[linux-audio-dev] CLAM 0.90 Released

Wed Feb 8 2006 CLAM 0.90 Released ====================================== ´New multiplied build-system, fancy applications and inter- connectivity' What is CLAM? CLAM is a framework for research and application development in the Audio and Music Domain. It offers a conceptual model as well as tools for the analysis, synthesis and processing of audio signals. We are glad to announce that our new 0.90 release is already available at our (also brand new) website: http://clam.iua.upf.edu. This release represents a big step forward to our soon to come first stable 1.0 release and includes major improvements. For the first time the CLAM framework and all related applications are available in binary form for all major platforms: deb packages are provided for Ubuntu/Debian GNU/Linux, dmg images for Mac OSX and setup executables for Windows. This change has represented a complete but necessary (and painful!) rework of our build system, which is now based on small binary libraries and uses Scons as the build tool. We expect it to reduce drastically the complexity of the compilation and installation of clam applications for the end-user. Other major improvements include a complete rework of the SMSTools, application GUI, which is now based on Qt, as well as many additions to the Annotator app. A CLAM Network can now also become an Open Sound Control (OSC) node, opening up the possibility of interconnection to external applications. In the 'Application Prototyping' chapter we'd like to mention that we have also added complete tools to create both VST and LADSPA plugins out of a previously designed network. It is also worth noticing the possibility of creating stand-alone applications with a GUI created using the great Qt-designer and the CLAM Qt-plugins. Such standalone applications can behave either as a Jack client (for GNU/Linux and Mac OSX) or use audio backends like alsa or Portaudio. Please read these and other improvements in the attached changelog and visit our website and/our mailing list for further announcements. Although we are continuing to work toward the 1.0 release and we expect to come up with new improvements soon, we hope all these additions already convert the framework into a more usable and useful tool and, as always, we expect as much feedback as possible from all our users. The CLAM team CLAM ChangeLog 2006-02-07 CLAM_0_90_0 'New multiplatform build-system, fancy applications and interconnectivity' * Building and packaging + New build system based on scons + Binary libraries + Standard library installation + CLAM applications just link against the libraries + CLAM and all provided applications are working multiplatform (Linux/MacOSX/Windows) + Easy to use installers for MacOSX, Windows and Linux (Debian) + Ported to g++ 4.0 * Rappid prototyping infrastructure + New external-generators/sinks and external-control-senders/receiver classes. o They glue specific architecture (jack, portaudio, ladspa, vst) ports with a clam network. * New hierarchy of network-players classes, with these (final) classes: + JACKNetworkPlayer, + PortAudioNetworkPlayer, + BlockingNetworkPlayer, * LADSPA Plugins (Linux): A generic plugin that embeds a network can be easily created by just providing the path to a valid network xml file. * VST Plugins (Mac/Windows): A generic plugin that embeds a network can be easily created by just providing the path to a valid network xml file. * OSC (Open Sound Control): A network (for instance from the Network Editor) can now send an receive OSC messages and interconnect to other applications that follow this protocol. * MIDI files + New classes to read/write standard MIDI files * Qt Visualization Module + Support for multidisplay plots. + BPFEditor: multiple BPF allowed + Faster rendering of plots using buffered pixmaps * QtSMSTools2: New! A total rewrite of SMSTools2 GUI using the Qt toolkit. + Multidisplay implementation sharing common axis o Spectrogram (Color,Black&White) o Improved player: audio and fundamental frequency o More suitable dialogs to configure projects * NetworkEditor + New callback audio-driving mode. This allow different modes (specified as command line options) o Jack client mode (not in Windows) o PortAudio mode o Blocking mode * Annotator + New segment editor: o Different annotation restrictions depending on the schema. Right now: # Continuous segmentation (no gap) # Discontinous segmentation (gaps but not overlaps) o Consistent dragging o Tooltips are faster to appear o Tooltips say just the position of the hovered element instead the cursor position. o Hovering highlights the limit + Optimizations on the song switching and on the display + Inserting and removing segments now has its reflexion on the pool + Playing the wav and the auralization on different channels. + Description schema browser + Now, viable projects can be built from the interface * Spectral Analysis Synthesis + FFTOoura: o By defining a compilation flag, FFTOoura can be choosen instead of fftw by default o FFTOoura is now also implemented in the inverse FFT process 2005-07-21 CLAM_0_8_0 'Prototyper with streaming SMS transformations' * SMS Transformations on the network editor: + All SMS Transformations have been refactored in order to work in streaming mode and not only in offline mode. * New Prototyping way: + Prototyper: Allows to bind a Qt desinger interface to a Network XML definition so you can have an CLAM GUI application up an running without a single line of code. Current features: o It uses the widget names and classes to Automagically relate widgets to processings, ports and controls. o Binds sliders, knobs and so to in-controls on the network o Binds monitoring plots to out-ports on the network o Binds buttons to play/stop actions on the network * QtPlots add-ons: + Editable segmentation marks on all the plots + QtSpectrogram: o Plot to view sonogram (Color/B&W) + BPFEditor: o Editable/auralizable plot (Audio and MIDI support) * Compiler compatibility: + CLAM and its applications now compiles in GNU g++3.4 (as well as 3.3) * Audio file I/O facilities: + MP3 I/O: Bug fixed: that prevented XING headers from being used to compute duration + MP3 I/O: Bug fixed in conversion from milliseconds to seconds + Vorbis I/O: Feature addition: now the # of samples is computed for Vorbis bitstreams * Memory leak review: + FFT internal buffer was not freed on destruction * XML related changes: + Now XmlStorage::Dump does indentation by default. A new optional parameter disables indentation. + XercesC 2.6 is required in order to pass the tests and be memory leak free (even 2.3 should be enough to compile and run CLAM). + XML Storage Error Handling (This solves issue #0000022): o Catchable CLAM::XmlStorageErr excepetions are thrown whenever: # I/O error happens # Malformed XML is readed # Read elements or contents does not match with CLAM objects structure # CLAM objects detect some semantic constraints. + XPath (like) navigation (This solves issue #0000045): o The implementation of XmlStorage::Select allows using: # XmlStorage::AppendToDocument(object, path, filename) # XmlStorage::RestoreFromFragment(object, path, istream) # Using atomic primitives for doing some similar hacks like writing fragments of the XML for an object to disk. + Alternative XML Backends (LibXml++) o Unification of the way XmlStorage interfaces the library dependant code. o LibXml++ Backend implemented. It is planned to be the default backend on future releases but still some work is needed to get the error messages correctly reported. * Network refactoring: + Published{In|Out}{Controls|Ports} -> {In|Out}{Control|Port}Registry * Descriptors: + SpectralDescriptors::HighFrequencyCoefficent -> HighFrequencyContent as specified by the original literature. * Other: + ConnectPorts overloaded to connect free ports (that is not belonging to any processing, normally used for injecting or extracting data) * Build System: + Changes in order to not abort ./configure script when some library is not found (and not specifyed with the --without-libname option) 2004-11-18 CLAM_0_7_0 'Easier deployment, better plots and Processing Networks' etc.