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KXStudio Monthly Report (March 2021)
On 2021-03-31 by falkTX
Hello all, another monthly report about the KXStudio project is here.
If you have been paying attention to these reports, you likely already know what is going to be covered here.
Starting late February, I began using a
public kanban-style board
in order to show/list the things I am working on and plan to do on the short and medium term.
In a few days I will delete the "done" items related to March, so that the "done" stuff actually relates to the current month.
Now getting to the news..
First, in case you missed it,
DISTRHO-Ports and PawPaw
had a new release,
which finalizes the custom/redistributable Vitalium fork of Vital.
While testing, a few issues on the JUCE LV2 wrapper
were
found
and
fixed.
To the point of, at least on Linux, we now have the LV2 version behaving better than the VST3 one.
Additionally, this
PawPaw
release automates the macOS-universal builds, something that is being applied for Carla and jack2 next releases.
Speaking of Carla, the
2.3-RC2
version was tagged, with the final v2.3 release scheduled for April 15.
The remaining things to check and fix are all very minor, so we are all good for a release anyway.
And speaking of jack2, current plans are to fix the macOS-universal meta-data situation among other minor things where possible.
I began fetching the zita-a2j/j2a code to work as internal client (just like jack1 does) but found a few issues while testing.
It already works well if the internal client is not unloaded, which is good enough for the setup I had in mind for it first - using it to
expose USB audio gadget mode
in a MOD device.
You can already grab the code from
moddevices jack2 fork
though I will try fix the last things so it is good to add in next jack2 release, expected at April 15 as well.
There is a big
DPF overhaul
of its graphic handling, mostly triggered from updating to latest pugl (used for window and event handling).
There is nothing to show just yet, as the code does not even build right now.
I am still on the phase of reworking some core C++ code, so yeah, nothing to show yet.
On a small note, I also patched eg-sampler (LV2 example sampler) to
be able to load non-mono files
and
resample the audio sample to the host sample-rate.
There was a race condition when loading new files,
which is now fixed and merged upstream.
This work was mainly done in order to have a quick usable plugin using files for MOD, but overall everyone benefits.
Regarding packages in the KXStudio repositories, there are a few updates. Those are:
- airwindows added
- melmatcheq.lv2 added (reusing LibraZik package, much appreciated!)
- distrho-ports updated to 2021-03-15
- lsp-plugins updated to 1.1.29
- sequencer64 updated to latest git
And that is it for now.
If you appreciate the kind of work I do, please consider a
donation.
Thank you in advance for your support and stay safe out there!
PS: 2 of the package updates above appear as a result of a Patreon perk ;)
>
Carla 2.3 RC2 is here!
On 2021-03-17 by falkTX
Hello all, this is an announcement for the next release candidate for Carla v2.3.
Comes after a few issues were reported and fixed,
specially important for Windows users where plugin discovery did not work.
The audiofile and midifile plugins were also finalized, the task I was waiting to finish before publishing this RC2.
For the changes made in v2.3 (compared to v2.2) please see the
Carla v2.3-RC1
announcement.
The full list of changes in v2.3-RC2 is:
- Add audio and MIDI file information as parameter outputs
- Make audio and MIDI file host sync optional, enabled by default
- Accept oga and opus audio files
- Fix wine bridge build for certain systems
- Fix (native) plugin discovery under Windows
- Fix plugin search listing AU as possible type on Windows
- Fix loading project with VST3 plugin bridges
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-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.
Final note
Just a reminder that this is a release candidate, and not the final release yet.
There are a few known issues I want to fix before tagging v2.3 as stable, but it is very very close.
And of course, if you appreciate the kind of work I do, please consider a
donation.
Thank you.
>
DISTRHO-Ports 2021-03-15 and PawPaw v1.1 releases
On 2021-03-16 by falkTX
Hello everyone, I am happy to announce a new release for DISTRHO-Ports,
and subsequently an update to PawPaw that adds the new plugins.
In this DISTRHO-Ports release we now have 2 new plugins: SwankyAmp and Vitalium.
SwankyAmp appears as a direct port contribution from Jean Pierre Cimalando, you can find the original plugin here.
As for Vitalium, this is an open-source and redistributable version of
Vital,
a spectral warping wavetable synth that has recently being made
open-source.
We cannot use the Vital brand or connect to its vital.audio online services,
so this is completely removed from the Vitalium source code, with an alternative name and icon.
So with this release, I updated PawPaw so it
now includes SwankyAmp and Vitalium.
In case you forgot or are not aware, PawPaw is a little project to build and package LV2 plugins for macOS and Windows.
Sadly due to technical difficulties I had to drop Windows 32-bit builds, which I imagine most will not care anyway.
So now you can enjoy 2 new plugins, no matter if you use Linux, macOS or Windows.
(for Linux builds, please refer to your distribution of choice, or grab them from the KXStudio repositories)
Oh, and some screenshots of course, everybody loves those.
Reaper with SwankyAmp on Windows
Zrythm with Vitalium on macOS
PS: Yes, Reaper supports LV2 now. And yes, Zrythm is quickly becoming a nice DAW too.
>
KXStudio Monthly Report (February 2021)
On 2021-02-28 by falkTX
Hello all, another "monthly" report about the KXStudio project is here.
There is not a whole lot of stuff this time around, this being a short month and also me moving to a different place.
But there are still some things worth reporting, so let's get to that.
First, in case you missed it,
Carla v2.3-RC1 was tagged and released,
marking the first PyQt-based project of mine to have automated release binaries.
This is crucial for having more frequent releases, as it reduces the workload that each release requires.
It is now basically just
setting the commit hash
in the
Carla-Releases
project, and
wait for the builds
to be done.
