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1 senoner 542 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
2     <html>
3     <head>
4 senoner 702
5 senoner 542 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="index.css">
6     <title>The Linux Sampler Project</title>
7    
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100     <body>
101    
102     <div id="mainwindow"><img name="LinuxSampler" src="gfx/lsbackground.jpg" alt="LinuxSampler">
103    
104     <h1><span class="hidden">The LinuxSampler Project</span></h1>
105    
106     <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr><th colspan=2 align=left>
107     <img name="h1about" src="gfx/h1about.png" alt="About"><span class="hidden">about</span></th></tr>
108     <tr><td valign=top>
109     <a id="news" href="index.php" onmouseover="javascript:if(document.images)document.news.src = newsover.src" onmouseout="javascript:if(document.images)document.news.src = newsout.src"><img name="news" src="gfx/mnews.png" alt="news"></a>
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122     </td><td valign=top width="100%">
123     <div id="contents">
124    
125 schoenebeck 1610 <h2>The Project</h2>
126 senoner 542 <p class="default">
127 schoenebeck 1611 The LinuxSampler proect was founded with the
128 schoenebeck 1610 goal to produce a free, open source pure software audio sampler
129     with professional grade features, comparable to both hardware and
130     commercial Windows/Mac software samplers
131     and to introduce new features not yet available by any other
132     sampler in the world.
133     </p>
134    
135     <h2>The Engine</h2>
136     <p class="default">
137     <u><b>LinuxSampler</b></u> was designed very modular, especially
138     (and in contrast to other samplers) it was decoupled from any user
139     interface. LinuxSampler itself usually runs as own process in the
140     background of the computer and usually does not show up anything on
141     the screen, or at most it can be launched to show status
142     informations and debug messages in a console window:<br>
143 senoner 542 <br>
144 schoenebeck 1610 <a href="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console.png">
145     <img src="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console_preview.png">
146     </a><br>
147 senoner 542 <br>
148 schoenebeck 1610 That means LinuxSampler itself is the "engine" of the sampler, it
149     is the software component which performs all the heavy and time
150     critical computational tasks of handling MIDI events, calculating
151     the audio data and sending the final audio data to your sound
152     card(s). We call LinuxSampler the <i>sampler backend</i>.
153     </p>
154    
155     <h2>The Face(s)</h2>
156     <p class="default">
157     Obviously you need some way to control the sampler. That's where a
158     2nd application comes into game, which we call a
159     <i>sampler frontend</i> application. A frontend is (usually) a
160     graphical application, visible on the screen, providing the user
161     a set of e.g. menus, buttons, sliders, dials, etc. to allow the
162     user to control the sampler in a convenient way. It merely sends
163     the user requests to the sampler engine (LinuxSampler) and in turn
164     shows the engine's status informations on the screen. A frontend
165     does not perform any signal processing tasks, so you can see it as
166     a "face" of the sampler.<br>
167 senoner 542 <br>
168 schoenebeck 1610 For luxury we already provide you two different frontends / "faces"
169     for LinuxSampler:
170     </p>
171     <ul>
172     <li>
173     <u><b>QSampler</b></u> is a light-weight frontend written in
174     C++, using straightforward native graphical controls of the
175     underlying operating system. That way the appearance of
176     QSampler on the screen is very fast and it only consumes very
177     little resources. Due to its utilization of the operating
178     system's common GUI controls, it looks slightly different on
179     every operating system (also dependent of the user's selected
180     theme on his OS):<br>
181     <br>
182     <a href="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_win.jpg">
183     <img src="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_win_preview.jpg">
184     </a>&nbsp;
185     <a href="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_ubuntu.jpg">
186     <img src="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_ubuntu_preview.png">
187     </a><br>
188     <br>
189     </li>
190    
191     <li>
192     <u><b>JSampler</b></u> is a full-fledged frontend for
193     LinuxSampler, written in Java and currently comes in two
194     flavors: <b>JSampler "Classic"</b> offers straightforward GUI
195     controls whereas <b>JSampler "Fantasia"</b> provides a modern
196     skin based user interface:<br>
197     <br>
198     <a href="screenshots/fantasia.png"><img src="screenshots/fantasia-preview.png"></a>
199     <br>
200     JSampler supports all features currently available in the
201     sampler engine (LinuxSampler).<br>
202     </li>
203     </ul>
204     <p class="default">
205     It's completely up to you which frontend to use. You could even use
206     both parallel at the same time for the same sampler engine
207     instance, really! ;-)
208     </p>
209    
210     <h2>The Format</h2>
211     <p class="default">
212     It is planned to support all common sampler formats in
213     LinuxSampler, but at the moment we chose to concentrate on the
214     Gigasampler format, because when we started this project, the
215     Gigasampler format was (in our opinion) the most popular
216     and "best" sampler format in regards of quality and power,
217     especially for the synthesis of natural instruments like pianos,
218     brass and bowed instruments. But we already made good advance in
219     implementing this format, so we are optimistic to start with
220     adding other formats soon. Beside that we also planned to
221     design our own, sophisticated sampler format to introduce a more
222     powerful and more flexible sampler format compared to
223     any sampler format currently available in the world. Be encouraged
224     to share your ideas about such a new format with us!
