[linux-audio-user] ecasound 2.2.1 released

[Kai Vehmanen]

1. A short summary of changes

The JACK slave mode code has been completely rewritten. As a
new feature it is now possible to use libsamplerate for 
resampling. Using JACK has been made more user-friendly as ecasound 
can now automatically configure the runtime parameters to 
match the current server settings. And thanks to build system 
and signal handling updates, it's now possible to compile 
ecasound for win32 under Cygwin.

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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 licenced under the LGPL.

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3. Changes since last release

* If configured with JACK-support, ecasound will now fetch the 
  correct buffer size and sampling rate parameters from the 
  JACK server when connecting a chainsetup with JACK inputs or 
  outputs. In other words you don't have to manually match 
  these settings between the JACK server and ecasound.

* Support for Erik de Castro Lopo's libsamplerate 
  resampling library added. If libsamplerate is not installed,
  ecasound will fall back to the old resampling algorithm.

* Rewritten the code that handles JACK slave-mode operation. 
  Ecasound is now able to more quickly and reliably follow 
  transport state and position changes, as initiated by the 
  current JACK timebase master.

* Ecasound for Windows! :) With help of the Cygwin environment, 
  you can now compile win32 ecasound binaries straight from 
  the standard source package. As of 1.3.1, Cygwin also
  contains basic /dev/dsp emulation, so even audio playback 
  works.

* Fixed many, more or less serious, bugs. The most annoying 
  ones were incorrect handling of the '-t' option, excessive
  DBC warnings with JACK inputs and outputs and failing to
  properly reset the terminal after a CTRL-C while in interactive
  mode.

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

None.

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5. Contributors

Patches

	Junichi Uekawa (build system)
	Kai Vehmanen (various)

Bug Hunting (items closed)

	Janne Halttunen (2)
	Eric Amundsen (1)
	Antti Boman (1)
	William Goldsmith (1)
	Andrew Reilly (1)
	Oliver Thuns (1)

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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-2.2.1.tar.gz

Related sites:
	http://jackit.sf.net (JACK)
        http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC (libsamplerate)
	http://www.cygwin.com

Distributions with maintained ecasound support:
	Agnula - http://www.agnula.org
	Debian - http://packages.debian.org/stable/sound/ecasound.html
	         
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/sound9.0.html

Note! Distributors do not necessarily provide packages for 
      the very latest ecasound version.

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