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1 <html>
2 <head>
3 <meta name="author" content="Christian Schoenebeck">
4 <title>Release Notes LinuxSampler 2.0.0</title>
5 <navpath>LinuxSampler 2.0.0</navpath>
6 <meta name="description" content="Release notes for LinuxSampler 2.0.0.">
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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 <img src="../../gigedit/scripts/gigedit_script_editor.png" caption="NKSP Instrument Script Editor of Gigedit">
41
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 <a href="lscp_shell.html">Find out more ...</a>
50 </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 <img src="gigedit_imidi_rules.png">
69 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
91 <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html#MIDI%20Instrument%20Mapping">MIDI instrument mapping system</a>
92 to show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among them.
93 And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
94 </p>
95
96 <h2>Gigedit 1.0.0</h2>
97 <p>
98 <img src="gigedit_format_extension_warnings.png">
99 Also <i>Gigedit</i>, our instrument editor for the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
100 format, had been enhanced quite a lot during the last six years. As
101 mentioned above, we introduced our own extensions to the Giga format.
102 Obviously all those extensions will not work with any GigaStudio version,
103 they only work with a recent version of Gigedit and LinuxSampler. Gigedit
104 will inform you whenever you are using such kind of custom Giga format
105 extension, so that you are always aware in case your changes to sounds are
106 not cross/backward compatible with the GigaStudio software. You may also
107 disable those warnings on the settings menu.
108 </p>
109
110 <h3>Multi-Selection of Dimension Zones</h3>
111 <p>
112 Until now you were only able to edit either exactly
113 one dimension region or all dimension regions simultaneously with gigedit. With this
114 release you may now hold the Ctrl button and select a specific set of
115 dimension region zones in the dimension region selector area (on the very
116 bottom of the Gigedit window) with your mouse. All synthesis parameters you
117 then change, will all be applied to that precise set of dimension region
118 zones.
119 </p>
120 <img src="gigedit_multi_zone_selection.png" caption="Multi-zone selection with Ctrl key">
121
122 <h3>Improvements to Dimension Management</h3>
123 <p>
124 Also managing dimensions has been improved: previously to change the
125 amount of zones of a dimension you had to delete and recreate the
126 dimension. Which was not just inconvenient, but you also had to redefine
127 your synthesis parameters from scratch. Now you can just open the
128 dimension manager dialog and increase or decrease the amount of zones of
129 a dimension with few clicks. Same applies to the dimension type: you may
130 now simply open the dimension manager dialog and alter the type of a
131 dimension with few clicks.
132 </p>
133
134 <h3>Monitoring Sample References</h3>
135 <p>
136 <img src="gigedit_sample_references.png">
137 When working on complex Giga sounds you certainly noticed that one could
138 easily get lost about which samples are exactly used by which
139 instrument or even whether a sample is actually used at all by any
140 instrument or just left orphaned and wasting disk space. This was also due
141 to the fact that the Giga format does not require unique names for
142 samples. We have worked on resolving this usability issue. In the samples
143 list view you can now read the amount of times a sample is referenced by
144 instruments of your .gig file. If a sample is not used at all, then it
145 will be shown in striking red color in the sample list view. You may also
146 right click on a sample and select "Show references...", a new
147 window appears on your screen which will show you where exactly that
148 particular sample is used by, that is by which instruments and by which
149 regions of those instruments. Also the other way around has been
150 addressed: when you now edit the synthesis parameters of a particular
151 dimension region, you may now click on the new "&lt;- Select Sample"
152 button and Gigedit automatically selects and displays the respective sample
153 in the samples list view, which you then might rename to some more
154 appropriate sample name, or you might check by which other instrument(s)
155 that sample is used by, etc. You want to get rid of all unused samples?
156 Simply right click on the samples list view and select
157 "Remove unused samples", then select "Save" from the menu and all orphaned
158 samples are gone.
159 </p>
160 <img src="gigedit_go_to_sample.png" caption="Find and select used sample">
161
162 <h3>Silent Cases</h3>
163 <p>
164 <img src="gigedit_null_sample.png">
165 You may now also remove the current sample reference from individual
166 dimension regions (assigning a so called "NULL" sample instead) by clicking on
167 the new "X" button next to the sample reference field on the "Sample" tab
168 of a dimension region; this allows you to define "silent cases", that
169 is a case where no sample should be played at all, for example this is
170 often used for very low velocity ranges of i.e. between 0 and 6.
