Annotation of /linuxsampler/trunk/NEWS

Version 2.1.1 (27 Jul 2019)

  This is a maintenance release with various fixes. There are only two
  minor new features in this release:

  The Giga format engine adds a format extension which allows sound
  designers to define whether release trigger samples shall be played when
  the sustain pedal is released. In the previous release this was actually
  the default behaviour by the sampler, but meanwhile there was a consensus
  on the mailing list that release samples being triggered by sustain pedal
  is not the common, expected behaviour. So this is no longer the default
  behaviour, but you can still opt in to this old behaviour by using this
  new format extension option (i.e. by using latest release version of
  libgig and gigedit and enabling the respective checkbox for your
  gig instrument). If you don't enable this option then release samples are
  now only triggered by note-off events.

  The sfz engine adds support for the commonly used built-in sample
  '*silence' of the sfz format. It does what you think it does; it
  instructs the sampler to play no sound at all. This is commonly used
  in sfz files for instance for the lowest velocity switch to not play any
  sample. With the previous release trying to load sfz files which used this
  built-in sample caused a file loading error. There are various other
  commonly used built-in samples in sfz files which you can denote by the
  leading star character in the sample name, however the '*silence' one is
  currently the only supported built-in sample by our sfz engine yet. Trying
  to load sfz files which are using other built-in samples does not prevent
  your instrument from being loaded by the sampler, however you will get a
  warning message on the console that the built-in sample is not supported
  yet and the sampler will simply play silence for that non supported
  built-in sample.

Version 2.1.0 (25 November 2017)

  This release adds a large amount of extensions and improvements for the
  real-time instrument scripting support of LinuxSampler (NKSP).
  For example 48 new built-in NKSP functions and 21 new built-in NKSP
  variables have been added. Also the NKSP language itself was extended.
  Most notably the script engine now has an execution scheduler which is
  the basis for many of the timing relevant new NKSP features in this
  release, like programmatically suspending and resuming scripts for an
  exact amount of time or triggering or killing notes at very precise
  times. Bitwise operators have been added to NKSP, as well as support for
  read only built-in variables, "synchronized" code blocks
  ("synchronized .. end synchronized"), user declared functions and user
  declared const array variables have been added to the NKSP language,
  and automatic suspension of RT threatening scripts by the RT script engine
  has been implemented. Also syntax error messages with NKSP scripts have
  been improved to output more clear and user friendly error messages, as
  well as NKSP editor API has been improved which brings handy new features
  to gigedit's NKSP script editor like automatically graying out code blocks
  which are disabled by NKSP preprocessor statements.

  The SFZ engine now supports <global>, <master>, #define and set_ccN
  statements. And finally the SFZ engine now supports NKSP real-time
  instrument scripts as well by adding a new "script" opcode.

  Also the Instruments Database feature has received important maintenance
  fixes. Before this release the instrument DB feature was barely usable
  for quite some time. Fundamental instruments DB issues have been fixed in
  this release to finally consider this feature stable again.

  And finally this release provides a huge amount of general bug fixes.

Version 2.0.0 (15 July 2015)

  The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes in the last six years,
  since the last release of LinuxSampler. The sampler engine code base has
  been unified to a set of abstract base classes which cleared the way for
  two new sampler engines: The SFZ2 format engine (.sfz) and the SoundFont 2
  engine (.sf2). So LinuxSampler is not limited to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
  format (.gig) anymore. Another major new feature is support for real-time
  instrument scripts, which may be bundled with sound files to extend the
  sampler with custom behavior for individual sounds. You may know such scripts
  from commercial software samplers. Find out more about instrument scripts
  on http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/. At the moment this
  scripting feature is yet limited to the Giga format engine. Also noteworthy
  is the new command line application "lscp", 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. You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler
  (only LADSPA plugins yet). The LSCP network protocol (v1.7) has been extended
  to manage such effects respectively. Also new with latest LSCP version is the
  ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP commands. 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. The sampler's host plugins have also seen
  some enhancements: the LV2 plugin now stores and restores the sampler's
  overall state with your DAW application's song, 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.

