release_notes/linuxsampler_2_0_0/01_linuxsampler_2_0_0.html

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    <h1>LinuxSampler 2.0.0</h1>
    <p>
      LinuxSampler 2.0.0 and friends were released on July 17th 2015.
      Unbelievable six years have passed since the last release of LinuxSampler.
      A load of things have changed in silence, which I want to summarize for
      you in this article.
    </p>

    <h3>New Sampler Engines</h3>
    <p>
      The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes during that long
      period. The sampler engine code base has been unified to a set of common,
      abstract base classes which cleared the way for two new sampler engines:
      <ol>
        <li>The <b>SFZ2</b> format engine (.sfz).</li>
        <li>The <b>SoundFont 2</b> format engine (.sf2).</li>
      </ol>
      So LinuxSampler is not limited to just the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format
      (.gig) anymore.
    </p>

    <h3>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</h3>
    <p>
      Another major new feature is the brand new support for so called
      <i>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</i>, which are small programs that may be
      bundled with sound files to extend the sampler with custom behavior for
      individual sounds. You may know such instrument scripts from commercial
      software samplers. At the moment this scripting feature is yet limited to
      the Giga format engine. <a href="instrument_scripts.html">Find out more ...</a>
    </p>
    <img src="../../gigedit/scripts/gigedit_script_editor.png" caption="NKSP Instrument Script Editor of Gigedit">

    <h3>LSCP Shell</h3>
    <p>
      Also noteworthy is the new command line application <i>lscp</i>, which is
      a text based shell for controlling the sampler from the command line,
      providing colored output, type completion, help text while typing LSCP
      commands and other convenient features for terminal enthusiasts who want
      to use the sampler without GUI frontend applications.
      <a href="lscp_shell.html">Find out more ...</a>
    </p>
    <img src="../../lscp_shell/lscp_shell.png" caption="LSCP Shell">

    <h3>Internal Effects &amp; Extensions to LSCP</h3>
    <p>
      You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler. The
      <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html">LSCP network protocol</a>
      (<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/lscp-1.7.html">v1.7</a>) has
      been extended to
      <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html#effects">manage such effects</a>
      respectively. Effect chains may be
      built, and the individual sampler parts may be routed to an individual
      position of effect chains. At this point only LADSPA plugins are supported
      yet. However the sampler's effect subsystem uses an abstract interface,
      which allows easy integration of other effect systems. Also new with
      latest LSCP version is the ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP command.
    </p>

    <h3>New GigaStudio format features</h3>
    <p>
      <img src="gigedit_imidi_rules.png">
      You may have heard that the GigaStudio software has seen its last version
      with GigaStudio 4. Tascam officially discontinued this product, its
      intellectual property has been sold several times among companies and
      there is currently no way to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore. However
      the GigaStudio format is still under active development with LinuxSampler.
      We not only added support for the latest features introduced with
      GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to trigger notes by
      MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for the first
      time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one of it
      is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
      minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
      supported by GigaStudio before. So you can now use any MIDI CC for EG1
      controller, EG2 controller and attenuation controller.
    </p>

    <h3>DAW Plugin Enhancements</h3>
    <p>
      The sampler's host plugins have also seen some enhancements: the LV2
      plugin now stores and restores the sampler's overall state with the song
      of your DAW application, the LV2 and AudioUnit plugin's outputs
      were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by some users and
      the VST plugin now uses the sampler's
      <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html#MIDI%20Instrument%20Mapping">MIDI instrument mapping system</a>
      to show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among them.
      And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
    </p>

    <h2>Gigedit 1.0.0</h2>
    <p>
     <img src="gigedit_format_extension_warnings.png">
      Also <i>Gigedit</i>, our instrument editor for the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
      format, had been enhanced quite a lot during the last six years. As
      mentioned above, we introduced our own extensions to the Giga format.
      Obviously all those extensions will not work with any GigaStudio version,
      they only work with a recent version of Gigedit and LinuxSampler. Gigedit
      will inform you whenever you are using such kind of custom Giga format
      extension, so that you are always aware in case your changes to sounds are
      not cross/backward compatible with the GigaStudio software. You may also
      disable those warnings on the settings menu.
    </p>

