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* Preparations for new release (2.3.1).
1 Version 2.3.1 (26 Mar 2024)
2
3 Maintenance release.
4
5 Fixes build errors with certain C++ stdlib versions. No behaviour change.
6
7 Version 2.3.0 (26 Jan 2024)
8
9 This is a maintenance release with various fixes.
10
11 Most of the changes in this release are adoptions of API changes introduced on
12 libgig 4.4.0 side which in turn are fixing a bunch of misbehaviours people
13 were facing in the past, foremost multi-threading issues.
14
15 This release also addresses an issue with release-triggered samples.
16
17 Refer to ChangeLog file for more fixes.
18
19 Version 2.2.0 (9 May 2021)
20
21 There are a load of changes in this release. Many new features, many fixes,
22 but also new requirements.
23
24 Starting with this release of LinuxSampler you now need at least a C++14
25 compliant compiler. Originally it was planned to only raise the minimum
26 compiler requirement to C++11 in this release, however during this development
27 cycle some C++14 features came across which helped to reduce code complexity
28 in the LinuxSampler code base tremendously.
29
30 The NKSP real-time instrument script engine has received tremendous new
31 features and improvements in this release. Instrument script variables of type
32 integer (e.g. $foo) are now all 64-bit internally, which prevents unexpected
33 side effects of script authors due to integer overflows that easily had
34 happened before when integer script variables were just 32-bit wide. On NKSP
35 language level there is now support for floating point variables; both scalar
36 types (e.g. ~foo = 3.93) and floating point arrays
37 (e.g. ?foo[] = ( 1.6, 4.7 ) ). Another huge new NKSP language feature is
38 support for standard measuring units like Hz (Hertz), dB (Decibel),
39 s (seconds), c (cents) in conjuction with arbitrary metric prefixes like kHz,
40 mdB, ms, mc, etc. The newly introduced "final" operator "!" in NKSP allows to
41 force a synthesis parameter like e.g. volume or pitch to a specific value that
42 should not be overridden by any other modulation source (e.g. neither from
43 patch level, nor LFOs, nor from EGs, ...). This is sometimes helpful for being
44 able to e.g. say in a script, "hey, the volume of this voice should be exactly
45 -3dB, period. I mean it!". Furthermore there are 23 new built-in NKSP script
46 functions and 6 new NKSP constants/variables. There also two new event handler
47 types for processing MIDI RPN events ("on rpn ... end on") and for MIDI NRPN
48 events ("on nrpn ... end on") in instrument scripts. And last but not least
49 there are now "patch" variables supported in instrument scripts which allow to
50 expose individual script variables to instrument editors for quick and easy
51 fine tuning of certain instrument script aspects on a per-instrument basis.
52
53 The Giga format engine adds various format extensions. For instance you now
54 have much more control over LFOs like selecting different LFO waveforms as
55 sine, triangle, saw or square. GigaStudio had this limited to sine only. The
56 default LFO wave form in LinuxSampler's gig engine has also changed to sine
57 for that reason (instead of triangle in previous LinuxSampler versions).
58 Additionally you can now also fine control the start phase of individual LFOs.
59 In the original gig format you were only able to flip the phase. Furthermore
60 there are now new audio filter types available for the Giga engine: new lowpass
61 1/2/4/6-pole, new highpass 1/2/4/6-pole, new bandpass 2-pole, and finally a
62 bandreject 2-pole filter. You might say that some of those filter types
63 existed before, and they still do and will continue to co-exist, but they
64 simply sound differently. Keep in mind that the audio filters for the Giga
65 engine were very carefully designed to accurateley replicate the sounds as if
66 being played with Tascam's GigaStudio, so that made and still makes sense.
67 However you might simply like the sound of some of the new filter types more
68 for certain reasons when creating your own gig instruments from scratch. And
69 as always there are various fixes for the gig engine in this release as well.
70
71 On SFZ format engine side there are corrections for the SFZ opcodes
72 loccN/hiccN and xfin_hivel.
73
74 There are various other fixes that apply to all sampler engines, please refer
75 to the ChangeLog for more details.
76
77 For package maintainers: the unit tests (which were broken before) have been
78 fixed in this release and work now as expected. It is recommend for them to be
79 run automatically to detect and prevent any OS issues that might cause
80 misbehaviours for users. Just keep in mind the test cases also test the LSCP
81 server which will listen on TCP port 8888 during the tests. So make sure this
82 port cannot be accessed from outside for security reasons.
