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110    
111  <body>  <body>
112    
113          <div id="mainwindow"><img name="LinuxSampler" src="gfx/lsbackground.jpg" alt="LinuxSampler">          <div id="mainwindow"><div class="lsbackground"><img name="LinuxSampler" src="gfx/lsbackground.jpg" alt="LinuxSampler"></div>
114    
115                  <h1><span class="hidden">The LinuxSampler Project</span></h1>                  <h1><span class="hidden">The LinuxSampler Project</span></h1>
116    
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123                          <a id="screenshots" href="screenshots.html" onmouseover="javascript:if(document.images)document.screenshots.src = screenshotsover.src" onmouseout="javascript:if(document.images)document.screenshots.src = screenshotsout.src"><img name="screenshots" src="gfx/mscreenshots.png" alt="screenshots"></a>                          <a id="screenshots" href="screenshots.html" onmouseover="javascript:if(document.images)document.screenshots.src = screenshotsover.src" onmouseout="javascript:if(document.images)document.screenshots.src = screenshotsout.src"><img name="screenshots" src="gfx/mscreenshots.png" alt="screenshots"></a>
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155    <a href="donations.html">Why donate?</a>
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176                          <div id="contents">                          <div id="contents">
177    
178                          <h2>General</h2>                          <h2>The Project</h2>
179                            <p class="default">
180                            The LinuxSampler project was founded with the
181                            goal to produce a free, streaming capable open source pure
182                            software audio sampler with professional grade features,
183                            comparable to both hardware and commercial Windows/Mac software
184                            samplers and to introduce new features not yet available by any
185                            other sampler in the world.
186                            </p>
187    
188                            <h2>The Engine</h2>
189                            <p class="default">
190                            <u><b>LinuxSampler</b></u> was designed very modular, especially
191                            (and in contrast to other samplers) it was decoupled from any user
192                            interface. LinuxSampler itself usually runs as own process in the
193                            background of the computer and usually does not show up anything on
194                            the screen, or at most it can be launched to show status
195                            informations and debug messages in a console window:<br>
196                            <br>
197                            <a href="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console.png">
198                                    <img src="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console_preview.png">
199                            </a><br>
200                            <br>
201                            That means LinuxSampler itself is the "engine" of the sampler, it
202                            is the software component which performs all the heavy and time
203                            critical computational tasks of handling MIDI events, calculating
204                            the audio data and sending the final audio data to your sound
205                            card(s). We call LinuxSampler the <i>sampler backend</i>.
206                            </p>
207    
208                            <h2>The Face(s)</h2>
209                            <p class="default">
210                            Obviously you need some way to control the sampler. That's where a
211                            2nd application comes into game, which we call a
212                            <i>sampler frontend</i> application. A frontend is (usually) a
213                            graphical application, visible on the screen, providing the user
214                            a set of e.g. menus, buttons, sliders, dials, etc. to allow the
215                            user to control the sampler in a convenient way. It merely sends
216                            the user requests to the sampler engine (LinuxSampler) and in turn
217                            shows the engine's status informations on the screen. A frontend
218                            does not perform any signal processing tasks, so you can see it as
219                            a "face" of the sampler.<br>
220                            <br>
221                            For luxury we already provide you two different frontends / "faces"
222                            for LinuxSampler:
223                            </p>
224                            <ul>
225                                    <li>
226                                    <u><b>QSampler</b></u> is a light-weight frontend written in
227                                    C++, using straightforward native graphical controls of the
228                                    underlying operating system. That way the appearance of
229                                    QSampler on the screen is very fast and it only consumes very
230                                    little resources. Due to its utilization of the operating
231                                    system's common GUI controls, it looks slightly different on
232                                    every operating system (also dependent of the user's selected
233                                    theme on his OS):<br>
234                                    <br>
235                                    <a href="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_win.jpg">
236                                            <img src="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_win_preview.jpg">
237                                    </a>&nbsp;
238                                    <a href="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_ubuntu.png">
239                                            <img src="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_ubuntu_preview.png">
240                                    </a><br>
241                                    <br>
242                                    Note however, QSampler does not fully support all features of
243                                    the sampler engine (LinuxSampler) yet. Most notably the
244                                    engine's instruments database feature is not yet covered by
245                                    QSampler. But if you don't need that particular feature,
246                                    you're certainly fine with QSampler as well.<br>
247                                    <br>
248                                    </li>
249    
250                                    <li>
251                                    <u><b>JSampler</b></u> is a full-fledged frontend for
252                                    LinuxSampler, written in Java and currently comes in two
253                                    flavors: <b>JSampler "Classic"</b> offers straightforward GUI
