I'm pleased to announce the 20170701 release of WhySynth, a DSSI
softsynth plugin featuring four oscillators per voice, multiple
oscillator, filter, and envelope modes, effects, and more.
New since the last release:
* Over 100 new patch presets, thanks to Brian Collins at
linuxsynths.com.
* Patches now have a 'category' field, with which you can organize
the patch list.
* Fixes for a couple security concerns, a pile of bugs, and a raft
of compiler warnings.
* A change to the default knob behavior.
* No new synthesis features (yet).
See below for information on potential breakage or confusion caused
by these changes.
Find WhySynth here:
http://smbolton.com/whysynth.html
More information on the DSSI plugin standard, available hosts
and plugins can be found here:
http://dssi.sourceforge.net/
WhySynth is written and copyright (c) 2017 by Sean Bolton,
and licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2.
Oh, goody, breakage and confusion:
* The addition of the category field meant a change to the patch
file format. Unfortunately, earlier versions of WhySynth were not
designed with forward compatibility in mind. If you save patches in
the new 'version 1' format, older WhySynths will not be able to load
them. If you save patches in the old 'version 0' format, both older
and current versions of WhySynth can use them. (Current versions can
even save and load the categories using 'version 0' format, thanks
to a bit of a hack, but don't round-trip from new to old to new
versions of WhySynth, or you'll lose your categories.)
* This release changes the default mouse button bindings of the
knobs. Previously, dragging mouse button 1 made changes in angular
mode: the knob would (quite abruptly) move to point toward the mouse
pointer. Dragging mouse button 3 used to operate in linear mode,
where moving the pointer vertically or horizontally would make
smooth incremental changes. This release swaps that behavior
between the two buttons, to what I think is a more usable default.
If you prefer the old behavior, you can add the following to your
~/.gtkrc-2.0:
gtk-control-rotary-prefer-angular = 1
Have fun!
-Sean