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

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