254                                    controls whereas <b>JSampler "Fantasia"</b> provides a modern
255                                    skin based user interface:<br>
256                                    <br>
257                                    <a href="screenshots/fantasia.png"><img src="screenshots/fantasia-preview.png"></a>
258                                    <br>
259                                    JSampler supports all features currently available in the
260                                    sampler engine (LinuxSampler). Also note that even though
261                                    JSampler is written in Java and slightly more hungry
262                                    regarding resources (compared to QSampler), this usually
263                                    does not have any impact on the audio rendering performance
264                                    of the sampler, since the engine runs completely independently
265                                    and with much higher CPU priority than the frontend(s).<br>
266                                    </li>
267                            </ul>
268                            <p class="default">
269                            It's completely up to you which frontend to use. You could even use
270                            both parallel at the same time for the same sampler engine
271                            instance, really! ;-) You're concerned that your sampler frontend
272                            might waste precious resources of your computer? No problem, just
273                            setup the sampler session for your needs and then quit the
274                            frontend application. The sampler engine doesn't care! It continues
275                            to do its job. You need to change something? Start the frontend
276                            again (or another frontend) and you see what you expect to see: the
277                            current setup and state of the running sampler engine.
278                            </p>
279    
280                            <h2>The Format</h2>
281                            <p class="default">
282                            It is planned to support all common sampler formats in
283                            LinuxSampler, but at the moment we chose to concentrate on the
284                            Gigasampler format, because when we started this project, the
285                            Gigasampler format was (in our opinion) the most popular
286                            and "best" sampler format in regards of quality and power,
287                            especially      for the synthesis of natural instruments like pianos,
288                            brass and bowed instruments. But we already made good advance in
289                            implementing this format, so we are optimistic to start with
290                            adding other formats soon. Beside that we also planned to
291                            design our own, sophisticated sampler format to introduce a more
292                            powerful and more flexible sampler format compared to
293                            any sampler format currently available in the world. Be encouraged
294                            to share your ideas about such a new format with us!
295                            </p>
296    
297                            <h2>The Editor</h2>
298                            <p class="default">
299                            <u><b>gigedit</b></u> allows you to edit and create instruments
300                            for the Gigasampler format, which can be used with LinuxSampler
301                            as well as with Tascam's Gigastudio. Following our line of
302                            modularity we also made the instrument editors independent
303                            applications. Because let's face it: every sampler format is
304                            different, so in our opinion it is better to honor the specific
305                            features of one format with its own instrument editor application
306                            instead of trying to fiddle everything into one single bloated
307                            application. So gigedit is our first editor, dedicated to the .gig
308                            format:<br>
309                            <br>
310                            <a href="screenshots/gigedit_0_0_3.png"><img src="screenshots/gigedit_0_0_3_preview.jpg"></a>
311                            <br>
312                            You can use gigedit as stand-alone application or in conjunction
313                            with LinuxSampler. For the latter case gigedit installs a plugin
314                            into the sampler engine, so the engine (and with it the frontends)
315                            knows that gigedit actually exists and can handle the .gig format.
316                            So even though we decoupled the sampler's components into
317                            independent applications, they all work seamlessly together.
318                            <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/gigedit/quickstart/gigedit_quickstart.html#live_editing">
319                                    Just press the "Edit" button
320                            </a> on a channel strip of a frontend and
321                            gigedit will automatically popup on the screen and you're
322                            immediately ready to edit your selected instrument, making all your
323                            modifications audible in realtime. Even when editing huge
324                            instruments of 1GB or more, tweak the instrument with gigedit and
325                            immediately hear it while playing on the keyboard at the same time.
326                            And the good thing: even with new sampler formats we're going to
327                            add soon (and with it new editors), you don't have to remember
328                            which instrument you loaded uses which format. Simply click on
329                            "Edit" in a frontend and the sampler engine will choose the right
330                            instrument editor application for the respective instrument for
331                            you.
332                            </p>
333    
334                            <h2>The Technical Interface</h2>
335                            <p class="default">
336                            As the components of the sampler are independent applications,
337                            there must be a way to let the applications communicate with each
338                            other. For this LinuxSampler provides a native C++
339                            <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface">API</a>
340                            as well as a network interface using an ASCII based protocol which
341                            we call "<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html" title="LinuxSampler Control Protocol">LSCP</a>"
342                            for controlling the sampler engine and managing sampler sessions.
