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* Preparations for new release (2.3.0).
1 schoenebeck 4079 Version 2.3.0 (26 Jan 2024)
2    
3     This is a maintenance release with various fixes.
4    
5     Most of the changes in this release are adoptions of API changes introduced on
6     libgig 4.4.0 side which in turn are fixing a bunch of misbehaviours people
7     were facing in the past, foremost multi-threading issues.
8    
9     This release also addresses an issue with release-triggered samples.
10    
11     Refer to ChangeLog file for more fixes.
12    
13 schoenebeck 3880 Version 2.2.0 (9 May 2021)
14    
15     There are a load of changes in this release. Many new features, many fixes,
16     but also new requirements.
17    
18     Starting with this release of LinuxSampler you now need at least a C++14
19     compliant compiler. Originally it was planned to only raise the minimum
20     compiler requirement to C++11 in this release, however during this development
21     cycle some C++14 features came across which helped to reduce code complexity
22     in the LinuxSampler code base tremendously.
23    
24     The NKSP real-time instrument script engine has received tremendous new
25     features and improvements in this release. Instrument script variables of type
26     integer (e.g. $foo) are now all 64-bit internally, which prevents unexpected
27     side effects of script authors due to integer overflows that easily had
28     happened before when integer script variables were just 32-bit wide. On NKSP
29     language level there is now support for floating point variables; both scalar
30     types (e.g. ~foo = 3.93) and floating point arrays
31     (e.g. ?foo[] = ( 1.6, 4.7 ) ). Another huge new NKSP language feature is
32     support for standard measuring units like Hz (Hertz), dB (Decibel),
33     s (seconds), c (cents) in conjuction with arbitrary metric prefixes like kHz,
34     mdB, ms, mc, etc. The newly introduced "final" operator "!" in NKSP allows to
35     force a synthesis parameter like e.g. volume or pitch to a specific value that
36     should not be overridden by any other modulation source (e.g. neither from
37     patch level, nor LFOs, nor from EGs, ...). This is sometimes helpful for being
38     able to e.g. say in a script, "hey, the volume of this voice should be exactly
39     -3dB, period. I mean it!". Furthermore there are 23 new built-in NKSP script
40     functions and 6 new NKSP constants/variables. There also two new event handler
41     types for processing MIDI RPN events ("on rpn ... end on") and for MIDI NRPN
42     events ("on nrpn ... end on") in instrument scripts. And last but not least
43     there are now "patch" variables supported in instrument scripts which allow to
44     expose individual script variables to instrument editors for quick and easy
45     fine tuning of certain instrument script aspects on a per-instrument basis.
46    
47     The Giga format engine adds various format extensions. For instance you now
48     have much more control over LFOs like selecting different LFO waveforms as
49     sine, triangle, saw or square. GigaStudio had this limited to sine only. The
50     default LFO wave form in LinuxSampler's gig engine has also changed to sine
51     for that reason (instead of triangle in previous LinuxSampler versions).
52     Additionally you can now also fine control the start phase of individual LFOs.
53     In the original gig format you were only able to flip the phase. Furthermore
54     there are now new audio filter types available for the Giga engine: new lowpass
55     1/2/4/6-pole, new highpass 1/2/4/6-pole, new bandpass 2-pole, and finally a
56     bandreject 2-pole filter. You might say that some of those filter types
57     existed before, and they still do and will continue to co-exist, but they
58     simply sound differently. Keep in mind that the audio filters for the Giga
59     engine were very carefully designed to accurateley replicate the sounds as if
60     being played with Tascam's GigaStudio, so that made and still makes sense.
61     However you might simply like the sound of some of the new filter types more
62     for certain reasons when creating your own gig instruments from scratch. And
63     as always there are various fixes for the gig engine in this release as well.
64    
65     On SFZ format engine side there are corrections for the SFZ opcodes
66     loccN/hiccN and xfin_hivel.
67    
68     There are various other fixes that apply to all sampler engines, please refer
69     to the ChangeLog for more details.
70    
71     For package maintainers: the unit tests (which were broken before) have been
72     fixed in this release and work now as expected. It is recommend for them to be
73     run automatically to detect and prevent any OS issues that might cause
74     misbehaviours for users. Just keep in mind the test cases also test the LSCP
75     server which will listen on TCP port 8888 during the tests. So make sure this
76     port cannot be accessed from outside for security reasons.
