release_notes/linuxsampler_2_0_0/01_linuxsampler_2_0_0.html

<html>
  <head>
    <meta name="author" content="Christian Schoenebeck">
    <title>Release Notes LinuxSampler 2.0.0</title>
    <meta name="description" content="Release notes for LinuxSampler 2.0.0.">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://doc.linuxsampler.org/css/preview.css">
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://doc.linuxsampler.org/js/preview.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>LinuxSampler 2.0.0</h1>
    <p>
      Unbelievable six years have passed since the last release of LinuxSampler.
      A load of things have changed in silence, which I want to summarize for
      you in this article.
    </p>

    <h3>New Sampler Engines</h3>
    <p>
      The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes during that long
      period. The sampler engine code base has been unified to a set of common,
      abstract base classes which cleared the way for two new sampler engines:
      <ol>
        <li>The <b>SFZ2</b> format engine (.sfz).</li>
        <li>The <b>SoundFont 2</b> format engine (.sf2).</li>
      </ol>
      So LinuxSampler is not limited to just the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format
      (.gig) anymore.
    </p>

    <h3>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</h3>
    <p>
      Another major new feature is the brand new support for so called
      <i>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</i>, which are small programs that may be
      bundled with sound files to extend the sampler with custom behavior for
      individual sounds. You may know such instrument scripts from commercial
      software samplers. At the moment this scripting feature is yet limited to
      the Giga format engine. <a href="instrument_scripts.html">Find out more ...</a>
    </p>
    <img src="../../gigedit/scripts/gigedit_script_editor.png" caption="NKSP Instrument Script Editor">

    <h3>LSCP Shell</h3>
    <p>
      Also noteworthy is the new command line application <i>lscp</i>, which is
      a text based shell for controlling the sampler from the command line,
      providing colored output, type completion, help text while typing LSCP
      commands and other convenient features for terminal enthusiasts who want
      to use the sampler without GUI frontend applications.
      <a href="instrument_scripts.html">Find out more ...</a>
    </p>
    <img src="../../lscp_shell/lscp_shell.png" caption="LSCP Shell">

    <h3>Internal Effects &amp; Extensions to LSCP</h3>
    <p>
      You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler. The
      <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html">LSCP network protocol</a>
      (<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/lscp-1.7.html">v1.7</a>) has
      been extended to manage such effects respectively. Effect chains may be
      built, and the individual sampler parts may be routed to an individual
      position of effect chains. At this point only LADSPA plugins are supported
      yet. However the sampler's effect subsystem uses an abstract interface,
      which allows easy integration of other effect systems. Also new with
      latest LSCP version is the ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP command.
    </p>

    <h3>New GigaStudio format features</h3>
    <p>
      You may have heard that the GigaStudio software has seen its last version
      with GigaStudio 4. Tascam officially discontinued this product, its
      intellectual property has been sold several times among companies and
      there is currently no way to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore. However
      the GigaStudio format is still under active development with LinuxSampler.
      We not only added support for the latest features introduced with
      GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to trigger notes by
      MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for the first
      time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one of it
      is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
      minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
      supported by GigaStudio before. So you can now use any MIDI CC for EG1
      controller, EG2 controller and attenuation controller.
    </p>

    <h3>DAW Plugin Enhancements</h3>
    <p>
      The sampler's host plugins have also seen some enhancements: the LV2
      plugin now stores and restores the sampler's overall state with the song
      of your DAW application, the LV2 and AudioUnit plugin's outputs
      were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by some users and
      the VST plugin now uses the sampler's MIDI instrument mapping system to
      show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among them.
      And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
    </p>

    <h2>Gigedit 1.0.0</h2>
    <p>
      Also <i>Gigedit</i>, our instrument editor for the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
      format, had been enhanced quite a lot during the last six years. As
      mentioned above, we introduced our own extensions to the Giga format.
      Obviously all those extensions will not work with any GigaStudio version,
      they only work with a recent version of Gigedit and LinuxSampler. Gigedit
      will inform you whenever you are using such kind of custom Giga format
      extension, so that you are always aware in case your changes to sounds are
      not cross/backward compatible with the GigaStudio software. You may also
      disable those warnings on the settings menu.
    </p>

    <h3>Multi-Selection of Dimension Zones</h3>
    <p>
      A load of enhancements have been added to Gigedit
      in the last six years: Until now you were only able to edit either exactly
      one dimension region or all dimension regions simultaneously. With this
      release you may now hold the Ctrl button and select a specific set of
      dimension region zones in the dimension region selector area (on the very
      bottom of the Gigedit window) with your mouse. All synthesis parameters you
      then change, will all be applied to that precise set of dimension region
      zones.
    </p>

    <h3>Improvements to Dimension Management</h3>
    <p>
      Also managing dimensions have been improved: previously to change the
      amount of zones of a dimension you had to delete and recreate the
      dimension. Which was not just inconvenient, but you also had to redefine
      your synthesis parameters from scratch. Now you can just open the
      dimension manager dialog and increase or decrease the amount of zones of
      a dimension with few clicks. Same applies to the dimension type: you may
      now simply open the dimension manager dialog and alter the type of a
      dimension with few clicks.
    </p>