    <h3>Multi-Selection of Dimension Zones</h3>
    <p>
      Until now you were only able to edit either exactly
      one dimension region or all dimension regions simultaneously with gigedit. With this
      release you may now hold the Ctrl button and select a specific set of
      dimension region zones in the dimension region selector area (on the very
      bottom of the Gigedit window) with your mouse. All synthesis parameters you
      then change, will all be applied to that precise set of dimension region
      zones.
    </p>
    <img src="gigedit_multi_zone_selection.png" caption="Multi-zone selection with Ctrl key">

    <h3>Improvements to Dimension Management</h3>
    <p>
      <img src="gigedit_change_dim_type.png">
      Also managing dimensions has been improved: previously to change the
      type of a dimension you had to delete and recreate the
      dimension. Which was not just inconvenient, but you also had to redefine
      your synthesis parameters from scratch. Now you can just open the
      dimension manager dialog, double click on the displayed dimension type
      and select another type for the respective dimension.
    </p>
    <p>
      <img src="gigedit_manage_dims_all_regions.png">
      Another great enhancement of the dimension manager is the ability to alter
      the dimensions of all regions of an instrument at once. Previously you had
      to do that for each region on the keyboard separately. For example to
      delete a velocity split dimension, you had to double click on a region,
      delete the velocity dimension with the dimension manager dialog, then
      double click on the next region, delete the velocity dimension there as
      well, and so on. Now you can just click on the "All Regions" check box of
      the dimension manager, select the velocity dimension, click on "Remove"
      and that's it. Also notice the different display style in this
      "All Regions" mode, like shown on the screen shot left: Since you are
      viewing the dimension properties of not just one region, but of all
      regions of your instrument, we thought we also need to show you in case
      individual regions differ regarding their precise dimension properties.
      For example on the screen shot on the left you see that some regions have
      a velocity dimension with 2 zones, whereas other regions have a velocity
      dimension with 4 zones instead. Also there seem to be some regions which
      have a modulation wheel dimension and other regions which do not have a
      modulation wheel dimension at all. Same applies to the Layer dimension:
      in this particular example not all regions do have a Layer dimension.
      However all regions seem to have a Sample Channel (Stereo) dimension,
      and all regions even have the same amount of zones for that particular dimension.
    </p>

    <h3>Monitoring Sample References</h3>
    <p>
      <img src="gigedit_sample_references.png">
      When working on complex Giga sounds you certainly noticed that one could
      easily get lost about which samples are exactly used by which
      instrument or even whether a sample is actually used at all by any
      instrument or just left orphaned and wasting disk space. This was also due
      to the fact that the Giga format does not require unique names for
      samples. We have worked on resolving this usability issue. In the samples
      list view you can now read the amount of times a sample is referenced by
      instruments of your .gig file. If a sample is not used at all, then it
      will be shown in striking red color in the sample list view. You may also
      right click on a sample and select "Show references...", a new
      window appears on your screen which will show you where exactly that
      particular sample is used by, that is by which instruments and by which
      regions of those instruments. Also the other way around has been
      addressed: when you now edit the synthesis parameters of a particular
      dimension region, you may now click on the new "&lt;- Select Sample"
      button and Gigedit automatically selects and displays the respective sample
      in the samples list view, which you then might rename to some more
      appropriate sample name, or you might check by which other instrument(s)
      that sample is used by, etc. You want to get rid of all unused samples?
      Simply right click on the samples list view and select
      "Remove unused samples", then select "Save" from the menu and all orphaned
      samples are gone.
    </p>
    <img src="gigedit_go_to_sample.png" caption="Find and select used sample">

    <h3>Silent Cases</h3>
    <p>
      <img src="gigedit_null_sample.png">
      You may now also remove the current sample reference from individual
      dimension regions (assigning a so called "NULL" sample instead) by clicking on
      the new "X" button next to the sample reference field on the "Sample" tab
      of a dimension region; this allows you to define "silent cases", that
      is a case where no sample should be played at all, for example this is
      often used for very low velocity ranges of i.e. between 0 and 6.
    </p>

    <h3>Reordering Instruments</h3>
    <p>
      <img src="gigedit_reorder_instruments.png">
      If you are working on .gig files with a large amount of Instruments, then
      you might also be glad to know that you can finally also re-order the
      instruments of a file by simply dragging the instruments around in the
      instruments list view.
    </p>

