[fluid-dev] News and FluidSynth 1.0.4

[Peter Hanappe]

Hallo everyone,

There it is finally: FluidSynth version 1.0.4 is out!
It's available in the download section on the savannah
web site (http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/fluid/).
This version maybe did not get as much testing as it
should, but I did not want to wait any longer before
making some of the recent improvements available.
I also uploaded the files of the older versions, which
were lost after savannah got cracked.

The latest changes I made, and not yet mentioned on the
mailing list, are:

- The ALSA sequencer interface now opens several ports
  if the number of MIDI channels of the synthesizer
  is bigger than 16. This effectively makes it possible
  to use the synth with 32, 64, 128, ... number of channels
  through ALSA.

- I turned of the filter on/off optimization that still
  could cause some clicks.

- I added two projects in the "bindings" directory.
  First, and most importantly, is Norbert Schnell's fluidsynth~
  object for Max/MSP (currently for MacOS X). Second, is a
  Java JNI interface to the synth. Very much a work in progress.

Stuff that didn't make it in this release:

- Stephan Tassart and his team have ported FluidSynth to
  Solaris and have send me a patch. Unfortunately, the patch
  is not yet included.

- We had an interesting discussion on the mailing list about
  handling events in the audio thread and using FIFOs to
  communicate between threads. I haven't done any work on this,
  yet, partly because it's a fairly big change to do on a
  "stable" branch. I'm considering starting a development branch.

- Stephan Tassart noted that there is a anti-aliasing problem
  when running the synth at sampling rates below 44.1 kHz. This
  has not been handled, yet.


A more complete list of changes between version 1.0.3 and 1.0.4
is as follows:

- The Midi tempo problem is corrected

- Config files: fluidsynth now reads the configuration file
  correctly. On start-up, fluidsynth parses the
  file ~/.fluidsynth, if it is there. If it is not there, it tries to
  parse the file /etc/fluidsynth.conf. Any command that you can enter
  in fluidsynth's shell can be put in the config files.
  It is possible to specify an alternative config file on the command
  line. Passing the "-f filename" option will cause the synthesizer to
  load the specified file instead of the default configuration files.

- Added an audio driver that outputs the sound to
  a file. The driver is for debugging purposes; it is not
  suited to render a MIDI file accurately. To use the driver, use the
  "-a file" command line option. You can specify the filename by
  passing "-o audio.file.name=<filename>". The driver only outputs raw
  data. To use the file you'll probably want to convert it to a .wav
  file (with sox, for example).

- Changed some of the settings of the reverb module. The
  code has not been changed. I made the changes after comparing the
  wave forms of the original Freeverb with the synth's output. I'll
  explain more in the follow-up mail.

- Bug fixes in the sequencer. The sequencer is now also protected by a
  mutex and no longer has a maximum limit on the number of events.

- Added Markus Nentwig's LADSPA design document to CVS. It
  introduces the usage of the LADSPA effects module.

- Applied Stephane Letz' patch that connects MidiShare to fluidsynth
  by default so that received MIDI events directly trigger the synth.

- Bug fix in amplitude envelope

- Applied Eric Van Buggenhaut's patch to not compile asm code on
  non-i386 archs.

- Applied Ken Ellinwood's patches (see ChangeLog for details)

- Bug fixes in MIDI player code, pointed to by Sergey Pavlishin
  (see ChangeLog for details)

- The ALSA sequencer interface now opens several ports
  if the number of MIDI channels of the synthesizer
  is bigger than 16. This effectively makes it possible
  with ALSA to use the synth with 32, 64, 128, ... number
  of channels.

- Turned of the filter on/off optimization that still
  could cause some clicks.

- Added two projects in the "bindings" directory.
  First, and most importantly, is Norbert Schnell's fluidsynth~
  object for Max/MSP (currently for MacOS X). Second, is a
  Java JNI interface to the synth. Very much a work in progress.


Cheers,
Peter