News

2010-03-23

I am posting here to notify any concerned parties that this page will probably disappear on May 1st or soon thereafter. My ISP intends to stop providing web hosting to its customers and I don't think it matters very much at this point. I'll look for another host if/when I have something new to release.

2009-05-24

Hello. Since I have received a few emails asking me whether I still intend to continue working on Lost Technology, I'm going to explain my thoughts on the future of my DSP work here. Basically, you should consider Lost Technology – as it exists today – a finished chapter. The DSP engine is a testament to my ignorance and the GUI is full of kludges and very difficult to extend or adapt. I still haven't completed the studies I consider necessary to do any significant work in DSP. Once I am done studying I will probably develop and release one or more simpler plugins before I return to the Lost Technology concept. At that point, I will most likely discard the old LT code base and develop an entirely new plugin based on (roughly) the same concept.

That is that. You might see something new and exciting here in 2010. Until then, have fun and take care.

2007-11-21

Lost Technology 0.2.5 and Refuzznik 0.5.2 have been released. Notable changes in this update are:

More reliable thread synchronization, especially for multiprocessor systems.
Two new modulator functions for LT: Fine and Conv.
LT's post-modulation A&F displays show effects of offset and gain settings.

The added modulator functions means that the format of LT presets has changed again. Download and run the updated preset fixer (v0.3.1) to convert old presets to the format used by LT 0.2.5.

The new thread synch implementation will probably not work on very old versions of Windows. Vista, XP or 2000 Pro should be fine, anything else is probably not.

2007-06-17

The presetfixer has been blessed with the power to update Refuzznik presets. Since the presetfixer now has its own source package, I have also updated the source release of Lost Technology. The binary LT releases have not changed.

Version 0.3 of LT will be a major milestone for this fancy project. There are so many things I am planning to include in that release that I am starting to think that it will not be done by August. I will do my best to make a plugin that has filters and MIDI and JUCE and envelopes and feedback and lets you make music that rocks lots! It might even work on the Mac but please forget that I said that.

2007-06-12

Lost Technology 0.2.3 and Refuzznik 0.5.1 have been released. I have fixed a bug in LT that has caused wildly incorrect frequency detection in all versions since 0.2. It's a little embarrassing to have left a major error like this one uncorrected for months, but the lack of complaints indicates that few people expect/want LT to do what it's supposed to do anyway. Other changes in the new versions are:

New modulator function in LT that is sort of like the old Exp function but faster and better.
Some code tweaks in the Analyzer that might reduce processor usage when the inputs are silent.
An input slew limiter for Refuzznik that can reduce hiss and buzz when the frequency parameters are turned up high.

Presets made for earlier versions of LT will not load correctly in version 0.2.3. If you have presets that you want to use with LT 0.2.3, use the new version of the presetfixer to convert them to 0.2.3 format.

Edit: Presets made for Refuzznik 0.5 won't work in 0.5.1. The presetfixer does not deal with Refuzznik presets. Perhaps I should just go ahead and implement either an extensible preset format or automatic version identification and conversion on preset load.

I have gotten started with the DSP studies. The basic filter algorithms are turning out to be a lot less complicated than I imagined, the difficulty lies in calculating suitable parameters for those algorithms. Since the filter types I need for LT aren't exotic I can probably find designs for them on the web. If other obligations don't require too much of my time I might release LT 0.3 some time around August.

2007-03-18

Lost Technology 0.2.2 has been released. This minor update replaces the Exp modulator function (which didn't produce very interesting results) with the Top function. There is now a help feature that displays a brief explanation of the most recently modified parameter. This feature is off by default and can be turned on by clicking on a button.

I have also released a distortion plugin (containing no less than 14 lines of DSP code). It differs from ordinary distortion effects in that it uses a sinusoidal function to map input level to output level. Plug-ins with that feature might already have been released, but since I've never heard of one I made Refuzznik anyway.

The release plan for LT has been revised. To implement the filter-based features I want to put in version 0.3 I first have to learn some math. At the moment I don't know when I'll have time to do the required studying.

2006-08-18

Lost Technology 0.2.1 has been released. This bugfix eliminates a potential memory leak in the buffer allocation routines.

I have made a program that can convert ".fxp" presets made for LT 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 to the format used by LT 0.2 and later versions. This program is also avaliable in the download section.

2006-08-10

Lost Technology 0.2 has been released. This release includes the following changes:

The sizes of the waveform buffers can be changed. The default setting should work well most of the time; lower settings are useful when memory must be conserved, higher ones when very low minimum frequencies are desired.
The F&W update trigger sequence can be inverted. In version 0.1.3, the valley->peak->posneg sequence was arbitrarily chosen over the equally valid peak->valley->negpos form. Now both alternatives are available to the user.
The effects of parameter settings are now mostly independent of the sample rate. LT presets will produce similar results for all host sample rates.
I have been doing a lot of code reorganization and streamlining. LT might use slightly less CPU time now.

Presets made for earlier versions of LT will not load correctly in version 0.2. If you have presets that you want to keep, load them in your current version and note down the parameter settings before installing version 0.2.

2006-06-19

The new Analyzer algorithm as implemented in version 0.1.2 did not work as described in the manual. This has been fixed in version 0.1.3.

