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.
Bootstrap updated to v5.3.0 which supports color modes, which means that
if your system uses a dark color theme, it will adapt to your visual preferences
on browsers that supports it.
Highlight.js will adapt to the chosen theme, so the sfz examples will be shown with it.
VCV Rack, the free and open-source host, has added a new illustrated manual for all its free modules. (Free docs, free host, free modules - got it?) It's a great intro or refresher -- those pictures illustrate a lot of concepts that can elude even advanced synthesists. That makes this worth a look whether you've got a hardware Eurorack rig or are just getting started in software.
QXGEdit is a live XG instrument editor, specialized on editing MIDI System Exclusive files (.syx) for the Yamaha DB50XG and thus probably a baseline for many other XG devices.
Change-log:
Micro-adjustments to the View > Options... dialog layout.
Prepping into the next development cycle (with Qt >= 6.5).
QmidiCtl is a MIDI remote controller application that sends MIDI data over the network, using UDP/IP multicast. Inspired by multimidicast (https://llg.cubic.org/tools) and designed to be compatible with ipMIDI for Windows (https://nerds.de). QmidiCtl was long ago designed for the Maemo enabled handheld devices, namely the late Nokia N900 and promoted to the Maemo Package repositories. Nevertheless, QmidiCtl may still be found effective as a regular desktop application and recently as an Android application as well.
Change-log:
Prepping into the next development cycle (with Qt >= 6.5).
QmidiNet is a MIDI network gateway application that sends and receives MIDI data (ALSA-MIDI and JACK-MIDI) over the network, using UDP/IP multicast. Inspired by multimidicast and designed to be compatible with ipMIDI for Windows.
Change-log:
Fixed lost or out of order messages on JACK-MIDI client.
Prepping into the next development cycle (with Qt >= 6.5).
You might have missed it or thought this was about Push, but RNBO is included for all Max for Live users in Live 11.3. And in other RNBO news, folks are already combining sound and visuals on the Web with RNBO and JavaScript.
Once again, a very short recap. Week highlights: Blender Studio announces
their next open movie project, Intel Open Image Denoise 2.0 is out with major
improvements, Krita and Ardour are getting new features.
When I posted last week that the GIMP team was meeting somewhere in the EU, I
had no idea where. And now that I know, wow!
Not only Simon Budig went back to contributing, Michael Natterer is back too.
There’s also Niels De Graef helping with general stuff like the build system,
and Carlos Garnacho (GNOME) sending various patches.
Blender Studio
announced
their next open movie, Project Gold.
This will be a non-photorealistic animation with an impressionistic aesthetic.
The project will be directed by Jericca
Cleland, who was earlier involved with
big projects like Toy Story 2, Song of the Sea, Finding Nemo, and Ballerina. This definitely sets expectations!
The new release brings SYCL support for Intel Xe architecture GPUs, as well as
support for CUDA (NVIDIA Volta, Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace and Hopper) and
HIP (AMD RDNA2 and RDNA3) and interoperability API functions for both SYCL,
CUDA, and HIP.
Among other features:
New buffer API functions for specifying the storage type, copying data
to/from the host, and importing external buffers from graphics APIs.
New quality filter parameter for setting the filtering quality mode
(high or balanced).
Pretty much all changes this week were bugfixing and small improvements. The
v0.21 release is too close for anything else to be happening.
Yorik posted his weekly
report about
progress with NativeIFC. Long story short: creating windows and doors from
scratch for a NativeIFC project is now possible, and so is the editing of
openings.
Still not a lot of major changes since the last release, but Julius Künzel
started the preparation work for the KDE Frameworks
6 port, and Jean-Baptiste
Mardelle rewrote the media browser.
In Paul’s absence (who has been cycling through the USA for fun for the last
two weeks), Ben Loftis resumed the effort on improving tempo maps editing, and
Robin Gareus implemented support for recalling connections when switching
backends.
Here’s the general idea. Let’s say you recorded some material in one location
with an external audio interface, for which you needed either ALSA or JACK for
a backend (talking about Linux here).
Then you hopped on a train and went home. While on the train, you want to
listen to the material and maybe do some early cutting. You have Bluetooth
earphones, so you need the PulseAudio backend. Once you switch to it, all your
external connections are gone.
So when you show up in that other location the next day with the same session,
you need to manually restore the connections to record some more material.
Well, not anymore. Ardour will now restore connections when you jump between
backends.
Libre Arts is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work I do,
donations are once again possible. You can subscribe on Patreon or make a
one-time donation with BuyMeACoffee
(see here for more info).
Experimental electronic sound night at XM3 in Aalborg (DK), concerts with three block 4 acts TMS, Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen and Notstandskomitee. With custom hardware and software, live coding, Piezoelectric music and Pure Data. Saturday 27. May 18:00
Week highlights: Blender 3.6 beta is out, MLT gets more 10-bit video support,
VGC Illustration gets UI update and new tools, DrMr sampler gets a new life in
a fork.