83
84 Version 2.1.1 (27 Jul 2019)
85
86 This is a maintenance release with various fixes. There are only two
87 minor new features in this release:
88
89 The Giga format engine adds a format extension which allows sound
90 designers to define whether release trigger samples shall be played when
91 the sustain pedal is released. In the previous release this was actually
92 the default behaviour by the sampler, but meanwhile there was a consensus
93 on the mailing list that release samples being triggered by sustain pedal
94 is not the common, expected behaviour. So this is no longer the default
95 behaviour, but you can still opt in to this old behaviour by using this
96 new format extension option (i.e. by using latest release version of
97 libgig and gigedit and enabling the respective checkbox for your
98 gig instrument). If you don't enable this option then release samples are
99 now only triggered by note-off events.
100
101 The sfz engine adds support for the commonly used built-in sample
102 '*silence' of the sfz format. It does what you think it does; it
103 instructs the sampler to play no sound at all. This is commonly used
104 in sfz files for instance for the lowest velocity switch to not play any
105 sample. With the previous release trying to load sfz files which used this
106 built-in sample caused a file loading error. There are various other
107 commonly used built-in samples in sfz files which you can denote by the
108 leading star character in the sample name, however the '*silence' one is
109 currently the only supported built-in sample by our sfz engine yet. Trying
110 to load sfz files which are using other built-in samples does not prevent
111 your instrument from being loaded by the sampler, however you will get a
112 warning message on the console that the built-in sample is not supported
113 yet and the sampler will simply play silence for that non supported
114 built-in sample.
115
116 Version 2.1.0 (25 November 2017)
117
118 This release adds a large amount of extensions and improvements for the
119 real-time instrument scripting support of LinuxSampler (NKSP).
120 For example 48 new built-in NKSP functions and 21 new built-in NKSP
121 variables have been added. Also the NKSP language itself was extended.
122 Most notably the script engine now has an execution scheduler which is
123 the basis for many of the timing relevant new NKSP features in this
124 release, like programmatically suspending and resuming scripts for an
125 exact amount of time or triggering or killing notes at very precise
126 times. Bitwise operators have been added to NKSP, as well as support for
127 read only built-in variables, "synchronized" code blocks
128 ("synchronized .. end synchronized"), user declared functions and user
129 declared const array variables have been added to the NKSP language,
130 and automatic suspension of RT threatening scripts by the RT script engine
131 has been implemented. Also syntax error messages with NKSP scripts have
132 been improved to output more clear and user friendly error messages, as
133 well as NKSP editor API has been improved which brings handy new features
134 to gigedit's NKSP script editor like automatically graying out code blocks
135 which are disabled by NKSP preprocessor statements.
136
137 The SFZ engine now supports <global>, <master>, #define and set_ccN
138 statements. And finally the SFZ engine now supports NKSP real-time
139 instrument scripts as well by adding a new "script" opcode.
140
141 Also the Instruments Database feature has received important maintenance
142 fixes. Before this release the instrument DB feature was barely usable
143 for quite some time. Fundamental instruments DB issues have been fixed in
144 this release to finally consider this feature stable again.
145
146 And finally this release provides a huge amount of general bug fixes.
147
148 Version 2.0.0 (15 July 2015)
149
150 The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes in the last six years,
151 since the last release of LinuxSampler. The sampler engine code base has
152 been unified to a set of abstract base classes which cleared the way for
153 two new sampler engines: The SFZ2 format engine (.sfz) and the SoundFont 2
154 engine (.sf2). So LinuxSampler is not limited to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
155 format (.gig) anymore. Another major new feature is support for real-time
156 instrument scripts, which may be bundled with sound files to extend the
157 sampler with custom behavior for individual sounds. You may know such scripts
158 from commercial software samplers. Find out more about instrument scripts
159 on http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/. At the moment this
160 scripting feature is yet limited to the Giga format engine. Also noteworthy
161 is the new command line application "lscp", which is a text based shell for
162 controlling the sampler from the command line, providing colored output,
163 type completion, help text while typing LSCP commands and other convenient
164 features. You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler
165 (only LADSPA plugins yet). The LSCP network protocol (v1.7) has been extended
166 to manage such effects respectively. Also new with latest LSCP version is the
167 ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP commands. You may have heard that the
168 GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4. Tascam
169 officially discontinued this product, its intellectual property has been sold
170 several times among companies and there is currently no way to buy a new copy
171 of GigaStudio anymore. However the GigaStudio format is still under active
172 development with LinuxSampler. We not only added support for the latest
173 features introduced with GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to
174 trigger notes by MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for
175 the first time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one
176 of it is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
177 minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
178 supported by GigaStudio before. The sampler's host plugins have also seen
179 some enhancements: the LV2 plugin now stores and restores the sampler's
180 overall state with your DAW application's song, the LV2 and AudioUnit
181 plugin's outputs were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by
182 some users and the VST plugin now uses the sampler's MIDI instrument mapping
183 system to show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among
184 them. And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
185
186 Version 1.0.0 (31 July 2009)
187
188 This is the first release which allows the sampler to be used as audio
189 host plugin, namely supporting the standards VST, AU, DSSI and LV2. The
190 sampler's limits for max. voices & disk streams can now be altered at
191 runtime by frontends, no need to recompile the sampler anymore. The Mac
192 version now also supports CoreAudio as audio driver. The Windows version
193 finally supports the sampler's instruments DB feature as well, however
194 expect it still to be unstable at this point. Along to the already
195 existing JACK audio driver, Jack MIDI support has been added in this
196 release. The sampler allows frontends now basic MIDI control, that is to
197 monitor incoming MIDI data on MIDI input devices and sampler channels and
198 to send note-on and note-off MIDI events to sampler channels, which
199 allows frontends to provide a virtual MIDI keyboard to the user. Besides
200 these major changes there were countless bugfixes and optimizations.
