Results for JACK

Some interesting things I found recently:

The sound of the vuvuzela seems to irritate quite a number of people, so here’s a round-up of some solutions on how to watch the World Cup games without this loud horn.

# Filter The Vuvuzela Horn Out of the World Cup; Learn JACK Routing on Linux

Are you a World Cup fan annoyed by the constant sound of the South African vuvuzela horn? Wish you could remove that sound from your World Cup viewing experience? Do you want to learn a little bit about powerful modular effects routing can be on Linux? Either? Both? Call it “football”? “Soccer”? Any way round, we’ve got you covered.

# Waves Vuvuzela Noise Reduction Solution

Waves has a processing chain available to download.

In response to the widely publicized complaints from TV viewers and broadcasters of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Waves is proud to unveil a solution which dramatically reduces the problematic sound of the omnipresent Vuvuzela trumpet favored by South African soccer fans.

Working in conjunction with a major television broadcaster, we've precision-crafted a preset processing chain which drastically decreases Vuvuzela noise: The WNS Waves Noise Suppressor and the Q10 Paragraphic Equalizer. Together, they not only minimize Vuvuzela noise, they increase the intelligibility of the game announcers' play-by-play action and color commentary.

The processing chain for Vuvuzela noise reduction is now available as load-and-use sessions for Pro Tools, Waves MultiRack, and Cubase.

# Prosoniq VuvuX

And Prosoniq has a free filtering plug-in for Mac users.

Prosoniq is proud to announce the world's first realtime Vuvuzela filtering plug in based on sonicWORX' audio de-mixing technology.

# Sensomusic Usine

Sensomusic has released tons of freebies for its Usine users.

Good news for all Usine free Users: Get more than 200 Add-ons and ready-made patches for free. Just register on the forum (it's totally free).

Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music also report on this one in Hundreds of Free Musical Tools Now Free to Add to Usine.

Usine is an overlooked gem in music making, a PC-based modular environment and live performance tool that runs as a host or VST plug-in. Pick the modules you need from a set of powerful building blocks, and build a custom musical rig, complete with multi-touch control on new Windows devices. It sounds like something you might request from a magical genie, but the thing is real, priced at EUR120 (or just EUR60 for educational users).

As with any modular environment, having ample access to powerful modules and some patches to get you started is everything. But that makes this week’s news worth noting: co-developer Olivier Sens has made some 200+ add-ons and patches free. All you have to do to grab them is register on the forum. The demo version of Usine is surprisingly capable, too, so if you’ve been waiting to test-drive and you have a Windows machine (or a dual-boot Mac), now could be a good time.

# Review of the Chauvet Slimpar56 LED Light and Obey3 Light Controller

Mark @ Modulate This! on the Chauvet Slimpar56 & Obey3:

In a recent post I documented my new live rig with a drawing and a time-lapse video sans lights and light controller. I’m happy to report I just received and have been testing the brand new LED SlimPAR™ 56 and Obey™ 3 compact DMX controller so I thought I’d share some notes.

Grame, Centre National de Creation Musicale, has announced the release of Faust (Functional Audio Stream) 0.9.10, a functional programming language specifically designed for real-time signal processing and synthesis.

This version introduces several new possibilities. It is the first official release to offer full parallelization of the C++ code to exploit multicore architectures, as well as automatic generation of mathematical documentation.

New in Faust v0.9.10

• Several new options have been added to control how the C++ code is generated, in particular:
  • control of the floating point precision : single (default), double, quad
  • code re-organization in simple loops to facilitate automatic vectorization
  • automatic parallelization based on OpenMP
  • automatic parallelization based on a specific “Work-Stealing” algorithm
• Using formal methods the Faust compiler can automatically produce a complete mathematical documentation of a Faust program.
• Language Extensions
  • Sequential composition operator (A:B) has been restricted to expressions so that outputs(A) = inputs(B). This restriction has several advantages. It improves error detection, makes the code easier to understand and provides nicer and simpler formal semantic ( A:B is B o A)
  • User interface labels can now contain metadata. For example the label “volume[unit:dB][tooltip:control the output volume of the reverb]” contains two metadata, a unit definition and a tooltip message than can be exploited by an architecture file to fine tune the user interface.
  • User interface labels can contain absolute and relative pathnames to better control the hierarchical structure of the user interface. For example the label “../volume” points to place the widget one group higher in the hierarchy.
• Several new audio architectures have been included, in particular Action Script, CoreAudio, CSOUND, Chuck, Pure, SND-RT, for a total of about 20 different plateforms now supported: Action Script, Alsa, ChucK, CoreAudio, CSOUND, Jack, LADSPA, Matlab, MaxMSP, Octave, OSS, PortAudio, Pure, PureData, Q, Sndfile, Snd-RT, SuperCollider, SynthFile, VST, VSTi (mono)