77    
78 schoenebeck 3537 Version 2.1.1 (27 Jul 2019)
79    
80     This is a maintenance release with various fixes. There are only two
81     minor new features in this release:
82    
83     The Giga format engine adds a format extension which allows sound
84     designers to define whether release trigger samples shall be played when
85     the sustain pedal is released. In the previous release this was actually
86     the default behaviour by the sampler, but meanwhile there was a consensus
87     on the mailing list that release samples being triggered by sustain pedal
88     is not the common, expected behaviour. So this is no longer the default
89     behaviour, but you can still opt in to this old behaviour by using this
90     new format extension option (i.e. by using latest release version of
91     libgig and gigedit and enabling the respective checkbox for your
92     gig instrument). If you don't enable this option then release samples are
93     now only triggered by note-off events.
94    
95     The sfz engine adds support for the commonly used built-in sample
96     '*silence' of the sfz format. It does what you think it does; it
97     instructs the sampler to play no sound at all. This is commonly used
98     in sfz files for instance for the lowest velocity switch to not play any
99     sample. With the previous release trying to load sfz files which used this
100     built-in sample caused a file loading error. There are various other
101     commonly used built-in samples in sfz files which you can denote by the
102     leading star character in the sample name, however the '*silence' one is
103     currently the only supported built-in sample by our sfz engine yet. Trying
104     to load sfz files which are using other built-in samples does not prevent
105     your instrument from being loaded by the sampler, however you will get a
106     warning message on the console that the built-in sample is not supported
107     yet and the sampler will simply play silence for that non supported
108     built-in sample.
109    
110 schoenebeck 3372 Version 2.1.0 (25 November 2017)
111    
112     This release adds a large amount of extensions and improvements for the
113     real-time instrument scripting support of LinuxSampler (NKSP).
114     For example 48 new built-in NKSP functions and 21 new built-in NKSP
115     variables have been added. Also the NKSP language itself was extended.
116     Most notably the script engine now has an execution scheduler which is
117     the basis for many of the timing relevant new NKSP features in this
118     release, like programmatically suspending and resuming scripts for an
119     exact amount of time or triggering or killing notes at very precise
120     times. Bitwise operators have been added to NKSP, as well as support for
121     read only built-in variables, "synchronized" code blocks
122     ("synchronized .. end synchronized"), user declared functions and user
123     declared const array variables have been added to the NKSP language,
124     and automatic suspension of RT threatening scripts by the RT script engine
125     has been implemented. Also syntax error messages with NKSP scripts have
126     been improved to output more clear and user friendly error messages, as
127     well as NKSP editor API has been improved which brings handy new features
128     to gigedit's NKSP script editor like automatically graying out code blocks
129     which are disabled by NKSP preprocessor statements.
130    
131     The SFZ engine now supports <global>, <master>, #define and set_ccN
132     statements. And finally the SFZ engine now supports NKSP real-time
133     instrument scripts as well by adding a new "script" opcode.
134    
135     Also the Instruments Database feature has received important maintenance
136     fixes. Before this release the instrument DB feature was barely usable
137     for quite some time. Fundamental instruments DB issues have been fixed in
138     this release to finally consider this feature stable again.
139    
140     And finally this release provides a huge amount of general bug fixes.
141    
142 schoenebeck 2788 Version 2.0.0 (15 July 2015)
143    
144     The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes in the last six years,
145     since the last release of LinuxSampler. The sampler engine code base has
146     been unified to a set of abstract base classes which cleared the way for
147     two new sampler engines: The SFZ2 format engine (.sfz) and the SoundFont 2
148     engine (.sf2). So LinuxSampler is not limited to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
149     format (.gig) anymore. Another major new feature is support for real-time
150     instrument scripts, which may be bundled with sound files to extend the
151     sampler with custom behavior for individual sounds. You may know such scripts
152     from commercial software samplers. Find out more about instrument scripts
153     on http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/. At the moment this
154     scripting feature is yet limited to the Giga format engine. Also noteworthy
155     is the new command line application "lscp", which is a text based shell for
156     controlling the sampler from the command line, providing colored output,
157     type completion, help text while typing LSCP commands and other convenient
158     features. You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler
159     (only LADSPA plugins yet). The LSCP network protocol (v1.7) has been extended
160     to manage such effects respectively. Also new with latest LSCP version is the
161     ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP commands. You may have heard that the
162     GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4. Tascam
163     officially discontinued this product, its intellectual property has been sold
164     several times among companies and there is currently no way to buy a new copy
165     of GigaStudio anymore. However the GigaStudio format is still under active
166     development with LinuxSampler. We not only added support for the latest
167     features introduced with GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to
168     trigger notes by MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for
169     the first time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one
170     of it is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
171     minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
172     supported by GigaStudio before. The sampler's host plugins have also seen
173     some enhancements: the LV2 plugin now stores and restores the sampler's
174     overall state with your DAW application's song, the LV2 and AudioUnit
175     plugin's outputs were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by
176     some users and the VST plugin now uses the sampler's MIDI instrument mapping
177     system to show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among
178     them. And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
179    
180 persson 1957 Version 1.0.0 (31 July 2009)
181 schoenebeck 1956
182     This is the first release which allows the sampler to be used as audio
183     host plugin, namely supporting the standards VST, AU, DSSI and LV2. The
184     sampler's limits for max. voices & disk streams can now be altered at
185     runtime by frontends, no need to recompile the sampler anymore. The Mac
186     version now also supports CoreAudio as audio driver. The Windows version
187     finally supports the sampler's instruments DB feature as well, however
188     expect it still to be unstable at this point. Along to the already
189     existing JACK audio driver, Jack MIDI support has been added in this
190     release. The sampler allows frontends now basic MIDI control, that is to
191     monitor incoming MIDI data on MIDI input devices and sampler channels and
192     to send note-on and note-off MIDI events to sampler channels, which
193     allows frontends to provide a virtual MIDI keyboard to the user. Besides
194     these major changes there were countless bugfixes and optimizations.