    <h3>Combine Tool</h3>
    <p>
      <img src="gigedit_combine_tool.png">
      Another handy new feature for sound designers is the new "Combine" tool,
      which you can reach from the main menu. It allows you to select two ore
      more instruments (by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting with mouse
      left click) from your currently open Giga file and combine those selected
      instruments to a new instrument. This way you may for example create
      stunning layered sounds, or you may create velocity splits, crossfade
      sounds by MIDI controller and much more, all with just a few clicks. This
      may sound like a trivial task, but if you have worked on this before, you
      certainly noticed that this was often a very time consuming and error
      prone task before, especially with complex individual sounds which had
      custom region ranges, custom velocity splits and much more exotic stuff
      to take care of. The combine tool handles all such cases for you
      automatically.
    </p>

    <h3>Improved Interaction with LinuxSampler</h3>
    <p>
      Last but not least, the interaction of Gigedit with LinuxSampler (in so
      called "live mode") had been improved: When you click on the "Edit"
      button of a channel strip in QSampler or Fantasia, Gigedit will be
      launched with the respective instrument automatically being selected.
      Vice versa you may now also just select another instrument with Gigedit's
      instrument list view and LinuxSampler will automatically load and play
      that instrument on the respective sampler part for you. So no more need
      to switch between the Gigedit window and QSampler/Fantasia window all the
      time while working on your sounds with Gigedit.
    </p>

    <h2>QSampler 0.3.0</h2>
    <p>
      <img src="qsampler_sf2_selection.png">
      As new sampler formats made it into LinuxSampler, this was also addressed
      with QSampler. The sound selection dialog now also enumerates the sounds
      of a selected SoundFont file. And to ease switching between sounds, you
      may now click on the name of the current instrument of a channel strip,
      a list will popup that alows you to quickly switch to another sound,
      without having to open the channel strip's detailed part dialog.
    </p>
    <img src="qsampler_quick_switch.png" caption="Drop down list for fast switching between instruments">

    <h3>Suppressing Error Popups</h3>
    <p>
      In the past, error message dialogs frequently popped up on the screen.
      Most of them were just telling unuseful messages, even if the overall
      operation with the sampler was working correctly. There is now an "ignore"
      check box attached to those error message dialogs, which allow you to
      suppress most of the annoying error messages.
    </p>

    <h3>Improved Mac Support</h3>
    <p>
      Recently we created a convenient installer for Mac OS X, which
      conveniently installs all our software components on your Mac. So that
      includes the stand-alone version of the LinuxSampler backend, VST and
      AudioUnit plugin version of the sampler, "Fantasia" and "QSampler" frontends,
      our instrument editor "Gigedit", the LSCP shell and various other command
      line tools. You may also choose only some of them to be installed.
    </p>
    <img src="http://download.linuxsampler.org/pix/screenshots/mac_installer_1.jpg">
    <p>
      Using the sampler has also been improved on Mac. Before you first had to
      launch the LinuxSampler backend separately and then launch QSampler.
      Sometimes the sampler backend even had to be killed explicitly. Now
      you can just click on the QSampler icon and it will automatically spawn
      the sampler backend for you and shows its output on QSampler's integrated
      terminal section. When you quit QSampler, it will also stop the sampler backend
      for you automatically (you may tell QSampler to keep the sampler running in the background).
    </p>

    <h2>libgig 4.0.0</h2>
    <p>
      Our fundamental file access C++ library
      <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/">libgig</a>
      is now more than just a supporter of the GigaStudio/Gigasampler file
      format. New file formats have been added and are now bundled with libgig:
      <ol>
        <li>
          <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespaceKorg.html">
            Classes for KORG's sample based instrument files
          </a> (.KSF, .KMP).
        </li>
        <li>
          <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespacesf2.html">
            Classes for SoundFont v2 files
          </a> (.sf2).
        </li>
        <li>
          <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/classResource.html">
            Classes for AKAI sampler data.
          </a>
        </li>
      </ol>
      Please note that there is currently no support for KORG's .PCG file format
      yet. That's because this file format changes a lot and is not only
      dependent to the precise KORG keyboard model, but also to the precise OS
      version on the same model. And since basic conversion can also be done by
      just accessing the .KSF and .KMP files (sample data, loop informations),
      the current C++ classes should be sufficient for many tasks. Adding
      support for KORG's .PCG files is not planned at the moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Besides those major changes, a load of convenient methods have been added to
      the existing libgig classes to reduce the overall effort working with all
      those file formats with software applications based on libgig.
    </p>
    <p>
      Various command line tools have been added to libgig, which allow to
      dump, correct, extract and convert sounds between those various file formats.
      Refer to the individual <i>man pages</i> for details about how to use
      those new command line tools. As you can see, the ground had been prepared
      for further new sampler engines with LinuxSampler to come.
    </p>