More information: Faust / Faust @ Sourceforge

MusE, a MIDI/Audio sequencer with recording and editing capabilities for Linux, was updated to version 1.0.

This is not the beginning, nor the end, but it marks the culmination of 10 years of feature packed and bug ridden development towards the goal of making a good platform for creating music on the Linux platform

Changes since MusE v0.9

• DSSI + Win VST support.
• Python remote control API (for wonderful things), some primitive example scripts for live re-sequencing included, more to come.
• Instrument editor with GS/XG drum controller support.
• Part cloning.
• Better bounce operations, with Jack freewheel mode support.
• Better midi sync output.
• Midi controller knobs in pianoroll and drum editor.
• Jack transport master timebase function.
• External midi filtering support write your midi filters in just about anything, including bash.
• Denormal protection + limiter.
• Record looping overdub, replace, mix support.
• Audio optimizations, less CPU usage.
• Countless fixes and tweaks, about a 1000 lines in the Changelog, check it for a complete list of blood sweat and tears.

MusE is available to download under the GNU General Public License.

More information: MusE

Loomer has released version 1.5 of Aspect, a semi-modular synthesizer for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Aspect is a 32-note polyphonic synthesizer with an open ended semi-modular architecture, streamlined interface, and analogue sounding synthesis engine.

Changes in Aspect v1.5

• New oscillators with improved sound due to significantly reduced aliasing.
• Backwards compatibility options (for Registered Users only) to enable the use of legacy oscillators for perfect compatibility with older patches.
• Reduced CPU usage: generally around 10% reduction, but up to 20% in some cases.
• Massively reduced memory usage.
• Aspect oscillators are now tuned down an octave to bring them more into line with other synthesizers.
• Older patches will still play at the tuning they were created with.
• Fixed bug where very long release envelopes stop rather abruptly.
• Fixed bug in Sonar where notes are left hanging when the Sonar Transport is stopped.
• Factory presets are now categorized and sorted.
• Rotary controls can now be tweaked to a finer degree with the mouse wheel by holding Shift.
• Fixed bug where notes sustained over a sample rate change from 96KHz to 88KHz would play at the incorrect pitch.
• Fixed bug that could cause a lock under some Linux VST hosts the first time Aspect is scanned.

Aspect is available to purchase for £65 GBP (+ VAT).

More information: Loomer / Aspect

Ardour, the digital audio workstation for Mac and Linux, was updated to version 2.8.4.

It has been a month of mostly bug fixing activity, but some nice fixes they certainly are and we’ve included a couple of new features just to keep you all interested and paying attention. If you use BWF files for anything, this update is critical, because we have fixed a very serious error in the way we generate the header for such files. As of this writing, this is planned to be the last release of Ardour 2.X before 3.0alpha is announced (unless there are any critical breakages in this release).

New in Ardour v2.8.4

• Plugin manager now has a “hide” option so that you can control which plugins show up in the plugin menus (J. Abelardo Gutierrez).
• New “by category” plugin menu, to complement the “by creator” one that already existed (J. Abelardo Gutierrez).
• If auto-play is enabled, defining or changing a range selection will immediately start playing it.
• New action, ToggleRollMaybe, which leaves loop play or range play mode but without stopping the transport (Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-space by default).
• PortInsert GUIs now have a builtin hardware latency “ping” tester, modelled on Fons Adriennsen’s jdelay. This can accurately measure the roundtrip signal latency of your insert and sets the latency that JACK sees. You can now use external h/w processing and get sample-accurate latency compensation within Ardour.
• New Region Layering Editor. This is accessed via the region context menu, and provides an easy way to modify the layering of regions at a given location (it will only show in the menu if there is more than one region under the mouse pointer). It can be used as an excellent tool for comping loop recording or overdubs in general. Thanks to JAG for this excellent addition.

Check the change log for more details, including some critical fixes and improvements.

