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.
---
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.
---
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>.
---
4. Interface and configuration file changes
None.
---
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)
---
6. Links and files
Web sites:
http://www.eca.cxhttp://www.eca.cx/ecasound
Source packages:
http://ecasound.seul.org/downloadhttp://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.htmlhttp://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!
Hi all,
New stuff. Good.
* you can now use plugins with unequal numbers of input and output ports.
any excess ports get exposed as extra jack ports with names like
"amplif_1-1_i2", of the form
"<shortened plugin name>_<rack position>-<plugin copy>_{i,o}<port>"
* wet/dry controls for the output of each plugin
* logarithmic controls
* much more resilient file loader
http://pkl.net/~node/jack-rack.html
Bob
--
Bob Ham <rah(a)bash.sh>
Hi,
There was a problem compiling the gtkmm ui in 0.5.0 with the latest
sigc++.. oops :) Fixed now. Trivial patch attached, and a new tarball
and everything up on the website.
http://pkl.net/~node/alsa-patch-bay.html
Bob
--
Bob Ham <rah(a)bash.sh>
Jack Audio Connection Kit 0.50.0 Released
The Jack team is pleased to announce the release of version 0.50.0 of
the Jack low-latency audio server. Jack allows applications to share
data and audio devices in synchronous operation, and has already seen
a year of hard testing and refinement. The API has stabilized for
the foreseeable future, although backwards compatibility is not
guaranteed.
More information on Jack is available at the group's web site,
[1]http://jackit.sourceforge.net/.
Source packages for Jack 0.50.0 are available [2]here.
What's new:
* Audio block sizes are fixed during runtime so clients can have more
efficient algorithms.
* No partial blocks will be delivered. Again for efficient client
algorithms.
* Thread scheduling hidden from clients for better portability.
* Cleanly compiles with gcc-3.3.
* Works on 64-bit platforms
Work is ongoing to improve transport control.
Developers and users interested in Jack should sign up to
[4]jackit-devel, our mailing list.
References
1. http://jackit.sourceforge.net/
2. http://jackit.sourceforge.net/releases/current/
3. http://jackit.sourceforge.net/apps/
4. http://jackit.sourceforge.net/lists/
Hi all,
Now supports jack. It needs the patchbay-facilitating jack functions
that are only in cvs atm, tho; there's been no tarball release with them
yet. And yes, it's still called "ALSA" patchbay :)
* added jack driver, also installing a jack-patch-bay link to alsa-patch-bay
and a jack-patch-bay.desktop
* added client subscriptions, similar to qjackconnect; press a read port
twice
http://pkl.net/~node/alsa-patch-bay.html
Bob
--
Bob Ham <rah(a)bash.sh>
Hi all,
LADCCA, the session management system for jack and alsa sequencer
applications on linux is now at version 0.3. After about a month of
gentle fiddling, it now seems to work quite well. As an example, I
managed to run muse, 2 standalone copies of iiwusynth and 2 copies of
jack rack, save it with the server, close all the apps and restore it
nearly perfectly (I say "nearly" as muse likes to control alsa ports and
connections.) It's certainly coming along.
Quite a few people have mentioned that they don't have a recent version
of alsa and so no alsa.pc file in order for pkgconfig to detect it.
This time, I've included an alsa.pc in the tarball. Obviously, inspect
it first and make sure the prefix is ok and it's all kosher.
* Added the facility to run restored apps in a terminal using xterm, and
added the CCA_Terminal client flag for clients that need a terminal to
operate.
* much improved jack and alsa listeners in the server
* quite a few compilation and bug fixes and whatnot
http://pkl.net/~node/ladcca.html
Bob
--
Bob Ham <rah(a)bash.sh>
Thu Feb 6 2003 -- Sweep 0.8.1 Released
=======================================
Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and
compatible systems. It supports many music and voice formats including
WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Speex and MP3, with multichannel editing and
LADSPA effects plugins. Inside lives a pesky little virtual stylus called
Scrubby who enjoys mixing around in your files.
This development release is available as a source tarball at:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sweep/sweep-0.8.1.tar.gz?download
Latest News
-----------
This release contains performance improvements for basic editing operations,
including reduced memory consumption during cut and paste insert. It also
includes support for creation of new files on the command line, updated
handling of raw file loading through libsndfile, and updated support for
voice activity detection and intensity stereo coding features of the Speex
speech codec.
Mstation.org this month features interviews with Conrad Parker about
the history and development of Sweep, and with Erik de Castro Lopo, the
author of libsndfile and libsamplerate which are used by Sweep.
Further information
-------------------
Screenshots:
http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/screenshots/
Some interesting audio recordings of Scrubby are at:
http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/demos.html
Sweep is designed to be intuitive and to give you full control. It includes
almost everything you would expect in a sample editor, and then some:
* precise, vinyl like scrubbing
* looped, reverse, and pitch-controlled playback
* playback mixing of unlimited independent tracks
* looped and reverse recording
* internationalisation
* multichannel and 32 bit floating point PCM file support
* support for Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and Speex compressed audio files
* sample rate conversion and channel operations
* LADSPA 1.1 effects support
* multiple views, discontinuous selections
* easy keybindings, mouse wheel zooming
* unlimited undo/redo with fully revertible edit history
* multithreaded background processing
* shaded peak/mean waveform rendering, multiple colour schemes
Sweep is Free Software, available under the GNU General Public License.
More information is available at:
http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/
Thanks to Pixar Animation Studios and CSIRO Australia for supporting the
development of this project.
enjoy :)
Conrad.
Hi,
This month we have for your reading pleasure ...
Sweep is a Linux tool for editing and playing soundfiles in some
non-standard ways. We talk to developer Conrad Parker. Interview
Erik de Castro Lopo is the author of libsndfile and Secret Rabbit -
libsamplerate. Here he talks to us about OO, C, C++, and testing.
Interview
Cheers
John
--
http://Mstation.org
Hi all,
No response to the beta testing request, so I'll have to subject you all
to a likely hairy release :) Arbitrary channels are the biggest thing.
Also, previous save files will no longer work as the save files use XML
now. Sorry, but it's better to change it now instead of later as
changing the xml format will create less of a disturbance.
* can now have arbitrary channel numbers. you can use any plugin that has
equal numbers of input and output channels where they divide exactly into
the number of rack channels. eg, you could have a 4 channel rack with 2
stereo plugins in one slot and 4 mono plugins in another. obviously, you
can also have mono racks now. use the -c command line option to specify
the number of channels on startup.
* now, when you lock a group of controls, only one widget will be shown.
click on a control while holding down the CTRL key to make it the one that
remains visible.
* the PID is now used in the jack client name by default. you can change it
to the previous behaviour (of using just "jack_rack") with the -n option.
* save files now use an XML format (which is incompatible with the previous
format, sorry)
* port connecting works now, -i to connect inputs, -o to connect outputs
* quite a bit of code factoring and cleanups and stuff
http://pkl.net/~node/jack-rack.html
Bob
--
If you're happy and you know it, bomb iraq