201
202 Version 0.5.1 (6 December 2007)
203
204 This is the first release for the Windows platform, providing a MME MIDI
205 input driver and ASIO audio output driver. Note that the instruments DB
206 feature is not yet available for Windows systems, since the respective
207 code base has yet to be ported. Needless to say that there still might be
208 plenty of issues on MS systems. Beside that support for Windows, this is
209 merely a bugfix release (i.e. fixing one serious crash) with only minor
210 new features.
211
212 Version 0.5.0 (15 October 2007)
213
214 This release comes with a bunch of important new features. We implemented
215 a very powerful and easy MIDI program change mapping, which not only
216 allows you to define which instrument to load on which MIDI program
217 change number (and bank select number), it also allows further parameters
218 like whether the instrument shall be pre-cached or loaded only when needed
219 (and likewise freed when not needed). You can create arbitrary amount of
220 effect sends for each sampler channel, each having an arbitrary MIDI
221 controller for controlling the effect send level in realtime and can
222 flexible be routed to some of the sampler's audio output channel, i.e.
223 to a dedicated one for a certain effect type. The new instruments
224 database allows you to keep track even of largest instrument library
225 collections. You can order them in categories and search by various
226 criteria. The sampler now allows third party applications to offer so
227 called 'instrument editor plugins' which the sampler can use to spawn
228 an appropriate instrument editor application for a selected instrument
229 and for allowing to edit instruments with such an external editor
230 application on-the-fly, that is all modifications made with the editor
231 will immediately be audible with the sampler. No need to reload instrument
232 files anymore. Checkout our brand new instrument editor application called
233 'gigedit' which you can use for this feature. Loading huge instruments may
234 take a long time, that's why the sampler now allows to play an instrument
235 while loading. That way you can i.e. play and hold notes on the keyboard
236 while loading a new instrument on the same sampler channel at the same
237 time. Beside these new features, you can find the common huge list of bug
238 fixes and quality improvements.
239
240 Version 0.4.0 (24 November 2006)
241
242 Finally a new release after a long development cycle. The sampler now has
243 a completely revised synthesis core. Note that due to this, most of the
244 assembly code became incompatible and is thus deactivated at compile
245 time. So don't bother trying to activate the assembly option, it won't
246 compile! That's not an issue though, because even without assembly, the
247 new synthesis core is faster than the old one with assembly. The
248 Gigasampler engine now has real support for 24 bit samples, that is they
249 won't be truncated anymore, and finally supports all filter types of the
250 Gigasampler format. A lot of effort has been put into making all filters
251 under all parameters being as accurate as possible, compared to the
252 original Gigasampler ones. Analogue to hardware mixers, sampler channels
253 can now be muted and solo-ed and there is support for GM portamento and
254 GM mono mode (single note per channel) as well as support for sostenuto
255 pedal. Beside LSCP, third-party applications can now also link against
256 liblinuxsampler directly (using the sampler's C++ API). Beside these,
257 there have been of course a huge bunch of fixes and quality improvements.
258
259 Version 0.3.3 (15 July 2005)
260
261 Another bug fix release. It solves one usability issue regarding small
262 fragments / high sampling rates of audio drivers, fixes some compile time
263 errors with GCC 4.0 and fixes a minor efficiency bug.
264
265 Version 0.3.2 (24 June 2005)
266
267 This is more or less just a bug fix release. Beside a bunch of little
268 fixes it solves a serious crash in conjunction with voice stealing and
269 slightly improves Gigasampler format playback accuracy.

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