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1 senoner 542 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
2     <html>
3     <head>
4 senoner 702
5 senoner 542 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="index.css">
6     <title>The Linux Sampler Project</title>
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110    
111     <body>
112    
113     <div id="mainwindow"><img name="LinuxSampler" src="gfx/lsbackground.jpg" alt="LinuxSampler">
114    
115     <h1><span class="hidden">The LinuxSampler Project</span></h1>
116    
117     <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr><th colspan=2 align=left>
118     <img name="h1about" src="gfx/h1about.png" alt="About"><span class="hidden">about</span></th></tr>
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135 schoenebeck 1935
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149 schoenebeck 1947 <a href="donations.html">Why donate?</a>
150     </div>
151 schoenebeck 1935
152 senoner 542 </td><td valign=top width="100%">
153     <div id="contents">
154    
155 schoenebeck 1610 <h2>The Project</h2>
156 senoner 542 <p class="default">
157 schoenebeck 1613 The LinuxSampler project was founded with the
158 schoenebeck 1770 goal to produce a free, streaming capable open source pure
159     software audio sampler with professional grade features,
160     comparable to both hardware and commercial Windows/Mac software
161     samplers and to introduce new features not yet available by any
162     other sampler in the world.
163 schoenebeck 1610 </p>
164    
165     <h2>The Engine</h2>
166     <p class="default">
167     <u><b>LinuxSampler</b></u> was designed very modular, especially
168     (and in contrast to other samplers) it was decoupled from any user
169     interface. LinuxSampler itself usually runs as own process in the
170     background of the computer and usually does not show up anything on
171     the screen, or at most it can be launched to show status
172     informations and debug messages in a console window:<br>
173 senoner 542 <br>
174 schoenebeck 1610 <a href="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console.png">
175     <img src="screenshots/ls_0_5_1_console_preview.png">
176     </a><br>
177 senoner 542 <br>
178 schoenebeck 1610 That means LinuxSampler itself is the "engine" of the sampler, it
179     is the software component which performs all the heavy and time
180     critical computational tasks of handling MIDI events, calculating
181     the audio data and sending the final audio data to your sound
182     card(s). We call LinuxSampler the <i>sampler backend</i>.
183     </p>
184    
185     <h2>The Face(s)</h2>
186     <p class="default">
187     Obviously you need some way to control the sampler. That's where a
188     2nd application comes into game, which we call a
189     <i>sampler frontend</i> application. A frontend is (usually) a
190     graphical application, visible on the screen, providing the user
191     a set of e.g. menus, buttons, sliders, dials, etc. to allow the
192     user to control the sampler in a convenient way. It merely sends
193     the user requests to the sampler engine (LinuxSampler) and in turn
194     shows the engine's status informations on the screen. A frontend
195     does not perform any signal processing tasks, so you can see it as
196     a "face" of the sampler.<br>
197 senoner 542 <br>
198 schoenebeck 1610 For luxury we already provide you two different frontends / "faces"
199     for LinuxSampler:
200     </p>
201     <ul>
202     <li>
203     <u><b>QSampler</b></u> is a light-weight frontend written in
204     C++, using straightforward native graphical controls of the
205     underlying operating system. That way the appearance of
206     QSampler on the screen is very fast and it only consumes very
207     little resources. Due to its utilization of the operating
208     system's common GUI controls, it looks slightly different on
209     every operating system (also dependent of the user's selected
210     theme on his OS):<br>
211     <br>
212     <a href="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_win.jpg">
213     <img src="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_win_preview.jpg">
214     </a>&nbsp;
215 schoenebeck 1612 <a href="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_ubuntu.png">
216 schoenebeck 1610 <img src="screenshots/qs_0_2_1_ubuntu_preview.png">
217     </a><br>
218     <br>
219 schoenebeck 1624 Note however, QSampler does not fully support all features of
220     the sampler engine (LinuxSampler) yet. Most notably the
221     engine's instruments database feature is not yet covered by
222     QSampler. But if you don't need that particular feature,
223     you're certainly fine with QSampler as well.<br>
224     <br>
225 schoenebeck 1610 </li>
226    
227     <li>
228     <u><b>JSampler</b></u> is a full-fledged frontend for
229     LinuxSampler, written in Java and currently comes in two
230     flavors: <b>JSampler "Classic"</b> offers straightforward GUI
231     controls whereas <b>JSampler "Fantasia"</b> provides a modern
232     skin based user interface:<br>
233     <br>
234     <a href="screenshots/fantasia.png"><img src="screenshots/fantasia-preview.png"></a>
235     <br>
236     JSampler supports all features currently available in the
237 schoenebeck 1624 sampler engine (LinuxSampler). Also note that even though
238     JSampler is written in Java and slightly more hungry
239     regarding resources (compared to QSampler), this usually
240     does not have any impact on the audio rendering performance
241     of the sampler, since the engine runs completely independently
242     and with much higher CPU priority than the frontend(s).<br>
243 schoenebeck 1610 </li>
244     </ul>
245     <p class="default">
246     It's completely up to you which frontend to use. You could even use
247     both parallel at the same time for the same sampler engine
248 schoenebeck 1624 instance, really! ;-) You're concerned that your sampler frontend
249     might waste precious resources of your computer? No problem, just
250     setup the sampler session for your needs and then quit the
251     frontend application. The sampler engine doesn't care! It continues
252     to do its job. You need to change something? Start the frontend
253     again (or another frontend) and you see what you expect to see: the
254     current setup and state of the running sampler engine.