2006-06-16

Lost Technology 0.1.2 has been released. This release includes the following changes:

The Analyzer algorithm has been modified to produce less audible artifacts. The trigger level parameters have new roles in the new algorithm and have been renamed accordingly; "TrigLvl" is now called "HighTrig" and "ResetLvl" is now called "LowTrig".
There is a new modulator function called Exp that applies modulated distortion to the primary signal.
It is now possible to link equivalent parameter controls on each channel (e.g. FLag1 and FLag2) together. When one of a pair of linked controls is moved, the other control moves to the same position. Use the small square buttons to link controls.
The bundled manual uses the same CSS stylesheet as this page. (If you don't see a blue sidebar to the left of this post you might want to try refreshing this page to get your browser to load the stylesheet.) In my opinion the stylesheet makes the manual much more readable and navigable than it was when it was just raw HTML.

It is possible that presets made for earlier versions of LT will load with the wrong modulator functions set in version 0.1.2. If you want to be completely sure that your favorite presets aren't corrupted, you should load each of them in your current version of LT and note down the names of the active modulator functions before installing version 0.1.2. If the function settings are different when the presets are loaded in v0.1.2, you can get the correct function names from your notes.

A lot of the new functionality that I had planned for version 0.2 is already implemented in this version. The stuff that still needs to be done before v0.2 is ready for release is mostly boring reliability improvements. Since I don't feel like scrutinizing a pile of code right now, I have decided to push the release of v0.2 forward to (maybe) August. Activity around here will probably remain low until then.

2006-04-17

Lost Technology 0.1.1 is now available. This is primarily a bugfix release, the problem with crashes when FMin is tweaked should be gone now. If you are a Lost Technology user, it is strongly recommended that you either download and install this update or avoid touching the FMin knob.

Version 0.1.1 also includes an extensively rewritten manual. The manual now uses less vague terminology and explains the inner workings of the plugin much better than before.

2006-04-08

A few days after its first public release, Lost Technology has already gained some true believers, while leaving others decidedly underwhelmed. In this newspost I respond to reactions received via email and by lurking on the KVR Audio forums. I have also posted a release plan outlining the future of Lost Technology.

Thank you, everyone who has commented on Lost Technology. It's delightful to find out that people like my plugin and think it is useful, or at least interesting. The less positive comments have also been nice, some of them have pointed out things that could be improved, others have made me giggle by exposing certain flaws that I did my best to cover up.

Several forum posters mentioned that the plugin is hard to understand and/or get useful results from. One suggested that "some presets" demonstrating the potential applications would be good. I understand this criticism and have made increased user friendliness one of my top priorities for the next release.

The reference manual will be revised, descriptions of algorithms and parameters will be clarified and expanded.

Version 0.2 of the plugin will come with built-in presets, demonstrating how it can be configured to produce different types of sound.

I want your presets. If you create a preset that you think should be included in the built-in set, then I'd appreciate it very much if you sent it to me. Please send presets in Cubase (.fxp) format if you can. Preset donors will be credited if they so desire. By submitting a preset to me you implicitly agree to its free publication as part of a software product released under the MIT license.

Downloads

Lost Technology 0.2.5 - binary: zip tar.bz2

This is the primary binary release, consisting of a plugin DLL with custom GUI and the reference manual.
Lost Technology 0.2.5 - binary (no custom GUI): zip tar.bz2

This is an alternative binary release, consisting of a plugin DLL without custom GUI and the reference manual. This variant uses the default look-and-feel of the host application but the signal processing is exactly the same as in the primary release.
Lost Technology 0.2.5 - source: zip tar.bz2

This is the source release, consisting of the makefile, C++ source code, resource bitmaps and reference manual. The package includes source for both variants of the plugin. To build either variant, you need the VST Audio Plug-Ins SDK. To build the plugin with custom GUI, you also need the VSTGUI source library. The plugin was developed with tools from the MinGW project, version 2.3 of the SDK and version 3.0beta4 of the GUI library; I have not attempted to build it with any other tools or library versions.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The source code has not been edited to be easy to compile or understand for anyone but me. There is no systematic code documentation and you will almost certainly need to do some tweaking of the makefile and/or C++ code to get a successful build.
Refuzznik 0.5.2 - binary (no custom GUI): zip tar.bz2

This is the binary release of Refuzznik - a sinusoidal distortion plugin. The readme file explains how to use it.
Refuzznik 0.5.2 - source: zip tar.bz2

This is the source release of Refuzznik - a sinusoidal distortion plugin.
presetfixer 0.3.1 - binary: zip tar.bz2

This is a tool that can convert ".fxp" presets made for old versions of Transvaal Audio plugins to the format used in the most recent version. The readme file contains comprehensive usage instructions.
presetfixer 0.3.1 - source: zip tar.bz2

This is the source release of the presetfixer. Each supported pair of source and target formats is handled by a separate source file. The file IO and converter chaining routines aren't bound to any particular data format.

About

Lost Technology is a VST plugin for Microsoft Windows (it should work on 2000 Pro, XP and Vista) and is released under the MIT/Expat/X11 License. For information about what the plugin does and how to operate it, please consult the reference manual. This manual is also included in the downloadable packages.

If you want to contact the plugin author (me) you can do so by sending email to rabiteman_2000@yahoo.com. Please begin the subject line with the words "Lost Technology".

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