    <h3>Monitoring Sample References</h3>
    <p>
      When working on complex Giga sounds you certainly noticed that one could
      easily get lost about which samples are exactly used by which
      instrument or even whether a sample is actually used at all by any
      instrument or just left orphaned and wasting disk space. This was also due
      to the fact that the Giga format does not require unique names for
      samples. We have worked on resolving this usability issue. In the samples
      list view you can now read the amount of times a sample is referenced by
      instruments of your .gig file. If a sample is not used at all, then it
      will be shown in striking red color in the sample list view. You may also
      right click on a sample and select "Show references...", a new
      window appears on your screen which will show you where exactly that
      particular sample is used by, that is by which instruments and by which
      regions of those instruments. Also the other way around has been
      addressed: when you now edit the synthesis parameters of a particular
      dimension region, you may now click on the new "&lt;- Select Sample"
      button and Gigedit automatically selects and displays the respective sample
      in the samples list view, which you may then might rename to some more
      appropriate sample name, or you might check by which other instrument(s)
      that sample is used by, etc.
    </p>

    <h3>Silent Cases</h3>
    <p>
      You may now also remove the current sample reference from individual
      dimension regions (assigning a so called "NULL" sample instead) by clicking on
      the new "X" button next the sample reference field on the "Sample" tab
      of a dimension region; this allows you to define "silent cases", that
      is a case where no sample should be played at all, for example this is
      often used for very low velocity ranges of i.e. between 0 and 6.
    </p>

    <h3>Reordering Instruments</h3>
    <p>
      If you are working on .gig files with a large amount of Instruments, then
      you might also be glad to know that you can finally also re-order the
      instruments of a file by simply dragging the instruments around in the
      instruments list view.
    </p>

    <h3>Combine Tool</h3>
    <p>
      Another handy new feature for sound designers is the new "Combine" tool,
      which you can reach from the main menu. It allows you to select two ore
      more instruments (by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting with mouse
      click) from your currently open Giga file and combine those selected
      instruments to a new instrument. This way you may for example create
      stunning layered sounds, or you may create velocity splits, crossfade
      sounds by MIDI controller and much more, all with just a few clicks. This
      may sound like a trivial task, but if you have worked on this before, you
      certainly noticed that this was often a very time consuming and error
      prone task before, especially with complex individual sounds which had
      custom region ranges, custom velocity splits and much more exotic stuff
      to take care of. The combine tool handles all such cases for you
      automatically.
    </p>

    <h3>Improved Interaction with LinuxSampler</h3>
    <p>
      Last but not least, the interaction of Gigedit with LinuxSampler (in so
      called "live mode") had been improved: When you click on the "Edit"
      button of a channel strip in QSampler or Fantasia, Gigedit will be
      launched with the respective instrument automatically being selected.
      Vice versa you may now also just select another instrument with Gigedit's
      instrument list view and LinuxSampler will automatically load and play
      that instrument on the respective sampler part for you. So no more need
      to switch between the Gigedit window and QSampler/Fantasia window all the
      time while working on your sounds.
    </p>

    <h2>QSampler 0.3.0</h2>
    <p>
      As new sampler formats made it into LinuxSampler, this was also addressed
      with QSampler. The sound selection dialog now also enumerates the sounds
      of a selected SoundFont file. And to ease switching between sounds, you
      may now click on the name of the current instrument of a channel strip,
      a list will popup that alows you to quickly switch to another sound,
      without having to open the channel strip's detailed part dialog.
    </p>

    <h3>Suppressing Error Popups</h3>
    <p>
      In the past, error message dialogs frequently popped up on the screen.
      Most of them were just telling unuseful messages, even if the overall
      operation with the sampler was working correctly. There is now an "ignore"
      check box attached to those error message dialogs, which allow you to
      suppress most of the annoying error messages.
    </p>

    <h3>Improved Mac Support</h3>
    <p>
      Recently we created a convenient installer for Mac OS X, which
      conveniently installs all our software components on your Mac. So that
      includes the stand-alone version of the LinuxSampler backend, VST and
      AudioUnit plugin version of the sampler, "Fantasia" and "QSampler" frontends,
      our instrument editor "Gigedit", the LSCP shell and various other command
      line tools. You may also choose only some of them to be installed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Using the sampler has also been improved on Mac. Before you first had to
      launch the LinuxSampler backend separately and then launch QSampler.
      Sometimes the sampler backend even had to be killed explicitly. Now
      you can just click on the QSampler icon and it will automatically spawn
      the sampler backend for you and shows its output on QSampler's integrated
      terminal section. When you quit QSampler, it will also stop the sampler backend
      for you automatically (you may tell QSampler to keep the sampler running in the background).
    </p>

    <h2>libgig 4.0.0</h2>
    <p>
      Our fundamental file access C++ library
      <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/">libgig</a>
      is now more than just a supporter of the GigaStudio/Gigasampler file
      format. New file formats have been added and are now bundled with libgig:
      <ol>
        <li>
          <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespaceKorg.html">
            Classes for KORG's sample based instrument files
          </a> (.KSF, .KMP).
        </li>
        <li>
          <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespacesf2.html">
            Classes for SoundFont v2 files
          </a> (.sf2).
        </li>
        <li>
          <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/classResource.html">
            Classes for AKAI sampler data.
          </a>
        </li>
      </ol>
      Various command line tools have been added to libgig, which allow to
      dump, correct, extract and convert sounds between those various file formats.
      Refer to the individual <i>man pages</i> for details about how to use
      those new command line tools. As you can see, the ground had been prepared
      for further new sampler engines with LinuxSampler to come.
    </p>

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