And speaking of Carla, a few small issues were found and already fixed, so you can expect RC2 to be out very soon.
On non-KXStudio related news,
Vital is now open-source.
Obviously I have interest on packaging it in the KXStudio repositories but,
even though the project is released under
GPLv3, there are restrictions on the use of the name and its trademarks.
So the idea right now is to (im)port it over to
DISTRHO-Ports
project, with a change of name to Vitalium and an alternative icon made by unfa.
This is already on-going, with one change required which was to update the
DISTRHO JUCE fork
to the latest upstream v6.0.7 -
this is
done now
(including rebasing all of
DISTRHO JUCE patches).
I will write something when the porting process is over, likely doing another release of
PawPaw
since simply having Vitalium as cross-platform LV2 plugin is worth an update.
Package updates in the KXStudio repositories are very few this time.
Basically soundtracker was added (as a special request from a friend) and Helio was updated to v3.3 (which served as a way to test the updated JUCE).
On a final note, I am experimenting with a
public kanban-style board.
Not just to organize myself a bit better, but also as a way to let everyone know what I am working on at the moment and things that I will start to do relatively soon.
You can see what has already been done this month so far (let's pretend we are already in March) and what might be coming soon.
I am still playing with colors and tags, but general idea on the colors at the moment is:
- yellow: packaging stuff or something related to kxstudio repositories
- orange: articles or things to write (usually releases or news)
- green: coding task which is similar to something I did before, so "easy" to do
- red: bug-fixes
- blue: porting over something that already exists/was done before. involves boring, copy, paste and adjust work
- pink: brand new projects or things to do, which usually involve learning, research, testing, etc. can take long
I have recently been trying to get some sort of
crowd-funding going
(to help in terms of financial support).
If you are a sponsor/subscriber, you might have felt that these monthly updates are too spread out and too few.
So a public work-tracking board seems like a nice middle-ground, a way to indicate what is happening on a specific moment without having to wait for monthly reports or big splashy news.
For now you can access the board at board.kx.studio; later on I will see if it can be embed into the main website.
If you see anything you like in there or just simply appreciate the kind of work I do, please consider a
donation.
I am not taking feature requests at the moment, as there is quite a few things in the backlog already, but once most of the
DPF-related
work is complete, I will revisit this idea.
Thank you in advance for your support, stay safe out there!
>
Carla 2.3 RC1 is here!
On 2021-02-17 by falkTX
Hello again everyone, a somewhat small but important Carla update is here!
As there were many changes behind the scenes (specially for Windows builds) I am tagging it as Release Candidate for now.
So this is the announcement of the first release candidate of Carla version 2.3.
Carla is a fully-featured cross-platform audio plugin host, which itself can also run as a plugin (LV2 and VST2).
It is a project slowly growing and maturing for over 10 years now!
This release is the first step for automated releases of Carla, and
other
PyQt
projects.
Might not seem like big news, but it is!
I don't make Carla releases very often as it tends to consume a lot of time,
besides writing the release announcement (like this one), there is a lot of manual building and uploading.
The situation got worse with 1 more build type for macOS universal support..
This makes it more difficult to do quick bug-fixes than it should, and thus they tend to not happen much.
There are still no automated Linux builds though, I will take care of that at a later point.
In any case, I always keep the Carla package on the KXStudio repositories up to date, and ArchLinux is usually very quick on the updates too, so for Linux users this is not that big of a deal.
With that said, let's go through some of this release highlights.
|
macOS arm64/universal build support
Starting with v2.3, Carla natively supports the new macOS arm64 architecture, used in the new M1 hardware models.
As Carla has support for plugin bridges (even across architectures), I took care to make sure that the arm64 version can load x86_64 plugins.
Additionally, for something that kept bothering me a lot, Carla will automatically remove plugins from macOS quarentine before loading them. |
|
General improvements to AudioFile plugin
The AudioFile internal plugin received some deserved attention this time around.
Both Audio and MIDI file plugins are now exposed as LV2 plugins, allowing to load and use these plugins outside of Carla. |
|
Reworked Windows builds
The infrastructure used to build Windows binaries is now through
PawPaw,
as done with
JACK2
already.
For users, this means these binaries are more robust and with less dependencies.
For developers, a nice side-effect is that we can finally tweak the behaviour of the startup executable, now allowing debug messages to be seen.
(though you need to run it in Console/PowerShell for that)
Finally, it should be possible to build Carla under msys2 on Windows now. |
|
Use system/desktop theme icons (non-macOS/Windows only)
Due to popular demand, there is now an option in the experimental settings to use system/desktop theme icons.
Since I do not mind the default Carla icons (quite like them actually), this is not meant for me. |
Other notable changes
- Allow to run CV plugins in rack mode, with CV connected to a dummy port
- Carla-Control no longer has return remote url option, no longer needed after some fixes
- Clear up situation with nogui and carla-osc-gui script (explanation article to come later)
- Disable OSC by default on macos (needs to ask permission to use network, which may look suspicious)
- Do not build external plugins by default
- General improvement to LV2 parameter API support
- Many, many bug-fixes (not listed here, see the git commit history for the raw changes, including bug-fixes)
Notes for users
There are no binary releases for Linux at the moment, and the old Windows 32bit No-SSE builds are gone.
On Linux, use the packages from your distribution or ask the package maintainer to update.
The macOS and Windows binaries are not signed/notarized.
Carla-Control on macOS M1 fails to run natively, but is okay under rosetta2.
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-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.
Final note
With finally the Carla release out of the way, I will start work on DPF very soon, as mentioned on the last monthly report.
If you appreciate the kind of work I do here, please consider a
donation.
You can help to keep these projects alive and enthusiasm and motivation high by giving your support.
Thank you.
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