[LAU] Announcing synthclone-0.2.0! Now in beta!

[Devin Anderson]

I'm happy to announce the first beta release of `synthclone`!

`synthclone` is a Qt-based application that can "clone" your
MIDI-capable instruments. It does this by sending out MIDI data that
instructs an instrument to emit sounds for a series of notes,
velocities, controls, and aftertouch values. It then saves this data
as a sample-based instrument that can be loaded by sampler software.

Features:

* Supports user-configurable per-zone sample time, release time, MIDI
note, MIDI velocity, MIDI aftertouch, MIDI channel pressure, MIDI
control changes, etc. via a table interface.
* Audition samples and change zone parameters until you're happy with
the data you're acquiring from your MIDI device/software.
* Save and restore sessions.
* Distributed with plugins that support the JACK Audio Connection Kit
(with JACK Session support), PortAudio and PortMidi, trimming of
samples, the creation of patches for Hydrogen and SFZ, and automated
zone generation.
* Can create multiple targets in one session (i.e. a Hydrogen patch
and an SFZ patch) from the same set of samples.
* A well-documented plugin API is available for developers to write
their own plugins to extend synthclone.

Important Changes Since 0.1.0:

* Lots of bug fixes.
* Added a "portable" semaphore implementation to the plugin API.
* Added the new PortMedia plugin, which supports sampling via
PortAudio and PortMidi.
* Get `synthclone` to compile on Mac OSX.
* Change build system to use traditional `./configure`, `make`, `make
install` scheme.
* Add new 'debian' target for building Debian packages (`./configure
--prefix=/usr`, `make debian`).

Future Development:

* Figure out a good packaging scheme for Mac OSX.
* Support the Non-Session Manager protocol.
* Write a plugin that creates Renoise instruments.
* Write a plugin that loads LADSPA effects.
* Write a plugin that loads LV2 effects.
* Write a plugin that loads samples from the filesystem (expanding on
the plugin created in this tutorial:
http://code.google.com/p/synthclone/wiki/TutorialWritingASimplePluginPart1)
* Consider different ways to support the detection and/or creation of loops.

The new version of `synthclone` is available at:

   http://synthclone.googlecode.com/

Please report bugs using the issue tracker:

   http://code.google.com/p/synthclone/issues/list

If you like `synthclone` and have ideas that can make it better and/or
want to keep up with its progress, join the users group:

   http://groups.google.com/group/synthclone-users

If you're a developer and want to write plugins for `synthclone` or
contribute to the application itself, join the development group:

   http://groups.google.com/group/synthclone-development

Thanks, and hope to meet some of you next week at the Linux Audio Conference.

-- 
Devin Anderson
surfacepatterns (at) gmail (dot) com

blog - http://surfacepatterns.blogspot.com/
synthclone - http://synthclone.googlecode.com/