Version 1.0.0 (31 July 2009)

  This is the first release which allows the sampler to be used as audio
  host plugin, namely supporting the standards VST, AU, DSSI and LV2. The
  sampler's limits for max. voices & disk streams can now be altered at
  runtime by frontends, no need to recompile the sampler anymore. The Mac
  version now also supports CoreAudio as audio driver. The Windows version
  finally supports the sampler's instruments DB feature as well, however
  expect it still to be unstable at this point. Along to the already
  existing JACK audio driver, Jack MIDI support has been added in this
  release. The sampler allows frontends now basic MIDI control, that is to
  monitor incoming MIDI data on MIDI input devices and sampler channels and
  to send note-on and note-off MIDI events to sampler channels, which
  allows frontends to provide a virtual MIDI keyboard to the user. Besides
  these major changes there were countless bugfixes and optimizations.

Version 0.5.1 (6 December 2007)

  This is the first release for the Windows platform, providing a MME MIDI
  input driver and ASIO audio output driver. Note that the instruments DB
  feature is not yet available for Windows systems, since the respective
  code base has yet to be ported. Needless to say that there still might be
  plenty of issues on MS systems. Beside that support for Windows, this is
  merely a bugfix release (i.e. fixing one serious crash) with only minor
  new features.

Version 0.5.0 (15 October 2007)

  This release comes with a bunch of important new features. We implemented
  a very powerful and easy MIDI program change mapping, which not only
  allows you to define which instrument to load on which MIDI program
  change number (and bank select number), it also allows further parameters
  like whether the instrument shall be pre-cached or loaded only when needed
  (and likewise freed when not needed). You can create arbitrary amount of
  effect sends for each sampler channel, each having an arbitrary MIDI
  controller for controlling the effect send level in realtime and can
  flexible be routed to some of the sampler's audio output channel, i.e.
  to a dedicated one for a certain effect type. The new instruments
  database allows you to keep track even of largest instrument library
  collections. You can order them in categories and search by various
  criteria. The sampler now allows third party applications to offer so
  called 'instrument editor plugins' which the sampler can use to spawn
  an appropriate instrument editor application for a selected instrument
  and for allowing to edit instruments with such an external editor
  application on-the-fly, that is all modifications made with the editor
  will immediately be audible with the sampler. No need to reload instrument
  files anymore. Checkout our brand new instrument editor application called
  'gigedit' which you can use for this feature. Loading huge instruments may
  take a long time, that's why the sampler now allows to play an instrument
  while loading. That way you can i.e. play and hold notes on the keyboard
  while loading a new instrument on the same sampler channel at the same
  time. Beside these new features, you can find the common huge list of bug
  fixes and quality improvements.

Version 0.4.0 (24 November 2006)

  Finally a new release after a long development cycle. The sampler now has
  a completely revised synthesis core. Note that due to this, most of the
  assembly code became incompatible and is thus deactivated at compile
  time. So don't bother trying to activate the assembly option, it won't
  compile! That's not an issue though, because even without assembly, the
  new synthesis core is faster than the old one with assembly. The
  Gigasampler engine now has real support for 24 bit samples, that is they
  won't be truncated anymore, and finally supports all filter types of the
  Gigasampler format. A lot of effort has been put into making all filters
  under all parameters being as accurate as possible, compared to the
  original Gigasampler ones. Analogue to hardware mixers, sampler channels
  can now be muted and solo-ed and there is support for GM portamento and
  GM mono mode (single note per channel) as well as support for sostenuto
  pedal. Beside LSCP, third-party applications can now also link against
  liblinuxsampler directly (using the sampler's C++ API). Beside these,
  there have been of course a huge bunch of fixes and quality improvements.

Version 0.3.3 (15 July 2005)

  Another bug fix release. It solves one usability issue regarding small
  fragments / high sampling rates of audio drivers, fixes some compile time
  errors with GCC 4.0 and fixes a minor efficiency bug.

Version 0.3.2 (24 June 2005)

