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Sat Nov 25 17:29:29 2017 UTC (6 years, 4 months ago) by schoenebeck
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* Preparations for new release (2.1.0).

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

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