343                            Our frontends support that network interface, which also allows to
344                            control the sampler engine with the GUI frontend(s) remotely from
345                            another computer, probably even running a completely different
346                            Operating System. And compared to other remote control solutions,
347                            the frontend won't feel sluggish, as the frontend is running on
348                            your local machine.<br>
349                            <br>
350                            You can also configure your computer to automatically start the
351                            sampler engine and loading your prefered sampler session without
352                            any frontend, simply by using a <i>LSCP session file</i>. How do
353                            you get such a "LSCP session file"? Both frontends write LSCP
354                            session files for you when you request them to save your current
355                            sampler session. And as those LSCP session files are ordinary
356                            human readable text files, you can adjust them with any text
357                            editor if you want.
358                            </p>
359    
360                            <h2>The Compatibility</h2>
361                            <p class="default">
362                            LinuxSampler is available for the most popular operating
363                            systems and already supports a variety of audio and MIDI driver
364                            systems on each OS. It does not require any special dedicated
365                            device drivers from the sound card manufacturers, so you can
366                            also use it with cheap consumer cards. Due to its clean design
367                            the sampler can be ported to other operating systems and
368                            extended for further driver systems with a minimum of effort.
369                            So we're prepared for the future!
370                            </p>
371    
372                            <h2>The Community</h2>
373                          <p class="default">                          <p class="default">
374                          LinuxSampler is a work in progress. The goal is to produce a free, open source pure software audio sampler                          You need a helping hand? You certainly get the answers on your
375                          with professional grade features, comparable to both hardware and commercial Windows/Mac software samplers                          personal questions on our
376                          and to introduce new features not yet available by any other sampler in the world.<br>                          <a href="http://bb.linuxsampler.org/">web forum</a>.<br>
                         <br>  
                         LinuxSampler was designed as a sampler backend, decoupled from any user interface. It provides a native C++  
                         <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface">API</a> as well as a network interface  
                         using an ASCII based protocol called <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html">LSCP</a>  
                         for controlling the sampler and managing sampler sessions. But don't be afraid, with QSampler (based on the  
                         cross-platform C++ GUI library Qt) and JSampler (Java based, thus platform independent) we already have two convenient  
                         frontends for LinuxSampler and due to the  
                         decoupled design you can even control the sampler with the GUI frontend(s) from another computer, probably even running  
                         another OS like Windows or OS X. Beside our own custom network control layer we planned to add existing ones as well  
                         (e.g. <a href="http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/">OSC</a>). With the planned SMP and cluster support  
                         LinuxSampler might become a very interesting tool for high-end studios and concerts in future.<br>  
                         <br>  
                         It is planned to support all common sampler formats in LinuxSampler, but at the moment we chose to concentrate on the  
                         Gigasampler format, because when we started this project, the Gigasampler format was (in our opinion) the most popular  
                         and "best" sampler format in regards of quality and power, especially  
                         for the synthesis of natural instruments like pianos, brass and bowed instruments. But we already made good advance in  
                         implementing this format, so we are optimistic to start with adding other formats soon. Beside that we also planned to  
                         design our own, sophisticated sampler format to introduce a more powerful and more flexible sampler format compared to  
                         any sampler format currently available in the world. Be encouraged to share your ideas about such a new format with us!<br>  
377                          <br>                          <br>
378                          You might also want to read <a href="faq.html#aga">this FAQ</a> about explanations of the various subprojects.<br>                          All applications are under active development. However we all work
379                            on this project for fun in our spare time. There are still so many
380                            things to do and our hands are limited. So don't hesitate on
381                            participating to the project! You don't necessarily need to be a
382                            skilled programmer to help the project. Testing the applications,
383                            <a href="http://bugs.linuxsampler.org.">reporting bugs</a>, writing
384                            documentation, providing artwork, themes for frontends, etc. helps
385                            us and all users a lot! Simply subscribe to our
386                            <a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxsampler-devel">
387                                    developers mailing list
388                            </a> and we'll of course take you by the hand in case you want to
389                            participate with active source code development. Don't be afraid!
390                            You have your own ideas and concepts for making the sampler better?
391                            Great, share them with us!<br>
392                          <br>                          <br>
                         Anyway, there are so many things to do and our hands are limited. So don't hesitate on participating to the project!  
393                          </p>                          </p>
394    
395                  </div>                  </div>

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