255 schoenebeck 1610 </p>
256    
257     <h2>The Format</h2>
258     <p class="default">
259     It is planned to support all common sampler formats in
260     LinuxSampler, but at the moment we chose to concentrate on the
261     Gigasampler format, because when we started this project, the
262     Gigasampler format was (in our opinion) the most popular
263     and "best" sampler format in regards of quality and power,
264     especially for the synthesis of natural instruments like pianos,
265     brass and bowed instruments. But we already made good advance in
266     implementing this format, so we are optimistic to start with
267     adding other formats soon. Beside that we also planned to
268     design our own, sophisticated sampler format to introduce a more
269     powerful and more flexible sampler format compared to
270     any sampler format currently available in the world. Be encouraged
271     to share your ideas about such a new format with us!
272     </p>
273    
274     <h2>The Editor</h2>
275     <p class="default">
276     <u><b>gigedit</b></u> allows you to edit and create instruments
277     for the Gigasampler format, which can be used with LinuxSampler
278     as well as with Tascam's Gigastudio. Following our line of
279     modularity we also made the instrument editors independent
280     applications. Because let's face it: every sampler format is
281     different, so in our opinion it is better to honor the specific
282     features of one format with its own instrument editor application
283     instead of trying to fiddle everything into one single bloated
284     application. So gigedit is our first editor, dedicated to the .gig
285     format:<br>
286 schoenebeck 1404 <br>
287 schoenebeck 1610 <a href="screenshots/gigedit_0_0_3.png"><img src="screenshots/gigedit_0_0_3_preview.jpg"></a>
288     <br>
289     You can use gigedit as stand-alone application or in conjunction
290     with LinuxSampler. For the latter case gigedit installs a plugin
291     into the sampler engine, so the engine (and with it the frontends)
292     knows that gigedit actually exists and can handle the .gig format.
293     So even though we decoupled the sampler's components into
294 schoenebeck 1624 independent applications, they all work seamlessly together.
295     <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/doc/gigedit/quickstart/gigedit_quickstart.html#live_editing">
296     Just press the "Edit" button
297     </a> on a channel strip of a frontend and
298 schoenebeck 1610 gigedit will automatically popup on the screen and you're
299     immediately ready to edit your selected instrument, making all your
300     modifications audible in realtime. Even when editing huge
301     instruments of 1GB or more, tweak the instrument with gigedit and
302     immediately hear it while playing on the keyboard at the same time.
303     And the good thing: even with new sampler formats we're going to
304     add soon (and with it new editors), you don't have to remember
305     which instrument you loaded uses which format. Simply click on
306     "Edit" in a frontend and the sampler engine will choose the right
307     instrument editor application for the respective instrument for
308     you.
309 senoner 542 </p>
310    
311 schoenebeck 1610 <h2>The Technical Interface</h2>
312     <p class="default">
313     As the components of the sampler are independent applications,
314     there must be a way to let the applications communicate with each
315     other. For this LinuxSampler provides a native C++
316     <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface">API</a>
317     as well as a network interface using an ASCII based protocol which
318     we call "<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/api/draft-linuxsampler-protocol.html" title="LinuxSampler Control Protocol">LSCP</a>"
319     for controlling the sampler engine and managing sampler sessions.
320 schoenebeck 1624 Our frontends support that network interface, which also allows to
321 schoenebeck 1610 control the sampler engine with the GUI frontend(s) remotely from
322     another computer, probably even running a completely different
323 schoenebeck 1624 Operating System. And compared to other remote control solutions,
324     the frontend won't feel sluggish, as the frontend is running on
325     your local machine.<br>
326     <br>
327     You can also configure your computer to automatically start the
328     sampler engine and loading your prefered sampler session without
329     any frontend, simply by using a <i>LSCP session file</i>. How do
330     you get such a "LSCP session file"? Both frontends write LSCP
331     session files for you when you request them to save your current
332     sampler session. And as those LSCP session files are ordinary
333     human readable text files, you can adjust them with any text
334     editor if you want.
335 schoenebeck 1610 </p>
336    
337 schoenebeck 1624 <h2>The Compatibility</h2>
338     <p class="default">
339     LinuxSampler is available for the most popular operating
340     systems and already supports a variety of audio and MIDI driver
341     systems on each OS. It does not require any special dedicated
342     device drivers from the sound card manufacturers, so you can
343     also use it with cheap consumer cards. Due to its clean design
344     the sampler can be ported to other operating systems and
345     extended for further driver systems with a minimum of effort.
346     So we're prepared for the future!
347     </p>
348    
349 schoenebeck 1610 <h2>The Community</h2>
350     <p class="default">
351 schoenebeck 1770 You need a helping hand? You certainly get the answers on your
352     personal questions on our
353 schoenebeck 1856 <a href="http://bb.linuxsampler.org/">web forum</a>.<br>
354 schoenebeck 1770 <br>
355 schoenebeck 1610 All applications are under active development. However we all work
356     on this project for fun in our spare time. There are still so many
357     things to do and our hands are limited. So don't hesitate on
358     participating to the project! You don't necessarily need to be a
359     skilled programmer to help the project. Testing the applications,
360     <a href="http://bugs.linuxsampler.org.">reporting bugs</a>, writing
361     documentation, providing artwork, themes for frontends, etc. helps
362     us and all users a lot! Simply subscribe to our
363     <a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxsampler-devel">
364 schoenebeck 1770 developers mailing list
365 schoenebeck 1610 </a> and we'll of course take you by the hand in case you want to
366     participate with active source code development. Don't be afraid!
367     You have your own ideas and concepts for making the sampler better?
368     Great, share them with us!<br>
369     <br>
370     </p>
371    
372 senoner 542 </div>
373     </td></tr></table>
374    
375     </div>
376    
377     </body>
378     </html>

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