KXStudio : News

> Cardinal 23.07 released
On 2023-07-15 by falkTX

Hello yet again everyone, it is time for another Cardinal release.
Cardinal is a free and open-source virtual modular synthesizer plugin.
It is based on the popular VCV Rack but with a focus on being a fully self-contained plugin version.

There are quite a few nice changes this time, from finally allowing global user settings to improved audio plugin hosting.
Let's go throught the main changes...

Global user settings

As per user request Cardinal now defines a user directory for patches, modules settings and other details.
This came as a necessity for the updated Ildaeil module, which needs to store plugin cache between runs.
With this now in place, many things that Cardinal was missing compared to VCV Rack are now enabled, including:

• Allow modules to save and load settings in a known location
• Allow to save, list and load module presets and general files from a known location
• Menu action "File" -> "Open recent" is now enabled
• Menu action "File" -> "Overwrite template" is now enabled
• Menu action "Help" -> "Open user folder" is now enabled
• Save and load user settings globally

Please note that user settings are saved per-variant, so e.g. CardinalSynth and CardinalFX will have differnet settings.
This is 100% intentional, and found to be generally useful - we want to have different base templates and favorites on Synth vs FX.

Also, something not done on VCV Rack side, a "File" -> "New (factory template)" is now available.
This allows to load the Cardinal's original template instead of the user-saved one.

Ildaeil plugin hosting

The Ildaeil module allows to load audio plugins (such as LV2 and VST3) inside Cardinal.
With this update, Ildaeil will automatically scan and list binary plugins, bringing support for LADSPA, DSSI, VST2, VST3 and CLAP.
When supported by the plugin Ildaeil will also show the list of available presets.

AIDA-X module

This releases introduces a new module, a port of the AIDA-X audio plugin (also available separately as a standalone plugin).
AIDA-X is an Amp Model Player leveraging AI and machine learning, with a target of providing high fidelity simulations of guitar amplifiers.
It is also possible to run entire signal chains consisting of any combination of amp, cab, dist, drive, fuzz, boost and eq.

The module loads AIDA-X files that have been trained to match a desired sound output.
Right-click on the module and select "Load model file..." to load an AIDA-X model file from disk.

A quick model pack can be downloaded from AIDA DSP's Google Drive folder.
Check out the MOD Forum's Neural Modelling section for an online place for discussion, sharing and all things related to Amp Models.

Web browser persistent storage

A nice little addition to the Cardinal's online web version (running at cardinal.kx.studio or easily self-hostable) is browser-side peristent storage.
This means we are able to locally save patches and user settings on the web version of Cardnal, making it a little bit more useful and not purely a test tool.
Previously saved patches can be accessed via "File" -> "Open local patch" menu.

Also on the web version, it will now automatically detect lack of Web-SIMD support and load a non-optimized version of Cardinal.
This allows to load Cardinal on Safari and other WebKit based browsers, or any other that does not support Web-SIMD.
Worth noting that latest WebKit has finally added support for Web-SIMD, so this is more of a temporary measure until the update is rolled out everywhere.

There are a few module updates too, and some important bug fixes too, see the changelog below.

Changelog

• Add AIDA-X module
• Add Bogaudio AD to mini variant
• Add (binary) plugin scanning to Ildaeil plugin hosting (LADSPA, DSSI, VST2, VST3 and CLAP)
• Add plugin presets to Ildaeil, when exposed on the plugin side
• Add VST2 plugin folder option to Windows installer
• Allow custom URL for remote instance connections
• Allow usage of local user directory and configs, expose related options
• Fix focus to input text dialogs
• Fix missing menubar cpu usage
• Invert scroll X direction
• Rework file menu
• Update base VCV Rack to v2.3.0
• Update Sapphire to v2.2.2 (adds Tube Unit)
• Update MindMeldModular and SurgeXT, for Rack 2.3 compatibility

Build related changes

• Bump minimum required macOS version to 10.15
• Fix build with GCC13
• Fix missing `make install` of mini variant
• LTO no longer enabled by default for release builds
• Only enable remote OSC control in headless builds
• Remove `NOPLUGINS` build option
• Remove use of `mingw-std-threads`
• Several optimizations and build tweaks

Web version related changes

• Add persistent storage (automatic on save, can be manually triggered via File menu)
• Add local (browser-side) patch loading via File menu (under "Open local patch")
• Automatically load no-simd version on browsers that do not support web-simd
• Disable cursor lock by default

Downloads

The source code plus Linux, macOS and Windows binaries can be downloaded at https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal/releases/tag/23.07.
Cardinal is released as LV2, VST2, VST3 and CLAP plugin, plus AudioUnit and JACK/Standalone for certain systems.

> Ildaeil v1.3 released
On 2023-07-15 by falkTX

Hello again everyone, a new release of Ildaeil is here.
Ildaeil is mini-plugin host working as a plugin, allowing one-to-one plugin format reusage.
The idea is to load it as a plugin inside your DAW and then the other "real" plugin inside Ildaeil.
This allows, for example, a VST3 host to load LV2 plugins and vice-versa.