More information: Ardour

Digital audio workstation for Mac and Linux Ardour has been updated to version 2.8.3.

Ardour 2.8.3 no longer includes (a modified version of) libsndfile, but relies on the system installed version. You need at least version 1.0.18, and you should ensure that it was built with FLAC and Ogg/Vorbis support if you want Ardour to be able to use these formats. The simplest test of this is to run sndfile-info(1) on a FLAC and Ogg/Vorbis sample file and ensure that it can read the contents.

Changes in Ardour 2.8.3

• Features
  • Ardour can now open un-writable sessions without complaining. This includes sessions on read-only media and those for which write access is not granted to the user.
  • Support FLAC & Ogg/Vorbis import and export (via system libsndfile)
  • Provide jdelay-based hardware/port insert latency measurement (note: this is not automatic, but is initiated by the user in the insert GUI)
  • Enable very basic automation for On/Off plugin parameters. Write and Read modes only (no Touch, graphical editing is not allowed). It is a little crude but better than none at all and can only get better!
  • OSC API now supports add locate command (/ardour/locate i= i=)
• Fixes
  • The OS X builds include a fix for a crashing bug in the Pango font handling library. This would often occur during zoom operations.
  • Plugin/send/insert displays in mixer strips should now always list the correct items
  • Change keybindings to more closely match 3.0
  • Make keybindings pay attention only to “relevant” modifiers (i.e. ignore numlock)
  • When loading a template, make sure the user template directory exists
  • Add track-record-enable-toggle action to menu, to make it actually bindable
  • Fixup creation of tracks/busses with > 2 channels from track templates
  • Simplify waveform choices menu
  • Compiles cleanly with gcc4.4 patches
  • Limit group button width
  • “in” and “out” as part of a port name should not be translatable by default, since it will break session portability. French & Polish users who need to get old sessions that have these names translated and need to keep them working should set the environment variable ARDOUR_RETAIN_PORT_NAME_SUFFIX_TRANSLATION to force old behaviour.
  • Transpose appears in the popup region context menu as well as the Regions menu
  • Auto-* buttons now have a fixed size
  • Keep the transient auto-analyse dialog from showing up more than once per launch of Ardour
  • Fix some actions that need to be sensitive depending on the existence of selected tracks
  • Save and recall rectified waveform view setting(s)
  • Make tearoff windows still forward key events (and thus bindings still work)
  • Make big clock window into a utility window, not a menu
  • Bad syntax in LV2 RDF files no longer causes crash on startup.
  • Apply button made clickable when modifying the meter marker at the start of the session.
  • Fix import channel->track Mapping option so it follows the region/track menu selection
  • Add shortcuts to both SYSTEM and USER templates folder.
  • Correctly display wastebasket content size
  • Reinstate export-region which was lost
  • Make zoom-to-region more straightforward.
  • Fix logic in undo, redo and swapping of visual state changes
  • Add “all” items to track right click context menu instead of relying on the -all- edit/mix group
  • New Session/Startup dialog changes
    • If no interface has been identified previously, put the audio setup tab as the first tab
    • if JACK is not running and no interface has ever been chosen, show JUST the audio setup tab. once JACK is successfully
    • properly handle situation where use opts not to load a session because of SR mismatch
  • Better (less crash-prone) behaviour when JACK fails to start from “within” ardour.
  • Freesound mootcher patch (it might work now!)
  • LV2 external UIs supported
  • LV2 epp logarithmic parameters handled
  • LADSPA log parameters default values set appropriately
  • Handle localized decimal indicator in BarController widget
  • I/o buttons now show connection state a bit more sensibly
  • Edit group visibility maintained in session file
  • Better behaviour of the splash window with the Ion WM (activated by setting the environment variable ARDOUR_USE_OVERRIDE_REDIRECT_SPLASH)
  • “About” window set as transient for editor
  • Prevent sends/inserts from ever being renamed to the same name as a track/bus
  • Make handling of session and history files more robust across ardour versions
  • Don’t allow crossfade point dragging to create illegal values
  • Allow DIST_LIBDIR to override LIBDIR during the build
• Translations
  • Updated russian translation from Alexandre Prokoudine
  • Updated french translation from Raphaël Doursenaud
  • Tweaks to german translation

Ardour is available for download for OS X and Linux.

More information: Ardour