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1	schoenebeck	2811	<html>
2			<head>
3			<meta name="author" content="Christian Schoenebeck">
4			<title>Release Notes LinuxSampler 2.0.0</title>
5	schoenebeck	2813	<navpath>LinuxSampler 2.0.0</navpath>
6	schoenebeck	2811	<meta name="description" content="Release notes for LinuxSampler 2.0.0.">
7			<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://doc.linuxsampler.org/css/preview.css">
8			<script type="text/javascript" src="http://doc.linuxsampler.org/js/preview.js"></script>
9			</head>
10			<body>
11			<h1>LinuxSampler 2.0.0</h1>
12			<p>
13	schoenebeck	2819	LinuxSampler 2.0.0 and friends were released on July 17th 2015.
14	schoenebeck	2811	Unbelievable six years have passed since the last release of LinuxSampler.
15			A load of things have changed in silence, which I want to summarize for
16			you in this article.
17			</p>
18
19			<h3>New Sampler Engines</h3>
20			<p>
21			The sampler's code base has seen substantial changes during that long
22			period. The sampler engine code base has been unified to a set of common,
23			abstract base classes which cleared the way for two new sampler engines:
24			<ol>
25			<li>The <b>SFZ2</b> format engine (.sfz).</li>
26			<li>The <b>SoundFont 2</b> format engine (.sf2).</li>
27			</ol>
28			So LinuxSampler is not limited to just the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format
29			(.gig) anymore.
30			</p>
31
32			<h3>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</h3>
33			<p>
34			Another major new feature is the brand new support for so called
35			<i>Real-Time Instrument Scripts</i>, which are small programs that may be
36			bundled with sound files to extend the sampler with custom behavior for
37			individual sounds. You may know such instrument scripts from commercial
38			software samplers. At the moment this scripting feature is yet limited to
39			the Giga format engine. <a href="instrument_scripts.html">Find out more ...</a>
40			</p>
41	schoenebeck	2813	<img src="../../gigedit/scripts/gigedit_script_editor.png" caption="NKSP Instrument Script Editor of Gigedit">
42	schoenebeck	2811
43			<h3>LSCP Shell</h3>
44			<p>
45			Also noteworthy is the new command line application <i>lscp</i>, which is
46			a text based shell for controlling the sampler from the command line,
47			providing colored output, type completion, help text while typing LSCP
48			commands and other convenient features for terminal enthusiasts who want
49			to use the sampler without GUI frontend applications.
50	schoenebeck	2813	<a href="lscp_shell.html">Find out more ...</a>
51	schoenebeck	2811	</p>
52			<img src="../../lscp_shell/lscp_shell.png" caption="LSCP Shell">
53
54			<h3>Internal Effects & Extensions to LSCP</h3>
55			<p>
56			You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler. The
57			<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html">LSCP network protocol</a>
58			(<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/lscp-1.7.html">v1.7</a>) has
59	schoenebeck	2818	been extended to
60			<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html#effects">manage such effects</a>
61			respectively. Effect chains may be
62	schoenebeck	2811	built, and the individual sampler parts may be routed to an individual
63			position of effect chains. At this point only LADSPA plugins are supported
64			yet. However the sampler's effect subsystem uses an abstract interface,
65			which allows easy integration of other effect systems. Also new with
66			latest LSCP version is the ability to trigger MIDI CCs by LSCP command.
67			</p>
68
69			<h3>New GigaStudio format features</h3>
70			<p>
71	schoenebeck	2814	<img src="gigedit_imidi_rules.png">
72	schoenebeck	2811	You may have heard that the GigaStudio software has seen its last version
73			with GigaStudio 4. Tascam officially discontinued this product, its
74			intellectual property has been sold several times among companies and
75			there is currently no way to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore. However
76			the GigaStudio format is still under active development with LinuxSampler.
77			We not only added support for the latest features introduced with
78			GigaStudio 4: iMIDI rules for example which allow to trigger notes by
79			MIDI CC and allow i.e. defining a set of legato samples; for the first
80			time ever we also added our own extensions to the Giga format: one of it
81			is the previously mentioned new instrument scripting feature and a more
82			minor extension is support for various other MIDI CCs which were never
83			supported by GigaStudio before. So you can now use any MIDI CC for EG1