The main changes this time are automatic binary plugin scanning, exposing plugin presets and simplified standalone.
The automatic binary plugin scanning makes Ildaeil able to quickly list and load even more plugins than before.
Scanned plugins are cached so the scan only happens once per plugin (or until its binary is updated).

For the standalone, Ildaeil now has a single standalone variant instead of the old FX/Synth/MIDI separate programs.
In order to make this work in a more generic way, buttons for "enable midi" and "enable input" are shown when viewing a plugin's generic UI.
Also related to this, an online version is available at ildaeil.kx.studio, used for doing experiments with realtime audio and plugins on the Web.

Full changelog:

• Add auto-scan of binary plugins (LADSPA, DSSI, VST2, VST3 and CLAP)
• Add enable-input, enable-midi and buffer-size options for standalone
• Add macOS standalone to release binaries
• Add preset selector for plugins that expose them
• Improve VST3 hosting
• Initial experimental web version, public instance running at https://ildaeil.kx.studio/
• Set GUI as resizable when running as standalone
• Use a single standalone program instead of having Synth/FX/MIDI variants

Downloads

The source code plus Linux, macOS and Windows binaries can be downloaded at https://github.com/DISTRHO/Ildaeil/releases/tag/v1.3.
Ildaeil is released as CLAP, LV2, VST2 and VST3 plugin, plus JACK/Standalone for some systems.

> Carla 2.5.5 released
On 2023-06-04 by falkTX

Hello again everyone, a new release for the Carla Plugin Host is here, v2.5.5 which brings a couple of fixes to the v2.5 series and internal tweaks for its future integration in OBS.
Worth noting that future releases of Cardinal and Ildaeil will depend on this version (or later) for their audio plugin discovery support.

Changelog

• Allow IPC during plugin discovery (controlled by external tools)
• Expose a few extra APIs in carla-utils library
• Install extra carla-utils related headers during `make install`
• Fix invalid/empty LV2 paths for compatibility with lilv
• Fix LV2 plugin state for plugin bridges
• Fix showing engine device settings on systems without JACK
• Fix usage with LMMS on Windows
• Remove use of `REAL_BUILD` macro, no longer needed
• Tweaks for integration in OBS
• Other minor fixes and cleanup

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla".
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

> Introducing AIDA-X
On 2023-04-25 by falkTX

Hello everyone, I would like to introduce a new audio plugin - AIDA-X.

AIDA-X is an Amp Model Player, it loads models of AI trained music gear which you can then play in real-time.
Its main intended use is to provide high fidelity simulations of amplifiers.
However, it is also possible to run entire signal chains consisting of any combination of amp, cab, dist, drive, fuzz, boost and eq.
See https://github.com/AidaDSP/AIDA-X for more details on the project, including documentation and downloads.

Behind the scenes AIDA-X uses RTNeural, which does the heavy lifting for model processing.
Similar to master_me, I did the desktop plugin related code so it obviously uses DPF for the cross-platform and plugin format support details.

This new plugin comes out of an effort from me, AIDA-DSP and MOD Audio.
Initially AIDA-DSP folks did the work to get RTNeural working as its own embed-focused LV2 plugin, together with figuring out the AI training details.
The initial idea was to have an LV2/MOD-specific plugin that would serve as "generic model loader", this is the aidadsp-lv2 project.
As part of my work for MOD Audio, I helped to get this LV2 plugin in a bit better shape and integrated on the platform.
You can see a nice, extensive discussion with Jatin (RTNeural's main author) regarding how to best approach a "load it all" with it here.

With all pieces in place the LV2 embed plugin was/is working quite well inside MOD units and other low-spec devices, but LV2 is not yet a widely supported format...
We did not want to have it as a niche plugin, the technology around it is getting a lot of attention lately because of how damn cool it is.
I took the initiative to make a desktop plugin for AIDA-DSP, based on DPF as usual, and then we built on top of that.

Model Training and Downloads

If you are interesting on capturing/training your own models, MOD Audio has created a dedicated Modeling Guide page.
There's a dedicated space for sharing and discussing all things related to Amp Models in the MOD Forum's Neural Modelling section.

Plugin Downloads

There are pre-compiled binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows which can downloaded at https://github.com/AidaDSP/AIDA-X/releases.
You can also find it in the KXStudio repositories as aida-x package.

And you can also try it live online at mod.audio/aida-x-online, though this last option uses pre-recorded audio loops instead of real audio input.

Enjoy and have fun!

> Carla 2.5.4 released
On 2023-03-13 by falkTX

Hello again everyone, a new Carla release is here, v2.5.4 which brings a couple of fixes to the v2.5 series.

Carla is an audio plugin host, with support for many audio drivers and plugin formats.
It has some nice features like automation of parameters via MIDI CC (and send output back as MIDI too) and full OSC control.

Changelog

• Fix crash/regression when using LV2 plugins without worker extension
• Fix compat with PyQt >= PyQt 5.15.8
• Fix macOS build
• Simplify JACK event handling, now using a single queue on the main thread

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla".
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.