225     </p>
226    
227     <h2>The Editor</h2>
228     <p class="default">
229     <u><b>gigedit</b></u> allows you to edit and create instruments
230     for the Gigasampler format, which can be used with LinuxSampler
231     as well as with Tascam's Gigastudio. Following our line of
232     modularity we also made the instrument editors independent
233     applications. Because let's face it: every sampler format is
234     different, so in our opinion it is better to honor the specific
235     features of one format with its own instrument editor application
236     instead of trying to fiddle everything into one single bloated
237     application. So gigedit is our first editor, dedicated to the .gig
238     format:<br>
239 schoenebeck 1404 <br>
240 schoenebeck 1610 <a href="screenshots/gigedit_0_0_3.png"><img src="screenshots/gigedit_0_0_3_preview.jpg"></a>
241     <br>
242     You can use gigedit as stand-alone application or in conjunction
243     with LinuxSampler. For the latter case gigedit installs a plugin
244     into the sampler engine, so the engine (and with it the frontends)
245     knows that gigedit actually exists and can handle the .gig format.
246     So even though we decoupled the sampler's components into
247     independent applications, they all work seamlessly together. Just
248     press the "Edit" button on a channel strip of a frontend and
249     gigedit will automatically popup on the screen and you're
250     immediately ready to edit your selected instrument, making all your
251     modifications audible in realtime. Even when editing huge
252     instruments of 1GB or more, tweak the instrument with gigedit and
253     immediately hear it while playing on the keyboard at the same time.
254     And the good thing: even with new sampler formats we're going to
255     add soon (and with it new editors), you don't have to remember
256     which instrument you loaded uses which format. Simply click on
257     "Edit" in a frontend and the sampler engine will choose the right
258     instrument editor application for the respective instrument for
259     you.
260 senoner 542 </p>
261    
262 schoenebeck 1610 <h2>The Technical Interface</h2>
263     <p class="default">
264     As the components of the sampler are independent applications,
265     there must be a way to let the applications communicate with each
266     other. For this LinuxSampler provides a native C++
267     <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface">API</a>
268     as well as a network interface using an ASCII based protocol which
269     we call "<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html" title="LinuxSampler Control Protocol">LSCP</a>"
270     for controlling the sampler engine and managing sampler sessions.
271     Our frontends support that network interface, which also allwos
272     control the sampler engine with the GUI frontend(s) remotely from
273     another computer, probably even running a completely different
274     Operating System.
275     </p>
276    
277     <h2>The Community</h2>
278     <p class="default">
279     All applications are under active development. However we all work
280     on this project for fun in our spare time. There are still so many
281     things to do and our hands are limited. So don't hesitate on
282     participating to the project! You don't necessarily need to be a
283     skilled programmer to help the project. Testing the applications,
284     <a href="http://bugs.linuxsampler.org.">reporting bugs</a>, writing
285     documentation, providing artwork, themes for frontends, etc. helps
286     us and all users a lot! Simply subscribe to our
287     <a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxsampler-devel">
288     mailing list
289     </a> and we'll of course take you by the hand in case you want to
290     participate with active source code development. Don't be afraid!
291     You have your own ideas and concepts for making the sampler better?
292     Great, share them with us!<br>
293     <br>
294     </p>
295    
296 senoner 542 </div>
297     </td></tr></table>
298    
299     </div>
300    
301     </body>
302     </html>

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