171 </p>
172
173 <h3>Reordering Instruments</h3>
174 <p>
175 <img src="gigedit_reorder_instruments.png">
176 If you are working on .gig files with a large amount of Instruments, then
177 you might also be glad to know that you can finally also re-order the
178 instruments of a file by simply dragging the instruments around in the
179 instruments list view.
180 </p>
181
182 <h3>Combine Tool</h3>
183 <p>
184 <img src="gigedit_combine_tool.png">
185 Another handy new feature for sound designers is the new "Combine" tool,
186 which you can reach from the main menu. It allows you to select two ore
187 more instruments (by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting with mouse
188 left click) from your currently open Giga file and combine those selected
189 instruments to a new instrument. This way you may for example create
190 stunning layered sounds, or you may create velocity splits, crossfade
191 sounds by MIDI controller and much more, all with just a few clicks. This
192 may sound like a trivial task, but if you have worked on this before, you
193 certainly noticed that this was often a very time consuming and error
194 prone task before, especially with complex individual sounds which had
195 custom region ranges, custom velocity splits and much more exotic stuff
196 to take care of. The combine tool handles all such cases for you
197 automatically.
198 </p>
199
200 <h3>Improved Interaction with LinuxSampler</h3>
201 <p>
202 Last but not least, the interaction of Gigedit with LinuxSampler (in so
203 called "live mode") had been improved: When you click on the "Edit"
204 button of a channel strip in QSampler or Fantasia, Gigedit will be
205 launched with the respective instrument automatically being selected.
206 Vice versa you may now also just select another instrument with Gigedit's
207 instrument list view and LinuxSampler will automatically load and play
208 that instrument on the respective sampler part for you. So no more need
209 to switch between the Gigedit window and QSampler/Fantasia window all the
210 time while working on your sounds with Gigedit.
211 </p>
212
213 <h2>QSampler 0.3.0</h2>
214 <p>
215 As new sampler formats made it into LinuxSampler, this was also addressed
216 with QSampler. The sound selection dialog now also enumerates the sounds
217 of a selected SoundFont file. And to ease switching between sounds, you
218 may now click on the name of the current instrument of a channel strip,
219 a list will popup that alows you to quickly switch to another sound,
220 without having to open the channel strip's detailed part dialog.
221 </p>
222
223 <h3>Suppressing Error Popups</h3>
224 <p>
225 In the past, error message dialogs frequently popped up on the screen.
226 Most of them were just telling unuseful messages, even if the overall
227 operation with the sampler was working correctly. There is now an "ignore"
228 check box attached to those error message dialogs, which allow you to
229 suppress most of the annoying error messages.
230 </p>
231
232 <h3>Improved Mac Support</h3>
233 <p>
234 Recently we created a convenient installer for Mac OS X, which
235 conveniently installs all our software components on your Mac. So that
236 includes the stand-alone version of the LinuxSampler backend, VST and
237 AudioUnit plugin version of the sampler, "Fantasia" and "QSampler" frontends,
238 our instrument editor "Gigedit", the LSCP shell and various other command
239 line tools. You may also choose only some of them to be installed.
240 </p>
241 <p>
242 Using the sampler has also been improved on Mac. Before you first had to
243 launch the LinuxSampler backend separately and then launch QSampler.
244 Sometimes the sampler backend even had to be killed explicitly. Now
245 you can just click on the QSampler icon and it will automatically spawn
246 the sampler backend for you and shows its output on QSampler's integrated
247 terminal section. When you quit QSampler, it will also stop the sampler backend
248 for you automatically (you may tell QSampler to keep the sampler running in the background).
249 </p>
250
251 <h2>libgig 4.0.0</h2>
252 <p>
253 Our fundamental file access C++ library
254 <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/">libgig</a>
255 is now more than just a supporter of the GigaStudio/Gigasampler file
256 format. New file formats have been added and are now bundled with libgig:
257 <ol>
258 <li>
259 <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespaceKorg.html">
260 Classes for KORG's sample based instrument files
261 </a> (.KSF, .KMP).
262 </li>
263 <li>
264 <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespacesf2.html">
265 Classes for SoundFont v2 files
266 </a> (.sf2).
267 </li>
268 <li>
269 <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/classResource.html">
270 Classes for AKAI sampler data.
271 </a>
272 </li>
273 </ol>
274 Various command line tools have been added to libgig, which allow to
275 dump, correct, extract and convert sounds between those various file formats.
276 Refer to the individual <i>man pages</i> for details about how to use
277 those new command line tools. As you can see, the ground had been prepared
278 for further new sampler engines with LinuxSampler to come.
279 </p>
280
281 </body>
282 </html>

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