New Xhip 0.7 RC1

[aciddose]

very strange. there must be a bug with latent side-effects somewhere. something like memory being over-written.

to be able to debug that i really need to have a strict method of reproducing the crash

there are tools available to catch these sorts of things but still, you can only catch something when it actually happens and without knowing how to make it happen it becomes very difficult.

http://soundcloud.com/aciddose/reaper-xhip-0-7rc1

you had me thinking it was an obvious bug at first though

[audiojunkie]

Do not post news about this or write about it on your blog. The full release will happen in approximately one week.

I've uploaded a release-candidate for Xhip.

This version includes many bug-fixes and improvements. The most noticeable change is an updated GUI background done by Branis.


http://xhip.presetexchange.com/xhip/rel ... .7_rc1.png

Other new features include:

• Bender and velocity routing works.
• Improved GUI, widgets, menus and more.
• Background color can be changed from inside the plugin. Limited skinning is possible.
• Project chunk support, all parameters should save in projects now.
• New oscillators produce much cleaner output.
• New filters saturate and drive more smoothly.
• Some modes are combined and easier to use. (ws pos/abs, lfo s&h/random.)
• Many small tweaks and cpu efficiency improvements.

Get it on the Xhip download page. Please report any bugs to me via email, the Xhip forum or here on KVR.

Do not post news about this or write about it on your blog. The full release will happen in approximately one week.

If you wanted to write about it, you could mention that there is a release scheduled for approximately next week and bug-testing is on-going. I do not want to have a large number of people downloading an untested version that potentially contains serious bugs. Unless they are specifically aware of this and are downloading it for the purpose of testing with the intent to report bugs back to me to be fixed before the release!

Let me guess... You are a big fan of Sherbet, right?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3394039646/



--Sean

[aciddose]

the default is grey - the blend mode is just one possible color combination. it's actually possible (in the future, using the skin files) to create any kind of gradients or textures for the background either by selecting options or importing bitmaps.

i used the blend in the screenshot to point out this fact.

try clicking on the xhip logo. mouse-wheel also works.

[Rural Health Punk]

cant wait. hoping for more presets

[synthgeek]

Project chunk support, all parameters should save in projects now.

Excellent. Thanks for the new version!

[aciddose]

new presets will probably wait until 0.8 for synth presets - 0.8 will have the "matrix" saved in presets for midi cc, etc. or 0.9 which will have the ability to store samples and extra waveforms in the presets/banks.

1.0 will probably also include some extra features like more filter modes, standard waveforms and some "back panel / page" configuration for things like oscillator unison and so on.

this 0.7 version is pretty much "xhip 1.0" from the perspective of everything actually working though. it just isn't the "complete" picture of everything i wanted it to include.

hey - nobody mentioned that the pitch offset for imported waves was wrong or a few other bugs i've fixed

i still haven't been able to make it crash, so if anybody could figure out what the heck can trigger it directly that would be a huge help. "crowd sourcing" this is definitely the way to do it because it would just take me so long to do it alone.

[synthgeek]

hey - nobody mentioned that the pitch offset for imported waves was wrong or a few other bugs i've fixed

Is one of those bugs not saving the "control" section in presets, or was that done on purpose?

Other than that, seems to be working fine in Bidule here.

[anzoid]

Just wanted to say that I've tried RC1 and it's superb! Going to have to spend some time going through the presets to see how those sounds are made. No bugs to report...

[aciddose]

hey - nobody mentioned that the pitch offset for imported waves was wrong or a few other bugs i've fixed

Is one of those extra features not saving the "control" section in presets, or was that done on purpose?

Other than that, seems to be working fine in Bidule here.

that will never be saved in presets because none of it has anything to do with the presets.

what might happen is that i'll move things around.

if i ever did though - for example say you wanted to set a preset as monophonic with a specific priority (lowest). this is super annoying if you want to go through sounds playing a chord with each sound because you'd need to go in and modify it to polyphonic before playing the chord.

so what i'd have to do is make all those options "lockable".

this has been on the todo list for five years. there are more important things to do now let's worry about those first.

- important: bugs.
- not important: extra features.

i've already mentioned:

0.8 - "bender" and "velocity" are just parts of the "matrix" of midi controls that can be routed and will be saved in presets. the current ones will be removed from the "control" section and instead just be part of that matrix.

- not all the features i want to implement will go into xhip 1 because many of them will instead go into xhip 2, which will not be free.

i haven't mentioned:

- there is a need for a per-preset tuning control to correct the de-tuning that occurs due to sub-oscillators, ringmod, xmod and others. currently there is an oscillators scale control, but really there needs to be a coarse/fine tune control as well. i don't like the idea of those because people tend to release presets that are tuned all over the keyboard - which is bad - but because there is a real need to tune presets to the proper pitch (60 = middle c) i'll have to add it with instruction and hope that people don't abuse it.

- the "super saw" control was a quick hack added years ago. originally i had intended to expand the oscillators to have osc unison for all waveforms as well as a few other controls without abusing the width control. for example on the ramp wave, width should like in the lfo morph between ramp and triangle. sine would be an additional "back panel" control for that waveform in addition to the standard osc unison settings. other waveforms like pulse would have other special controls.

- drum mode is another quick hack which should eventually be replaced with key mapping / splits / layers.

[synthgeek]

that will never be saved in presets because none of it has anything to do with the presets.

what might happen is that i'll move things around.

if i ever did though - for example say you wanted to set a preset as monophonic with a specific priority (lowest). this is super annoying if you want to go through sounds playing a chord with each sound because you'd need to go in and modify it to polyphonic before playing the chord.

so what i'd have to do is make all those options "lockable".

this has been on the todo list for five years. there are more important things to do now let's worry about those first.

- important: bugs.
- not important: extra features.

Ok, gotcha. That would work too.

[osiris]

Sounds good. Any plans to add fx?

[aciddose]

it already has effects. it's only a matter of the gui.

everything is the gui

effects will be editable and stored in presets (assuming they will be) in either 1.0 or 2.0.

it also needs a basic sample configuration screen to set loop points, interpolation and tuning for samples.

all extra features. none of this is going to be done this week. the focus is on bugs.

[aciddose]

ok, version 0.7 is released.

if it has some weird bug remaining in it it'll be a little bit annoying.

i tried and tried and wasn't really able to make it crash.

i did notice a few issues but those are difficult, time consuming things and they could only be triggered by extreme settings. not critical issues that anybody would normally notice.

i'll eat my words if somebody reports them

sig link of course.

[1-2-Many]

Still no GUI in Minihost 1.64 Maybe it's a VST3 thing?

[aciddose]

no, as i said minihost doesn't call idle. i could force the gui to be shown by drawing from in the message handler, but that isn't really a great way to do things. i could trigger a redraw from windows by "invalidating", but then redrawing the window would require parsing the control list for dirty controls each time it's updated, creating flicker.

the best option is that i could create my own thread and call idle() from there, ignoring what the host says to do.

the only reasonable option is to do nothing. i don't fix other people's bugs by creating more of my own.

even if i did display the gui in minihost, none of the animation would work. i think it's better off not to have anything if there is no animation. do you know the amount of work i'd need to do to remove all animation function? the leds would become useless. the whole idea is just silly.

ask him to fix minihost.

(of course i could make lots of improvements to my code. the ability to disable animation isn't unreasonable. it's just not something i'm interested in right now. works well enough in most cases. more important things to do.)