[linux-audio-dev] ecasound 2.3.0 released

[Kai Vehmanen]

1. A short summary of changes

A set of severe bugs in audio mixing code have been fixed. 
Pyecasound build process has been improved. Reporting chainsetup 
parsing errors has been improved significantly. Support for
the JACK 0.80 transport interface has been added. Support for
reading and writing aiff, snd and au files has been fixed.
Changes have been made to ensure correct operation with 
the NPTL package recently added to Linux kernel and glibc. 
A serious bug in metronome timing was fixed. Minor bugs 
in dynamic sample rate changes, MIDI-server initialization
and the ewf file format have been fixed.

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2. What is Ecasound?

Ecasound is a software package designed for multitrack audio
processing. It can be used for simple tasks like audio playback, 
recording and format conversions, as well as for multitrack effect 
processing, mixing, recording and signal recycling. Ecasound supports 
a wide range of audio inputs, outputs and effect algorithms. 
Effects and audio objects can be combined in various ways, and their
parameters can be controlled by operator objects like oscillators 
and MIDI-CCs. A versatile console mode user-interface is included 
in the package.

Ecasound is licensed under the GPL. The Ecasound Control Interface 
(ECI) is licensed under the LGPL.

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3. Changes since last release

* Support for JACK 0.80 transport interface. The recently 
  released JACK 0.80.0 marks another milestone for Linux audio 
  development. The new transport interface allows concurrent use 
  of multiple independent audio applications with full 
  sample-accurate transport synchronization. This release of
  Ecasound provides full support for the new transport API.

  See the following links to ecasound-list postings that 
  give examples of how to use Ecasound with the new transport API:
     http://eca.cx/ecasound-list/2003/08/0005.html
     http://eca.cx/ecasound-list/2003/08/0070.html

* Metronome timing bug. There was a subtle bug in the 
  pulse gate operator that is used to generate the 
  metronome signal. This bug caused a small (<0.5%) timing 
  error in metronome speed. The bug has been fixed, but the 
  change in speed might cause problems for working with 
  sessions recorded with previous versions of Ecasound.
  Thanks to Carsten Bauer for finding the bug.
  
Full list of changes is available at 
<http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecasound/history.html>.

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4. Interface and configuration file changes

Libecasound interface version number was incremented to 11. 
This release is backwards compatible with interface
versions 9 and 10. See 'ecasound/libecasound/ChangeLog'
for a detailed list of changes.

Libkvutils interface version number was incremented to 6.
This release is backwards compatible with versions 5 and 4.
See 'ecasound/kvutils/ChangeLog' for a detailed list of changes.

Note! Using libecasound and libkvutils outside Ecasound has 
been discouraged since the release of 2.2.0 in Jan 2003. The 
interface changes introduced in this 2.3.0 release should 
only affect a small group of distributors and developers. 
Apps such as Ecamegapedal need to be recompiled only if 
you want to take advantage of the new features introduced
in the latest Ecasound release.

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5. Contributors

Patches - Accepted code, documentation and build system changes

	Kai Vehmanen (various)

Bug Hunting - Reports that led to bugfixes (items closed)

        Jeremy Hall (3) -- non-default chainsetup srates, mixdown
	       	           signal leak bug, pyecasound install
	Junichi Uekawa (3) -- non-default chainsetup srates,
	       	              pyecasound install, gcc-3.3 verification
	Janne Halttunen (2) -- locale-settings broke map-* commands,
			       MIDI-server startup bug
	Vegard Lima (2) -- feedback bug, ewf srate bug
        Carsten Bauer (1) -- timing bug in metronome and pulse gate
        Ismail Donmez (1) -- build errors with sys-readline option
	Lars Henrik Mai (1) -- aiff/au/snd bug
	Stephan Niemz (1) -- non-default chainsetup srates
	Al Oemens (1) -- reporting chainsetup parsing errors 
	Oliver Thuns (1) -- -ei big shift-x values
	Tommi Uimonen (1) -- problems with ecasignalview channel meter
	       	             layout

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6. Links and files
   
Web sites:
	http://www.eca.cx
	http://www.eca.cx/ecasound

Source packages:
	http://ecasound.seul.org/download
	http://ecasound.seul.org/download/ecasound-2.3.0.tar.gz

Distributions with maintained Ecasound support:
	Agnula - http://www.agnula.org
	Debian - http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/ecasound2.2.html
	DeMuDi - http://www.demudi.org
	FreeBSD - http://www.freebsd.org/ports/audio.html
	Gentoo Linux - http://www.gentoo.org
	PLD Linux - http://www.pld.org.pl
	PlanetCCRMA - http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software
	SuSE Linux -  http://www.suse.de/en

Contrib Packages for Distributions:
	Mandrake - http://rpm.nyvalls.se/
	Slackware - http://www.audioslack.com
	Various distros - http://apps.kde.com/rf/2/info/id/2146
	
Note! Distributors do not necessarily provide packages for 
      the very latest Ecasound version.

--
 http://www.eca.cx
 Audio software for Linux!