LinuxSampler 2.0.0 (and friends) has been released after six years of development. Read on to find out what's new.
New Sampler Engines
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:
- The SFZ2 format engine (.sfz).
- The SoundFont 2 format engine (.sf2).
So LinuxSampler is not limited to just the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format (.gig) any more.
Real-Time Instrument Scripts
Another major new feature is the brand new support for so called Real-Time Instrument Scripts, 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. Find out more.
LSCP Shell
Also noteworthy is the new command line application lscp, 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 front-end applications. Find out more.
Internal Effects & Extensions to LSCP
You may now also load external effects directly into the sampler. The LSCP network protocol (v1.7) has been extended to manage such effects 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.
New GigaStudio format features
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 any more. 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.
DAW Plugin Enhancements
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 MIDI instrument mapping system 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.
Read more in the full release notes.