84			controller, EG2 controller and attenuation controller.
85			</p>
86
87			<h3>DAW Plugin Enhancements</h3>
88			<p>
89			The sampler's host plugins have also seen some enhancements: the LV2
90			plugin now stores and restores the sampler's overall state with the song
91			of your DAW application, the LV2 and AudioUnit plugin's outputs
92			were increased from 2 audio channels to 16 upon request by some users and
93	schoenebeck	2814	the VST plugin now uses the sampler's
94			<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html#MIDI%20Instrument%20Mapping">MIDI instrument mapping system</a>
95			to show a list of available sounds to allow the user to switch among them.
96	schoenebeck	2811	And last but not least the VST plugin may also be used on Mac now.
97			</p>
98
99			<h2>Gigedit 1.0.0</h2>
100			<p>
101	schoenebeck	2814	<img src="gigedit_format_extension_warnings.png">
102	schoenebeck	2811	Also <i>Gigedit</i>, our instrument editor for the GigaStudio/Gigasampler
103			format, had been enhanced quite a lot during the last six years. As
104			mentioned above, we introduced our own extensions to the Giga format.
105			Obviously all those extensions will not work with any GigaStudio version,
106			they only work with a recent version of Gigedit and LinuxSampler. Gigedit
107			will inform you whenever you are using such kind of custom Giga format
108			extension, so that you are always aware in case your changes to sounds are
109			not cross/backward compatible with the GigaStudio software. You may also
110			disable those warnings on the settings menu.
111			</p>
112
113			<h3>Multi-Selection of Dimension Zones</h3>
114			<p>
115	schoenebeck	2813	Until now you were only able to edit either exactly
116			one dimension region or all dimension regions simultaneously with gigedit. With this
117	schoenebeck	2811	release you may now hold the Ctrl button and select a specific set of
118			dimension region zones in the dimension region selector area (on the very
119			bottom of the Gigedit window) with your mouse. All synthesis parameters you
120			then change, will all be applied to that precise set of dimension region
121			zones.
122			</p>
123	schoenebeck	2813	<img src="gigedit_multi_zone_selection.png" caption="Multi-zone selection with Ctrl key">
124	schoenebeck	2811
125			<h3>Improvements to Dimension Management</h3>
126			<p>
127	schoenebeck	2815	<img src="gigedit_change_dim_type.png">
128	schoenebeck	2814	Also managing dimensions has been improved: previously to change the
129	schoenebeck	2815	type of a dimension you had to delete and recreate the
130	schoenebeck	2811	dimension. Which was not just inconvenient, but you also had to redefine
131			your synthesis parameters from scratch. Now you can just open the
132	schoenebeck	2815	dimension manager dialog, double click on the displayed dimension type
133			and select another type for the respective dimension.
134	schoenebeck	2811	</p>
135	schoenebeck	2815	<p>
136			<img src="gigedit_manage_dims_all_regions.png">
137			Another great enhancement of the dimension manager is the ability to alter
138			the dimensions of all regions of an instrument at once. Previously you had
139			to do that for each region on the keyboard separately. For example to
140			delete a velocity split dimension, you had to double click on a region,
141			delete the velocity dimension with the dimension manager dialog, then
142			double click on the next region, delete the velocity dimension there as
143			well, and so on. Now you can just click on the "All Regions" check box of
144			the dimension manager, select the velocity dimension, click on "Remove"
145			and that's it. Also notice the different display style in this
146			"All Regions" mode, like shown on the screen shot left: Since you are
147			viewing the dimension properties of not just one region, but of all
148			regions of your instrument, we thought we also need to show you in case
149			individual regions differ regarding their precise dimension properties.
150			For example on the screen shot on the left you see that some regions have
151			a velocity dimension with 2 zones, whereas other regions have a velocity
152			dimension with 4 zones instead. Also there seem to be some regions which
153			have a modulation wheel dimension and other regions which do not have a
154			modulation wheel dimension at all. Same applies to the Layer dimension:
155			in this particular example not all regions do have a Layer dimension.
156			However all regions seem to have a Sample Channel (Stereo) dimension,
157			and all regions even have the same amount of zones for that particular dimension.
158			</p>
