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Sat Jul 27 11:18:17 2019 UTC (4 years, 8 months ago) by schoenebeck
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* Preparations for new release (2.1.1).

1 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 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 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 Version 1.0.0 (31 July 2009)
104
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 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 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 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 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 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.

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