[linux-audio-dev] ANN: Csound 5.00 Release

Istvan Varga ivarga at csounds.com
Thu Feb 2 18:03:24 UTC 2006


After what has seemed a very long time (because it was...) we are
releasing csound5.00
   The binary, manuals and source files are on
http://sourceforge.net/projects/csound and look for the csound5 files.
The opportunity has been taken to tidy up the assembly of csound4.23
and earlier files and we are leaving the 4.23 files for a short while.
   Main message -- everyone should change to csound5.  More robust,
faster, more facilities, more fun, more music.

==John ffitch

Release Notes for Csound 5.00
-----------------------------

The developers are very pleased to be releasing Csound5, for Linux (32 
and 64 bit), Mac OSX and Windows, together with an uptodate manual.

The system can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/csound

More details and further information can be found in the csound-devel
mailing list at sourceforge and the main user mailing list at
csound at lists.bath.ac.uk

The changes from version 4.23 are extensive.  The internal structure of
the code has been radically changed, but the language remains compatible
with Csound4, and all old orchestra/scores should run unchanged.

The main visible change is that we are using a plugin style of system.
Many of the opcodes are now loaded at start-up.  This opens the way for
private opcode libraries, and opcodes released under other licences than
LGPL.

The other major change is a move to the use of external libraries where
possible. All the internal code for sound files, realtime audio etc has
been replaced. We are now using libsndfile for audio file I/O, and one
of ALSA, PortAudio, CoreAudio, MME or ASIO for realtime.  MIDI may be
handled by PortMIDI as well. The incorporation of Open Sound Control
facilities uses the liblo library.

A number of opcodes from csoundAV and csoundVST are now part of the main
system.

Another major change is that Csound5 is embeddable in other programming
systems, using an API for information linkage.  We are including Python,
Java and other bindings for the API.  Csound5 can also have multiple
instances and is re-entrant.

In addition there are a number of new opcodes, and of course bug fixes.
We believe that csound5 is faster than csound4, and we encourage all
users to move to it.

NOTE: IT MAY BE NECESSARY ON SOME PLATFORMS TO HAVE EITHER ENVIRONMENT
VARIABLES OPCODEDIR OR OPCODEDIR64 SET TO POINT TO DIRECTORY WHERE
OPCODES LIVE.
THE RELEASED FILES ARE BELIEVED TO BE SAFE AND CORRECT IN THIS RESPECT
BUT BEWARE!

New features:
------------
Access to multiple ALSA devices
FLTK widgets reworked and synchronised with csoundAV
User defined gens with names (rather than numbers)
--expression-opt command option
Information on time for each phase of csound if required
Command line options to set ID tags in output soundfile
  (title/copyright etc)
Jack available as output device
--sched option now accepts a priority value
-+rtaudio option to select output system
Many new command line options
Utilities to create csd files from orc/score
Tcl/TK frontends (cstclsh and cswish)
Can use looping structures in WAV files as well as AIFF
Increased number of possible input and output audio file formats
named channels
#ifdef in orchestra
removed limitation of only one track in MIDI input files
MIDI output can also be written to a file (this is somewhat limited)
MIDI-style extra time and release (xtratim, linsegr, etc.) is now also
  possible with score notes
string variables (of type S)
automatic conversion of some C-style escape sequences
  (\n, \r, ASCII code in octal \ooo format, etc) in string constants
made internal indexes to orchestra variables 32 bit (was 16 bit in 
Csound 4),
  allowing for larger and more complex instruments
replaced old PVOC format with PVOC-EX in all related opcodes
SADIR SSDIR and INCDIR can now be a sdemicolon separated list of
  directories

New Opcodes:
-----------
maxk
tab, tabw, and tb0()..tb15()
vst4cs plugin opcodes
pconvolve
ftconv
loris opcodes
Python opcodes
fluid opcodes
chani and chano; chnset and chnget (string indexed)
GEN43
a number of pvs (streaming phase vocoder) opcodes
moogladder
statevar
fofilter
syncgrain
miditempo
event_i
reverbsc (Sean Costello's waveguide reverb)
freeverb
gentune GEN operation
GEN51
GEN52
diskin2
turnoff2
a-rate int() and frac(), and round(), floor(), and ceil()
 << and >> operators
STK (Perry Cook) instruments available from original code
k() function
Mixer opcodes
OSCrecv, OSClisten, OSCsend
loop opcodes
printf, printf_i
string hacking opcodes

Bug Fixes:
---------
Error in tablew fixed
Minor fixed in dcblock
Include files were confused by sections
Improved reading of command line
Fixes in dynamic fgen numbers
gogobel and vibraphone amplitude fix
Arguments to schewhen were wrong
Better checking in bqrez
minor checking in grain
wguide2, wguide1 avoid very low frequencies
wgpluck bug fix
Some error messages corrected and typos fixed
FLsetVal arguments were wrong
outo missed out channel 6
fixed bugs and improved error reporting in ^+ and ^- code.
kread, kdump and a number of other opcodes will take string arguments 
from the score
bug fix in sinc window (gen20)
Added iskip options to moogvcf, vco, bqrez, pareq, tbvcf and rezzy
values rounded rather than truncated in deltap, comb, and delay
removed spurious initial values from some MIDI opcodes
Joystick was upside down
lpshold and loopseg changed to agree with csoundAV
marimba now allows zero probability of a multiple strike
Added skipinit argument to diskin and soundin
wave-terrain fixes for phase error accumulation (on long notes)
new optional argument to delayr and all deltap opcodes, to allow delay
  taps to read from any of the nested delayr/delayw pairs, not just the
  last
new optional argument to distort1 opcode (defaults to zero), to select
  amplitude scaling mode (0: default, compatible with original version;
  1: relative to 0dBFS, same as mode 0 if 0dbfs is 32768; 2: unscaled)
valpass fixed parameter overwriting
Improved accuracy in some filters
Improvements in bowedbar

JPff -- 1 Feb 2006

Files on Sourceforge
====================

Sources:
        Csound5.00_src.tar.gz
        Csound5.00_src.zip
        Csound5.00_OS9_src.smi.bin
        Csound5.00_src_all.tar.gz (including Loris and STK code)
        Csound5.00_src_all.zip (including Loris and STK code)

Manual
        Csound5.00_manual_chm.zip
        Csound5.00_manual_html.zip
        Csound5.00_manual_pdf.zip
        Csound5.00_manual_pdf_A4.zip
        Csound5.00_manual_single_file.zip

OS9:
        Csound5.00_OS9.smi.bin

OSX:
        Csound5.00_OSX10.3.tar.gz
        Csound5.00_OSX10.4.tar.gz

Linux
        Csound5.00_i686.rpm
        Csound5.00_x86_64.rpm
    [Linux for non-root users
            Csound5.00_x86_64d.tar.gz
            Csound5.00_x86_64f.tar.gz
    ]

Windows
        Csound5.00_win32.i686.zip
        Csound5.00_win32.exe (with installer)



More information about the Linux-audio-dev mailing list