159	schoenebeck	2811
160			<h3>Monitoring Sample References</h3>
161			<p>
162	schoenebeck	2814	<img src="gigedit_sample_references.png">
163	schoenebeck	2811	When working on complex Giga sounds you certainly noticed that one could
164			easily get lost about which samples are exactly used by which
165			instrument or even whether a sample is actually used at all by any
166			instrument or just left orphaned and wasting disk space. This was also due
167			to the fact that the Giga format does not require unique names for
168			samples. We have worked on resolving this usability issue. In the samples
169			list view you can now read the amount of times a sample is referenced by
170			instruments of your .gig file. If a sample is not used at all, then it
171			will be shown in striking red color in the sample list view. You may also
172			right click on a sample and select "Show references...", a new
173			window appears on your screen which will show you where exactly that
174			particular sample is used by, that is by which instruments and by which
175			regions of those instruments. Also the other way around has been
176			addressed: when you now edit the synthesis parameters of a particular
177			dimension region, you may now click on the new "<- Select Sample"
178			button and Gigedit automatically selects and displays the respective sample
179	schoenebeck	2814	in the samples list view, which you then might rename to some more
180	schoenebeck	2811	appropriate sample name, or you might check by which other instrument(s)
181	schoenebeck	2814	that sample is used by, etc. You want to get rid of all unused samples?
182			Simply right click on the samples list view and select
183			"Remove unused samples", then select "Save" from the menu and all orphaned
184			samples are gone.
185	schoenebeck	2811	</p>
186	schoenebeck	2813	<img src="gigedit_go_to_sample.png" caption="Find and select used sample">
187	schoenebeck	2811
188			<h3>Silent Cases</h3>
189			<p>
190	schoenebeck	2814	<img src="gigedit_null_sample.png">
191	schoenebeck	2811	You may now also remove the current sample reference from individual
192			dimension regions (assigning a so called "NULL" sample instead) by clicking on
193	schoenebeck	2814	the new "X" button next to the sample reference field on the "Sample" tab
194	schoenebeck	2811	of a dimension region; this allows you to define "silent cases", that
195			is a case where no sample should be played at all, for example this is
196			often used for very low velocity ranges of i.e. between 0 and 6.
197			</p>
198
199			<h3>Reordering Instruments</h3>
200			<p>
201	schoenebeck	2814	<img src="gigedit_reorder_instruments.png">
202	schoenebeck	2811	If you are working on .gig files with a large amount of Instruments, then
203			you might also be glad to know that you can finally also re-order the
204			instruments of a file by simply dragging the instruments around in the
205			instruments list view.
206			</p>
207
208			<h3>Combine Tool</h3>
209			<p>
210	schoenebeck	2814	<img src="gigedit_combine_tool.png">
211	schoenebeck	2811	Another handy new feature for sound designers is the new "Combine" tool,
212			which you can reach from the main menu. It allows you to select two ore
213			more instruments (by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting with mouse
214	schoenebeck	2814	left click) from your currently open Giga file and combine those selected
215	schoenebeck	2811	instruments to a new instrument. This way you may for example create
216			stunning layered sounds, or you may create velocity splits, crossfade
217			sounds by MIDI controller and much more, all with just a few clicks. This
218			may sound like a trivial task, but if you have worked on this before, you
219			certainly noticed that this was often a very time consuming and error
220			prone task before, especially with complex individual sounds which had
221			custom region ranges, custom velocity splits and much more exotic stuff
222			to take care of. The combine tool handles all such cases for you
223			automatically.
224			</p>
225
226			<h3>Improved Interaction with LinuxSampler</h3>
227			<p>
228			Last but not least, the interaction of Gigedit with LinuxSampler (in so
229			called "live mode") had been improved: When you click on the "Edit"
230			button of a channel strip in QSampler or Fantasia, Gigedit will be
231			launched with the respective instrument automatically being selected.
232			Vice versa you may now also just select another instrument with Gigedit's
233			instrument list view and LinuxSampler will automatically load and play
234			that instrument on the respective sampler part for you. So no more need
