Version 4.2.0 (25 Jul 2019) This is a maintenance release with important fixes; especially it fixes issues with gig files in GigaStudio v4 format, however this release also introduces some few new features and additions. Most notably it is now possible to write large gig files splitted over extension files (.gx01, .gx02, ...). Previously it was only possible to read gig files with extension files, but libgig only supported to save large gig files as one single, monolithic gig file. The problem with the latter was that gig files >= 2 GB could only be read by libgig, but could not be loaded with any version of GigaStudio. So this solves that legacy support issue. Apart from that, a bunch of convenience methods have been added. Version 4.1.0 (25 Nov 2017) This release adds support for files much larger than 2 GB for GigaStudio / Gigasampler (.gig), DLS, as well as for RIFF files in general. This file size limitation existed for a very long time due to the RIFF format's historical, internal 32 bit file offsets. To circumvent this file size limitation the concept of so called "extension files" was added in the past to the GigaStudio format, which means that the GigaStudio instrument editor splitted the respective overall instrument file into a set of files (.gig, .gx01, .gx02, ...), each being max. 2 GB in size, and all of them were expected to be located in the same directory for the sampler to load the entire large instrument successfully. libgig always supported only reading such gig extension files, however libgig never supported to create .gig files with extension files, nor did it support modifying existing ones. In this release it was necessary to finally get rid of this overall file size limitation in libgig. Now when that concept of extension files was introduced years ago, it made sense at that point, because there were still many systems out there which still had no support for large files (on either OS or file system level). However today even on low end mobile devices support for large files is already a broad standard. Accordingly instead of adding write support for extension files in libgig, the problem was addressed at its root by transparently using appropriate, automatic file offset sizes. So when writing .gig/DLS/RIFF files smaller than 2 GB there are still 32 bit file offsets being used by libgig. Accordingly such files are still backward compatible with older software. However if the overall file size to be written is 2 GB or larger, then 64 bit file offsets are automatically used by libgig instead. Note though that due to that circumstance such files >= 2 GB are not backward compatible with older versions of libgig, nor could they be loaded with the original GigaStudio software. Another major new feature in this libgig release is the entirely new serialization API (Serialization.h) which provides a powerful and easy way to serialize and deserialize an arbitrary set of native C++ objects into an abstract data stream. Which means you can simply save the entire runtime state of an application to a file or send it as data over "wire" (i.e. over network or to another process) and restore that runtime state from that data there at any time. In contrast to other C++ serialization frameworks out there, this framework provides two major benefits: 1. This serialization framework is designed to be very robust regarding potential versioning changes of the native C++ classes being (de)serialized. So even if the C++ classes have seen massive software changes between the point where they were serialized and the point where they are to be deserialized; for example if class member variables of serialized C++ objects were renamed in meantime, or if variable offsets, or variables' data types had been changed, then the deserialization algorithm can still cope with such common software changes automatically in many cases, that is as long as the deserialization algorithm can "guess" what the changes were exactly. If the serialization framework is unable to automatically detect the precise software changes, then it will abort the deserialization task with an exception and an error message stating that the software versions are incompatible. 2. This serialization framework supports "partial" deserialization. That means it not only allows to restore an entire runtime state, but it also allows to only restore an arbitrary desired subset of information from the previously serialized data stream, while leaving all other data of the running C++ objects untouched. The serialization framework also incorporates a reflection API which allows applications to implement convenient editors on top of such serialized data, i.e. allowing end users to pick or alter specific information within the serialized data. The new Serialization framework is already embedded into the gig classes of libgig, and it is used as basis for the new powerful macro features in the gigedit instrument editor application. Refer to the release notes of gigedit 1.1.0 for more information about those new macro features in gigedit. Version 4.0.0 (14 Jul 2015) This major release of libgig adds support for other file formats: SoundFont 2 (.sf2), KORG multi sample instruments (.KSF, .KMP) and AKAI format sounds. The AKAI classes are a fork of Sébastien Métrot's libakai and since it is released under a different license (LGPL) than libgig is (GPL), the AKAI classes are built as separate DLL file. All other classes of those new file formats are built and bundled with the existing libgig DLL. Thanks to Grigor Iliev for his work on the SoundFont 2 classes! 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 classes should be sufficient for many tasks. Adding support for KORG's .PCG files is not planned at the moment. Various new command line tools have been added as well to dump, extract and convert between all those file formats now. Each one of it has a man page, so please refer to the respective man page of the individual command line tool for details. The GigaStudio/Gigasampler classes received a load of fixes during the last six years. And support for features introduced with the last official GigaStudio 4 software (RIP) were added, for instance support for so called "iMIDI Rules". Those rules allow i.e. to trigger notes by MIDI CC and to define a sample set for legato playing style. In the meantime it seems as if the GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4, because Tascam discontinued this product and the intellectual property of GigaStudio had been sold several times between companies. It is currently not possible to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore and we personally don't expect that this situation will ever change. Does this also mean the end of new features for libgig? Not really! Actually we already started to add new features to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format which never existed with the GigaStudio/Gigasampler software: The most noteworthy new feature added by us is support for real-time instrument scripts. These are little "programs" which you can bundle with your .gig sounds to add a custom behavior to your sounds when playing them with i.e. LinuxSampler. Find out more about this new major feature on: http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/ There are also some more minor extensions to the .gig format, for example support for far more MIDI CC's than originally allowed by the GigaStudio software. Obviously all those custom extensions will not work with any version of the official GigaStudio software, those new features will only work with a recent version of LinuxSampler and gigedit at the moment. 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. Version 3.3.0 (30 Jul 2009) Partial support for MIDI rules, the rest are just bug fixes. Version 3.2.1 (5 Dec 2007) Just some minor performance optimizations. Version 3.2.0 (14 Oct 2007) This release once again comes with a huge bunch of fixes regarding Gigasampler write support. Instrument files created from scratch with libgig can finally be loaded into the Gigasampler application as well. libgig's home has moved! From now on you can find it on: http://www.linuxsampler.org/libgig/ Please update your links and bookmarks! Version 3.1.1 (24 Mar 2007) This is a bugfix release, fixing one important bug regarding gig v3 support (custom split points) and a lot of bugs regarding .gig write support. And this is the first official release for the Windows platform. Version 3.1.0 (24 Nov 2006) libgig's home has moved (slightly) from http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/ to http://stud.hs-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/, please update your links and bookmarks! This is due to the recent renaming of the University of Heilbronn, which kindly hosts this and other projects. Version 3.0.0 (28 Apr 2006) This is the first release which allows to create new and modify existing .gig files. Beside that it also includes another bunch of bug fixes and Gigasampler v3 support improvements.