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1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
2 <html>
3 <head>
4
5 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="index.css">
6 <title>The Linux Sampler Project</title>
7
8 <meta http-equiv="content-type"
9 content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
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98 </head>
99
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>
110 <a id="about" href="about.html" onmouseover="javascript:if(document.images)document.about.src = aboutover.src" onmouseout="javascript:if(document.images)document.about.src = aboutout.src"><img name="about" src="gfx/mabout.png" alt="about"></a>
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122 </td><td valign=top width="100%">
123 <div id="contents">
124
125 <h2>The Project</h2>
126 <p class="default">
127 The LinuxSampler proect was founded with the
128 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 <br>
144 <a href="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console.png">
145 <img src="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console_preview.png">
146 </a><br>
147 <br>
148 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 <br>
168 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.png">
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 <br>
240 <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 </p>
261
262 <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 </div>
297 </td></tr></table>
298
299 </div>
300
301 </body>
302 </html>

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