235			to switch between the Gigedit window and QSampler/Fantasia window all the
236	schoenebeck	2814	time while working on your sounds with Gigedit.
237	schoenebeck	2811	</p>
238
239			<h2>QSampler 0.3.0</h2>
240			<p>
241	schoenebeck	2815	<img src="qsampler_sf2_selection.png">
242	schoenebeck	2811	As new sampler formats made it into LinuxSampler, this was also addressed
243			with QSampler. The sound selection dialog now also enumerates the sounds
244			of a selected SoundFont file. And to ease switching between sounds, you
245			may now click on the name of the current instrument of a channel strip,
246			a list will popup that alows you to quickly switch to another sound,
247			without having to open the channel strip's detailed part dialog.
248			</p>
249	schoenebeck	2816	<img src="qsampler_quick_switch.png" caption="Drop down list for fast switching between instruments">
250	schoenebeck	2811
251			<h3>Suppressing Error Popups</h3>
252			<p>
253			In the past, error message dialogs frequently popped up on the screen.
254			Most of them were just telling unuseful messages, even if the overall
255			operation with the sampler was working correctly. There is now an "ignore"
256			check box attached to those error message dialogs, which allow you to
257			suppress most of the annoying error messages.
258			</p>
259
260			<h3>Improved Mac Support</h3>
261			<p>
262			Recently we created a convenient installer for Mac OS X, which
263			conveniently installs all our software components on your Mac. So that
264			includes the stand-alone version of the LinuxSampler backend, VST and
265			AudioUnit plugin version of the sampler, "Fantasia" and "QSampler" frontends,
266			our instrument editor "Gigedit", the LSCP shell and various other command
267			line tools. You may also choose only some of them to be installed.
268			</p>
269	schoenebeck	2816	<img src="http://download.linuxsampler.org/pix/screenshots/mac_installer_1.jpg">
270	schoenebeck	2811	<p>
271			Using the sampler has also been improved on Mac. Before you first had to
272			launch the LinuxSampler backend separately and then launch QSampler.
273			Sometimes the sampler backend even had to be killed explicitly. Now
274			you can just click on the QSampler icon and it will automatically spawn
275			the sampler backend for you and shows its output on QSampler's integrated
276			terminal section. When you quit QSampler, it will also stop the sampler backend
277			for you automatically (you may tell QSampler to keep the sampler running in the background).
278			</p>
279
280			<h2>libgig 4.0.0</h2>
281			<p>
282			Our fundamental file access C++ library
283			<a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/">libgig</a>
284			is now more than just a supporter of the GigaStudio/Gigasampler file
285			format. New file formats have been added and are now bundled with libgig:
286			<ol>
287			<li>
288			<a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespaceKorg.html">
289			Classes for KORG's sample based instrument files
290			</a> (.KSF, .KMP).
291			</li>
292			<li>
293			<a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/namespacesf2.html">
294			Classes for SoundFont v2 files
295			</a> (.sf2).
296			</li>
297			<li>
298			<a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/libgig/api/classResource.html">
299			Classes for AKAI sampler data.
300			</a>
301			</li>
302			</ol>
303	schoenebeck	2819	Please note that there is currently no support for KORG's .PCG file format
304			yet. That's because this file format changes a lot and is not only
305			dependent to the precise KORG keyboard model, but also to the precise OS
306			version on the same model. And since basic conversion can also be done by
307			just accessing the .KSF and .KMP files (sample data, loop informations),
308			the current C++ classes should be sufficient for many tasks. Adding
309			support for KORG's .PCG files is not planned at the moment.
310			</p>
311			<p>
312			Besides those major changes, a load of convenient methods have been added to
313			the existing libgig classes to reduce the overall effort working with all
314			those file formats with software applications based on libgig.
315			</p>
316			<p>
317	schoenebeck	2811	Various command line tools have been added to libgig, which allow to
318			dump, correct, extract and convert sounds between those various file formats.
319			Refer to the individual <i>man pages</i> for details about how to use
320			those new command line tools. As you can see, the ground had been prepared
321			for further new sampler engines with LinuxSampler to come.
322			</p>
323
324			</body>
325			</html>