used at all by any
139     instrument or just left orphaned and wasting disk space. This was also due
140     to the fact that the Giga format does not require unique names for
141     samples. We have worked on resolving this usability issue. In the samples
142     list view you can now read the amount of times a sample is referenced by
143     instruments of your .gig file. If a sample is not used at all, then it
144     will be shown in striking red color in the sample list view. You may also
145     right click on a sample and select "Show references...", a new
146     window appears on your screen which will show you where exactly that
147     particular sample is used by, that is by which instruments and by which
148     regions of those instruments. Also the other way around has been
149     addressed: when you now edit the synthesis parameters of a particular
150     dimension region, you may now click on the new "&lt;- Select Sample"
151     button and Gigedit automatically selects and displays the respective sample
152     in the samples list view, which you may then might rename to some more
153     appropriate sample name, or you might check by which other instrument(s)
154     that sample is used by, etc.
155     </p>
156 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_go_to_sample.png" caption="Find and select used sample">
157 schoenebeck 2811
158     <h3>Silent Cases</h3>
159     <p>
160 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_null_sample.png" caption="Create a silent case">
161 schoenebeck 2811 You may now also remove the current sample reference from individual
162     dimension regions (assigning a so called "NULL" sample instead) by clicking on
163     the new "X" button next the sample reference field on the "Sample" tab
164     of a dimension region; this allows you to define "silent cases", that
165     is a case where no sample should be played at all, for example this is
166     often used for very low velocity ranges of i.e. between 0 and 6.
167     </p>
168    
169     <h3>Reordering Instruments</h3>
170     <p>
171 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_reorder_instruments.png" caption="Re-order instruments with drag &amp; drop">
172 schoenebeck 2811 If you are working on .gig files with a large amount of Instruments, then
173     you might also be glad to know that you can finally also re-order the
174     instruments of a file by simply dragging the instruments around in the
175     instruments list view.
176     </p>
177    
178     <h3>Combine Tool</h3>
179     <p>
180 schoenebeck 2813 <img src="gigedit_combine_tool.png" caption="Combine Tool">
181 schoenebeck 2811 Another handy new feature for sound designers is the new "Combine" tool,
182     which you can reach from the main menu. It allows you to select two ore
183     more instruments (by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting with mouse
184     click) from your currently open Giga file and combine those selected
185     instruments to a new instrument. This way you may for example create
186     stunning layered sounds, or you may create velocity splits, crossfade
187     sounds by MIDI controller and much more, all with just a few clicks. This
188     may sound like a trivial task, but if you have worked on this before, you
189     certainly noticed that this was often a very time consuming and error
190     prone task before, especially with complex individual sounds which had
191     custom region ranges, custom velocity splits and much more exotic stuff
192     to take care of. The combine tool handles all such cases for you
193     automatically.
194     </p>
195    
196     <h3>Improved Interaction with LinuxSampler</h3>
197     <p>
198     Last but not least, the interaction of Gigedit with LinuxSampler (in so
199     called "live mode") had been improved: When you click on the "Edit"
200     button of a channel strip in QSampler or Fantasia, Gigedit will be
201     launched with the respective instrument automatically being selected.
202     Vice versa you may now also just select another instrument with Gigedit's
203     instrument list view and LinuxSampler will automatically load and play
204     that instrument on the respective sampler part for you. So no more need
205     to switch between the Gigedit window and QSampler/Fantasia window all the
206     time while working on your sounds.
207     </p>
208    
209     <h2>QSampler 0.3.0</h2>
210     <p>
211     As new sampler formats made it into LinuxSampler, this was also addressed
212     with QSampler. The sound selection dialog now also enumerates the sounds
213     of a selected SoundFont file. And to ease switching between sounds, you
214     may now click on the name of the current instrument of a channel strip,
215     a list will popup that alows you to quickly switch to another sound,
216     without having to open the channel strip's detailed part dialog.
217     </p>
218    
219     <h3>Suppressing Error Popups</h3>
220     <p>
221     In the past, error message dialogs frequently popped up on the screen.
222     Most of them were just telling unuseful messages, even if the overall
223     operation with the sampler was working correctly. There is now an "ignore"
224     check box attached to those error message dialogs, which allow you to
225     suppress most of the annoying error messages.
226     </p>
227    
228     <h3>Improved Mac Support</h3>
229     <p>
230     Recently we created a convenient installer for Mac OS X, which
231     conveniently installs all our software components on your Mac. So that
232     includes the stand-alone version of the LinuxSampler backend, VST and
233     AudioUnit plugin version of the sampler, "Fantasia" and "QSampler" frontends,
234     our instrument editor "Gigedit", the LSCP shell and various other command
235     line tools. You may also choose only some of them to be installed.
236     </p>
237     <p>
238     Using the sampler has also been improved on Mac. Before you first had to
239     launch the LinuxSampler backend separately and then launch QSampler.
240     Sometimes the sampler backend even had to be killed explicitly. Now
241     you can just click on the QSampler icon and it will automatically spawn
242     the sampler backend for you and shows its output on QSampler's integrated
243     terminal section. When you quit QSampler, it will also stop the sampler backend
244     for you automatically (you may tell QSampler to keep the sampler running in the background).
245     </p>
246    
247     <h2>libgig 4.0.0</h2>
248     <p>
249     Our fundamental file access C++ library
250     <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/">libgig</a>
251     is now more than just a supporter of the GigaStudio/Gigasampler file
252     format. New file formats have been added and are now bundled with libgig:
253     <ol>
254     <li>
255     <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespaceKorg.html">
256     Classes for KORG's sample based instrument files
257     </a> (.KSF, .KMP).
258     </li>
259     <li>
260     <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespacesf2.html">
261     Classes for SoundFont v2 files
262     </a> (.sf2).
263     </li>
264     <li>
265     <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/classResource.html">
266     Classes for AKAI sampler data.
267     </a>
268     </li>
269     </ol>
270     Various command line tools have been added to libgig, which allow to
271     dump, correct, extract and convert sounds between those various file formats.
272     Refer to the individual <i>man pages</i> for details about how to use
273     those new command line tools. As you can see, the ground had been prepared
274     for further new sampler engines with LinuxSampler to come.
275     </p>
276    
277     </body>
278     </html>

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