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* Preparations for new release (2.3.0).
1 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 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 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 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 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 Version 1.0.0 (31 July 2009)
181
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 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 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 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 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 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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