  This is more or less just a bug fix release. Beside a bunch of little
  fixes it solves a serious crash in conjunction with voice stealing and
  slightly improves Gigasampler format playback accuracy.
1	schoenebeck	3537	Version 2.1.1 (27 Jul 2019)
2
3			This is a maintenance release with various fixes. There are only two
4			minor new features in this release:
5
6			The Giga format engine adds a format extension which allows sound
7			designers to define whether release trigger samples shall be played when
8			the sustain pedal is released. In the previous release this was actually
9			the default behaviour by the sampler, but meanwhile there was a consensus
10			on the mailing list that release samples being triggered by sustain pedal
11			is not the common, expected behaviour. So this is no longer the default
12			behaviour, but you can still opt in to this old behaviour by using this
13			new format extension option (i.e. by using latest release version of
14			libgig and gigedit and enabling the respective checkbox for your
15			gig instrument). If you don't enable this option then release samples are
16			now only triggered by note-off events.
17
18			The sfz engine adds support for the commonly used built-in sample
19			'*silence' of the sfz format. It does what you think it does; it
20			instructs the sampler to play no sound at all. This is commonly used
21			in sfz files for instance for the lowest velocity switch to not play any
22			sample. With the previous release trying to load sfz files which used this
23			built-in sample caused a file loading error. There are various other
24			commonly used built-in samples in sfz files which you can denote by the
25			leading star character in the sample name, however the '*silence' one is
26			currently the only supported built-in sample by our sfz engine yet. Trying
27			to load sfz files which are using other built-in samples does not prevent
28			your instrument from being loaded by the sampler, however you will get a
29			warning message on the console that the built-in sample is not supported
30			yet and the sampler will simply play silence for that non supported
31			built-in sample.
32
33	schoenebeck	3372	Version 2.1.0 (25 November 2017)
34
35			This release adds a large amount of extensions and improvements for the
36			real-time instrument scripting support of LinuxSampler (NKSP).
37			For example 48 new built-in NKSP functions and 21 new built-in NKSP
38			variables have been added. Also the NKSP language itself was extended.
39			Most notably the script engine now has an execution scheduler which is
40			the basis for many of the timing relevant new NKSP features in this
41			release, like programmatically suspending and resuming scripts for an
42			exact amount of time or triggering or killing notes at very precise
43			times. Bitwise operators have been added to NKSP, as well as support for
44			read only built-in variables, "synchronized" code blocks
45			("synchronized .. end synchronized"), user declared functions and user
46			declared const array variables have been added to the NKSP language,
47			and automatic suspension of RT threatening scripts by the RT script engine
48			has been implemented. Also syntax error messages with NKSP scripts have
49			been improved to output more clear and user friendly error messages, as
50			well as NKSP editor API has been improved which brings handy new features
51			to gigedit's NKSP script editor like automatically graying out code blocks
52			which are disabled by NKSP preprocessor statements.
53
54			The SFZ engine now supports <global>, <master>, #define and set_ccN
55			statements. And finally the SFZ engine now supports NKSP real-time
56			instrument scripts as well by adding a new "script" opcode.
57
58			Also the Instruments Database feature has received important maintenance
59			fixes. Before this release the instrument DB feature was barely usable
60			for quite some time. Fundamental instruments DB issues have been fixed in
61			this release to finally consider this feature stable again.
62
63			And finally this release provides a huge amount of general bug fixes.
64
65	schoenebeck	2788	Version 2.0.0 (15 July 2015)
66
67			The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes in the last six years,
68			since the last release of LinuxSampler. The sampler engine code base has
69			been unified to a set of abstract base classes which cleared the way for
70			two new sampler engines: The SFZ2 format engine (.sfz) and the SoundFont 2
71			engine (.sf2). So LinuxSampler is not limited to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
72			format (.gig) anymore. Another major new feature is support for real-time
73			instrument scripts, which may be bundled with sound files to extend the
74			sampler with custom behavior for individual sounds. You may know such scripts
75			from commercial software samplers. Find out more about instrument scripts
76			on http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/. At the moment this
77			scripting feature is yet limited to the Giga format engine. Also noteworthy
78			is the new command line application "lscp", which is a text based shell for
79			controlling the sampler from the command line, providing colored output,
80			type completion, help text while typing LSCP commands and other convenient
81			features. You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler
82			(only LADSPA plugins yet). The LSCP network protocol (v1.7) has been extended
83			to manage such effects respectively. Also new with latest LSCP version is the
84			ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP commands. You may have heard that the
85			GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4. Tascam
86			officially discontinued this product, its intellectual property has been sold
87			several times among companies and there is currently no way to buy a new copy
88			of GigaStudio anymore. However the GigaStudio format is still under active
89			development with LinuxSampler. We not only added support for the latest
90			features introduced with GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to
