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1 Version 2.0.0 (15 July 2015)
2
3 The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes in the last six years,
4 since the last release of LinuxSampler. The sampler engine code base has
5 been unified to a set of abstract base classes which cleared the way for
6 two new sampler engines: The SFZ2 format engine (.sfz) and the SoundFont 2
7 engine (.sf2). So LinuxSampler is not limited to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
8 format (.gig) anymore. Another major new feature is support for real-time
9 instrument scripts, which may be bundled with sound files to extend the
10 sampler with custom behavior for individual sounds. You may know such scripts
11 from commercial software samplers. Find out more about instrument scripts
12 on http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/. At the moment this
13 scripting feature is yet limited to the Giga format engine. Also noteworthy
14 is the new command line application "lscp", which is a text based shell for
15 controlling the sampler from the command line, providing colored output,
16 type completion, help text while typing LSCP commands and other convenient
17 features. You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler
18 (only LADSPA plugins yet). The LSCP network protocol (v1.7) has been extended
19 to manage such effects respectively. Also new with latest LSCP version is the
20 ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP commands. You may have heard that the
21 GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4. Tascam
22 officially discontinued this product, its intellectual property has been sold
23 several times among companies and there is currently no way to buy a new copy
24 of GigaStudio anymore. However the GigaStudio format is still under active
25 development with LinuxSampler. We not only added support for the latest
26 features introduced with GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to
27 trigger notes by MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for
28 the first time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one
29 of it is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
30 minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
31 supported by GigaStudio before. The sampler's host plugins have also seen
32 some enhancements: the LV2 plugin now stores and restores the sampler's
33 overall state with your DAW application's song, the LV2 and AudioUnit
34 plugin's outputs were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by
35 some users and the VST plugin now uses the sampler's MIDI instrument mapping
36 system to show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among
37 them. And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
38
39 Version 1.0.0 (31 July 2009)
40
41 This is the first release which allows the sampler to be used as audio
42 host plugin, namely supporting the standards VST, AU, DSSI and LV2. The
43 sampler's limits for max. voices & disk streams can now be altered at
44 runtime by frontends, no need to recompile the sampler anymore. The Mac
45 version now also supports CoreAudio as audio driver. The Windows version
46 finally supports the sampler's instruments DB feature as well, however
47 expect it still to be unstable at this point. Along to the already
48 existing JACK audio driver, Jack MIDI support has been added in this
49 release. The sampler allows frontends now basic MIDI control, that is to
50 monitor incoming MIDI data on MIDI input devices and sampler channels and
51 to send note-on and note-off MIDI events to sampler channels, which
52 allows frontends to provide a virtual MIDI keyboard to the user. Besides
53 these major changes there were countless bugfixes and optimizations.
54
55 Version 0.5.1 (6 December 2007)
56
57 This is the first release for the Windows platform, providing a MME MIDI
58 input driver and ASIO audio output driver. Note that the instruments DB
59 feature is not yet available for Windows systems, since the respective
60 code base has yet to be ported. Needless to say that there still might be
61 plenty of issues on MS systems. Beside that support for Windows, this is
62 merely a bugfix release (i.e. fixing one serious crash) with only minor
63 new features.
64
65 Version 0.5.0 (15 October 2007)
66
67 This release comes with a bunch of important new features. We implemented
68 a very powerful and easy MIDI program change mapping, which not only
69 allows you to define which instrument to load on which MIDI program
70 change number (and bank select number), it also allows further parameters
71 like whether the instrument shall be pre-cached or loaded only when needed
72 (and likewise freed when not needed). You can create arbitrary amount of
73 effect sends for each sampler channel, each having an arbitrary MIDI
74 controller for controlling the effect send level in realtime and can
75 flexible be routed to some of the sampler's audio output channel, i.e.
76 to a dedicated one for a certain effect type. The new instruments
77 database allows you to keep track even of largest instrument library
78 collections. You can order them in categories and search by various
79 criteria. The sampler now allows third party applications to offer so
80 called 'instrument editor plugins' which the sampler can use to spawn
81 an appropriate instrument editor application for a selected instrument
82 and for allowing to edit instruments with such an external editor
83 application on-the-fly, that is all modifications made with the editor
84 will immediately be audible with the sampler. No need to reload instrument
85 files anymore. Checkout our brand new instrument editor application called
86 'gigedit' which you can use for this feature. Loading huge instruments may
87 take a long time, that's why the sampler now allows to play an instrument
88 while loading. That way you can i.e. play and hold notes on the keyboard
89 while loading a new instrument on the same sampler channel at the same
90 time. Beside these new features, you can find the common huge list of bug
91 fixes and quality improvements.
92
93 Version 0.4.0 (24 November 2006)
94
95 Finally a new release after a long development cycle. The sampler now has
96 a completely revised synthesis core. Note that due to this, most of the
97 assembly code became incompatible and is thus deactivated at compile
98 time. So don't bother trying to activate the assembly option, it won't
99 compile! That's not an issue though, because even without assembly, the
100 new synthesis core is faster than the old one with assembly. The
101 Gigasampler engine now has real support for 24 bit samples, that is they
102 won't be truncated anymore, and finally supports all filter types of the
103 Gigasampler format. A lot of effort has been put into making all filters
104 under all parameters being as accurate as possible, compared to the
105 original Gigasampler ones. Analogue to hardware mixers, sampler channels
106 can now be muted and solo-ed and there is support for GM portamento and
107 GM mono mode (single note per channel) as well as support for sostenuto
108 pedal. Beside LSCP, third-party applications can now also link against
109 liblinuxsampler directly (using the sampler's C++ API). Beside these,
110 there have been of course a huge bunch of fixes and quality improvements.
111
112 Version 0.3.3 (15 July 2005)
113
114 Another bug fix release. It solves one usability issue regarding small
115 fragments / high sampling rates of audio drivers, fixes some compile time
116 errors with GCC 4.0 and fixes a minor efficiency bug.
117
118 Version 0.3.2 (24 June 2005)
119
120 This is more or less just a bug fix release. Beside a bunch of little
121 fixes it solves a serious crash in conjunction with voice stealing and
122 slightly improves Gigasampler format playback accuracy.

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