195    
196 schoenebeck 1560 Version 0.5.1 (6 December 2007)
197    
198     This is the first release for the Windows platform, providing a MME MIDI
199     input driver and ASIO audio output driver. Note that the instruments DB
200     feature is not yet available for Windows systems, since the respective
201     code base has yet to be ported. Needless to say that there still might be
202     plenty of issues on MS systems. Beside that support for Windows, this is
203     merely a bugfix release (i.e. fixing one serious crash) with only minor
204     new features.
205    
206 schoenebeck 1424 Version 0.5.0 (15 October 2007)
207    
208     This release comes with a bunch of important new features. We implemented
209     a very powerful and easy MIDI program change mapping, which not only
210     allows you to define which instrument to load on which MIDI program
211     change number (and bank select number), it also allows further parameters
212     like whether the instrument shall be pre-cached or loaded only when needed
213     (and likewise freed when not needed). You can create arbitrary amount of
214     effect sends for each sampler channel, each having an arbitrary MIDI
215     controller for controlling the effect send level in realtime and can
216     flexible be routed to some of the sampler's audio output channel, i.e.
217     to a dedicated one for a certain effect type. The new instruments
218     database allows you to keep track even of largest instrument library
219     collections. You can order them in categories and search by various
220     criteria. The sampler now allows third party applications to offer so
221     called 'instrument editor plugins' which the sampler can use to spawn
222     an appropriate instrument editor application for a selected instrument
223     and for allowing to edit instruments with such an external editor
224     application on-the-fly, that is all modifications made with the editor
225     will immediately be audible with the sampler. No need to reload instrument
226     files anymore. Checkout our brand new instrument editor application called
227     'gigedit' which you can use for this feature. Loading huge instruments may
228     take a long time, that's why the sampler now allows to play an instrument
229     while loading. That way you can i.e. play and hold notes on the keyboard
230     while loading a new instrument on the same sampler channel at the same
231     time. Beside these new features, you can find the common huge list of bug
232     fixes and quality improvements.
233    
234 schoenebeck 937 Version 0.4.0 (24 November 2006)
235    
236     Finally a new release after a long development cycle. The sampler now has
237     a completely revised synthesis core. Note that due to this, most of the
238     assembly code became incompatible and is thus deactivated at compile
239     time. So don't bother trying to activate the assembly option, it won't
240     compile! That's not an issue though, because even without assembly, the
241     new synthesis core is faster than the old one with assembly. The
242     Gigasampler engine now has real support for 24 bit samples, that is they
243     won't be truncated anymore, and finally supports all filter types of the
244     Gigasampler format. A lot of effort has been put into making all filters
245     under all parameters being as accurate as possible, compared to the
246     original Gigasampler ones. Analogue to hardware mixers, sampler channels
247     can now be muted and solo-ed and there is support for GM portamento and
248     GM mono mode (single note per channel) as well as support for sostenuto
249     pedal. Beside LSCP, third-party applications can now also link against
250     liblinuxsampler directly (using the sampler's C++ API). Beside these,
251     there have been of course a huge bunch of fixes and quality improvements.
252    
253 schoenebeck 692 Version 0.3.3 (15 July 2005)
254    
255     Another bug fix release. It solves one usability issue regarding small
256     fragments / high sampling rates of audio drivers, fixes some compile time
257     errors with GCC 4.0 and fixes a minor efficiency bug.
258    
259 schoenebeck 677 Version 0.3.2 (24 June 2005)
260    
261     This is more or less just a bug fix release. Beside a bunch of little
262     fixes it solves a serious crash in conjunction with voice stealing and
263     slightly improves Gigasampler format playback accuracy.

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