91			trigger notes by MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for
92			the first time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one
93			of it is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
94			minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
95			supported by GigaStudio before. The sampler's host plugins have also seen
96			some enhancements: the LV2 plugin now stores and restores the sampler's
97			overall state with your DAW application's song, the LV2 and AudioUnit
98			plugin's outputs were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by
99			some users and the VST plugin now uses the sampler's MIDI instrument mapping
100			system to show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among
101			them. And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
102
103	persson	1957	Version 1.0.0 (31 July 2009)
104	schoenebeck	1956
105			This is the first release which allows the sampler to be used as audio
106			host plugin, namely supporting the standards VST, AU, DSSI and LV2. The
107			sampler's limits for max. voices & disk streams can now be altered at
108			runtime by frontends, no need to recompile the sampler anymore. The Mac
109			version now also supports CoreAudio as audio driver. The Windows version
110			finally supports the sampler's instruments DB feature as well, however
111			expect it still to be unstable at this point. Along to the already
112			existing JACK audio driver, Jack MIDI support has been added in this
113			release. The sampler allows frontends now basic MIDI control, that is to
114			monitor incoming MIDI data on MIDI input devices and sampler channels and
115			to send note-on and note-off MIDI events to sampler channels, which
116			allows frontends to provide a virtual MIDI keyboard to the user. Besides
117			these major changes there were countless bugfixes and optimizations.
118
119	schoenebeck	1560	Version 0.5.1 (6 December 2007)
120
121			This is the first release for the Windows platform, providing a MME MIDI
122			input driver and ASIO audio output driver. Note that the instruments DB
123			feature is not yet available for Windows systems, since the respective
124			code base has yet to be ported. Needless to say that there still might be
125			plenty of issues on MS systems. Beside that support for Windows, this is
126			merely a bugfix release (i.e. fixing one serious crash) with only minor
127			new features.
128
129	schoenebeck	1424	Version 0.5.0 (15 October 2007)
130
131			This release comes with a bunch of important new features. We implemented
132			a very powerful and easy MIDI program change mapping, which not only
133			allows you to define which instrument to load on which MIDI program
134			change number (and bank select number), it also allows further parameters
135			like whether the instrument shall be pre-cached or loaded only when needed
136			(and likewise freed when not needed). You can create arbitrary amount of
137			effect sends for each sampler channel, each having an arbitrary MIDI
138			controller for controlling the effect send level in realtime and can
139			flexible be routed to some of the sampler's audio output channel, i.e.
140			to a dedicated one for a certain effect type. The new instruments
141			database allows you to keep track even of largest instrument library
142			collections. You can order them in categories and search by various
143			criteria. The sampler now allows third party applications to offer so
144			called 'instrument editor plugins' which the sampler can use to spawn
145			an appropriate instrument editor application for a selected instrument
146			and for allowing to edit instruments with such an external editor
147			application on-the-fly, that is all modifications made with the editor
148			will immediately be audible with the sampler. No need to reload instrument
149			files anymore. Checkout our brand new instrument editor application called
150			'gigedit' which you can use for this feature. Loading huge instruments may
151			take a long time, that's why the sampler now allows to play an instrument
152			while loading. That way you can i.e. play and hold notes on the keyboard
153			while loading a new instrument on the same sampler channel at the same
154			time. Beside these new features, you can find the common huge list of bug
155			fixes and quality improvements.
156
157	schoenebeck	937	Version 0.4.0 (24 November 2006)
158
159			Finally a new release after a long development cycle. The sampler now has
160			a completely revised synthesis core. Note that due to this, most of the
161			assembly code became incompatible and is thus deactivated at compile
162			time. So don't bother trying to activate the assembly option, it won't
163			compile! That's not an issue though, because even without assembly, the
164			new synthesis core is faster than the old one with assembly. The
165			Gigasampler engine now has real support for 24 bit samples, that is they
166			won't be truncated anymore, and finally supports all filter types of the
167			Gigasampler format. A lot of effort has been put into making all filters
168			under all parameters being as accurate as possible, compared to the
169			original Gigasampler ones. Analogue to hardware mixers, sampler channels
170			can now be muted and solo-ed and there is support for GM portamento and
171			GM mono mode (single note per channel) as well as support for sostenuto
172			pedal. Beside LSCP, third-party applications can now also link against
173			liblinuxsampler directly (using the sampler's C++ API). Beside these,
174			there have been of course a huge bunch of fixes and quality improvements.
175
176	schoenebeck	692	Version 0.3.3 (15 July 2005)
177
178			Another bug fix release. It solves one usability issue regarding small
179			fragments / high sampling rates of audio drivers, fixes some compile time
180			errors with GCC 4.0 and fixes a minor efficiency bug.
181
182	schoenebeck	677	Version 0.3.2 (24 June 2005)
183
184			This is more or less just a bug fix release. Beside a bunch of little
185			fixes it solves a serious crash in conjunction with voice stealing and
186			slightly improves Gigasampler format playback accuracy.