LMS Suite 12.06 - Big sampler improvements, more compatible

[jeffh]

GMaq & FalkTX: FYI, I think I'm going to release LMS Suite 12.06-2 this weekend, you may want to hold off on any packaging work for 12.06-1 for your repos.

I think in the past 5 days since 12.06-1 I've fixed literally everything that was wrong with Euphoria, it appears to be 100% rock solid now, and it now also has a waveform viewer that can set start/end points for the samples. I'll spend all day tomorrow playing with it to make sure I haven't introduced any new bugs.

[jeffh]

hm, then I have a feature request.
Please implement the get_program/set_program DSSI descriptor calls, so I can directly access the plugin presets on my host (and map program changes to midi events properly).
as you might know, the DSSI spec dictates that the host should not pass any midi-program midi-data to the plugin, but map those events to the C calls. In turn, the plugin should not depend on the midi-program changes data too, but use the C calls for managing presets.

I've been using this method for presets for a long time, so if you any doubt about how it's suppose to work, just ask.

Ray-V is the only plugin of mine that even uses program-change, were you talking about implementing it in Ray-V? Or implementing it in all of them?

I'm not sure how program-change would even work in Euphoria, as presets would have to have corresponding samples to load, and I haven't made an official sample library yet.

[tripomatic]

How can i get the lms suite working under ardour3 wich doesn't support dssi?
Is there a way to do this with 64-bit system?

thx!

[jeffh]

I'm referring to Ray-V, yes (those presets available in the UI).

I agree that Euphoria doesn't need presets, but for regular FX plugins a single "Default"-name preset is handy because you can precisely define the plugins' default control-port values (the LADSPA API with 'hints' is not precise enough here).

If you have some example code handy for this, it would help a lot. I tried early on to implement proper DSSI program-change, back when I was a complete n00b ~5 months ago, and failed, so seeing it done properly would definitely help. OTOH, I'm not a complete n00b anymore, so maybe I'd be able to do it now

[jeffh]

How can i get the lms suite working under ardour3 wich doesn't support dssi?
Is there a way to do this with 64-bit system?

thx!

I don't know for sure because I don't use Ardour3, but I'm pretty sure it supports sending MIDI to external instruments, so you can use Ray-V and Euphoria externally(you'll have to remember to save your Ray-V preset, and save your Euphoria instrument to a file).

The effects plugins are also available as LADSPA, so they should be usable directly in Ardour3, but I haven't tested them.

[jeffh]

jeffh,

Just to clarify, going back over what happened with 12.05... your original debs based on Precise didn't work at all on AV Linux, when you moved back to 11.04 some of the debs worked (and still do currently) however Ray-V and Euphoria don't. falkTX has gone back to Lucid which has roughly the same QT version as Debian Squeeze.

I agree with falkTX that these packaging issues aren't your problem, I happen to use his because they work for me and there's no sense in duplicating our efforts if his packages work on both systems. Also AV Linux 6.0 will be the last version based on Squeeze so in a years time I'll be based on Wheezy which will be the new Debian Stable by then and have much newer QT4 libs.

Thanks for your hard work, I certainly didn't want to sound like I was complaining

Hey GMaq,

I've fixed my build system to create the full debian package with all of the bells&whistles in AV Linux, which I successfully tested. The problem was that AV Linux returns 'unknown' for the architecture when running 'uname -i', instead of i386 like it should. I added a workaround for AV Linux, and for non-AVLinuces that return 'unknown', the script now offers the user an opportunity to manually type in their own arch.

So, it now goes like:

Get a copy of the source:

Code: Select all

git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/libmodsynth/git libmodsynth-git

Find the list of tags, for the release you want:

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git tag
#now run:
#git checkout name_of_tag_you_wanted

Compile and package:

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cd libmodsynth-git/plugins
perl build-all.pl
#(answer some basic questions)

This will create a full .deb package including .desktop files, icons, etc...

[jeffh]

I've uploaded the new 12.06-2 packages here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmods ... s/plugins/

Pretty much all of the improvements are to Euphoria:

1. A sample viewer where you can set start/end points on the sample
2. Numerous bug fixes
3. An improved audio engine, is now capable of tighter timing, suitable for drums
4. Numerous improvements to the sound and feel

Next month, I'm going to start including a small sample library with LMS Suite in my own .u4ia format, and offer a bigger one on my Sourceforge page. I'm open to any user contributions as long as they meet the following criteria:

1. You either created the samples yourself, or they come from a library with a license compatible with the GPL. I'll gladly credit you for your work, but I'm not going to risk creating licensing issues.
2. They have a favorable size-of-the-files/usefulness/quality ratio. I'm not going to distribute a single piano instrument that weighs 2GB, and I'm not going to distribute anything that is lo-fi, unless it's some kind of industrial drum-kit that's actually meant to sound that way.

I would encourage a broad selection of instruments, things like drum-sets, pianos/strings/etc..., synthesizer sounds and so on....

[jeffh]

One thing important, can you please not use "-" on release versions? it really screws us packagers (I had to use 12.06.2 on this one)

Sure, I wasn't aware it was a problem for you. If memory serves, I started using it because I saw checkinstall used it, but OTOH, if checkinstall uses it, it wouldn't surprise me if it was completely wrong.

I'll try to hack in your code some time soon to make it support DSSI's get/set_program, but I'm really focusing on getting my tools as beta ASAP.

I'll do it if you can point me in the direction of a working plugin that already has this. I actually implemented my Program Change into the UI of Ray-V, and skipped implementing it in the back-end(mostly because C really sucks at manipulating strings and files), so I wouldn't ask you to do it because you would have to reverse-engineer a fairly complicated system that I already understand... I think I have a pretty good idea for how to implement it without massively disrupting the system I already have in place.

There are some issues with your GUIs on dark themes, but should be easy to fix - see the "bad" example here:
http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net/tmp/scr083.png

The only ways I know how to fix it are:

1. Theme my background QWidget and QDials so the OS doesn't do it for me.
2. Stop theming any of the plugin and let the OS do all of the theming.

I'm not very inclined to go with #2, so I'll do #1, unless you know a better way to fix it.

[jeffh]

Cool, thanks FalkTX.

I actually decided to go with some much darker themes, I've begun re-theming Ray-V and Euphoria to super-dark looking themes by default(admittedly, I should've ditched "Windows 95 Gray" a long time ago). I have the half-finished themes committed to Git already. If anybody out there is a CSS wizard and wants to theme my plugins, I'm open to outside contributions.

There's just too much potential to look bad when the user changes themes, best to assert control over every aspect of the plugin's appearance, even if it isn't color-coordinated with the rest of the user's applications.