The GIMP team is meeting live this week somewhere in the EU, for the first
time since 2019.
They’ve been patching various minor things, and I’m particularly happy to see
long-time contributor Simon Budig returning to hacking on GIMP after a
sabbatical.
Meanwhile, CmykStudent continues experimenting with non-destructive editing.
Here they are painting in a layer inside a group where two GEGL operations,
gegl:invert-linear and gegl:edge-neon, are chained:
Idriss Fekir is fixing issues with the text tool and attempting to port the
tool to Pango2 in his personal git
branches. Shubham Daule is
currently wrapping
up work on
improving the Selection Stroke dialog he started while preparing for GSoC.
There was an explosion of patches in the project’s git repository this week,
mostly thanks to Eoin O’Neill and Emmet O’Neill rewriting the animation player
with the MLT framework. Other than that:
Dmitry’s draft fix for CMYK blending modes went live in the main development
branch.
Krayton Draws contributed
more shortcut actions for multi-touch gestures (patch in review).
Killy proposed
alpha channel support for the MyPaint brush engine support.
Blender 3.6 (a long-time support release) is now in beta. There’s a bunch of
animation/rigging improvements, easier selection of letters in text objects,
multi-layer EXR images support in the viewport compositor (plus a dozen of
nodes), new Weight Paint tools in Grease Pencil (Blur, Average, Smear),
upgraded UV Packing engine, simulations support in geometry nodes, Embree 4
support for ray-tracing with Intel GPU, and more.
Here’s the preliminary release
notes, and here is
an overview by askNK:
Nothing fancy, as the project is wrapping up for the v0.21 release:
Draft: Better svg linestyle settings
Translation improvements
Sketcher: new edit tools toolbar
There’s some talk about switching to a time-based release
schedule
and bi-annual releases, this initiative coming from Ondsel (disclaimer: I
co-authored that post).
The general idea is that users should not have to run unstable weekly builds
to benefit from quality-of-life improvements. Let’s see if maintainers agree,
and if they do, what comes out of this.
Dan Dennedy released an
update of MLT
earlier this month. There’s the usual handful of bug fixes there, but I’d
like to draw your attention to further work on 10-bit support:
Image formats with yuv420 and yuv444 encoding in 10-bit now supported
10-bit video support in the movit.convert filter now available
10-bit video presets now available: AV1, DNxHR-HQ, FFV1, ProRes 422,
ProRes 444, ProRes HQ, x264-high10, x265-main10
The team is mostly busy fixing bugs after releasing 23.04 last month. There’s
another update
available, with
36 fixes and improvements. But the new development cycle is open, one of the
latest changes is a new option to automatically adjust tracks’ height to
timeline height.
If you rely on JACK2, this release is for you. It comes with a new
zero-latency jackdbus bridge. When jackdbus is started, PipeWire creates a
sink/source pair and run the complete PipeWire graph as a synchronous JACK
client with no added latency.
As a result of removing overhead when running the graph with the new bridge,
performance has been improved a lot.
Peter Semiletov forked DrMr, a simplistic LV2 sampler for
Hydrogen drumkits. With
DrumRox, he aims to maintain support
for the newer drumkits file format. Patches from Filipe Coelho’s earlier
maintenance fork are included.
Architecture Topics demonstrates the use of the Animation
Nodes add-on for construction animation in
Blender:
Marta Gvozdinskaya explains how to adjust seam allowance in Inkscape for
sewing (notably, Marta is one of the people directly benefitting from the
recent PDF importing fixes mentioned above):
Libre Arts is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work I do,
donations are once again possible. You can subscribe on Patreon or make a
one-time donation with BuyMeACoffee
(see here for more info).
SpectMorph (CLAP/LV2/VST plugin, JACK) is able to morph between samples of musical instruments. A standard set of instruments is shipped with SpectMorph, and an instrument editor is available to create user defined instruments from user samples.
This release took quite a bit of development time, because multiple related features were added, which resulted in lots of changes to the codebase. The main new features are
SpectMorph now provides a CLAP plugin.
A filter with different filter modes was added.
A new, more flexible modulation system was added.
SpectMorph now provides visual feedback for modulated parameters.
For macOS, there are now signed installers with support for Intel and ARM.
To see how to use the new possibilities, I recommend this video:
The GStreamer team is pleased to announce the second bug fix release
in the stable 1.22 release series of your favourite cross-platform
multimedia framework!
This release only contains bugfixes and it should be safe to update from
1.22.x.
Highlighted bugfixes:
avdec: fix occasional video decoder deadlock on seeking with FFmpeg 6.0
decodebin3: fix regression handling input streams without CAPS or TIME segment such as e.g. udpsrc or pushfilesrc
bluez: a2dpsink: fix Bluetooth SIG Certification test failures
osxvideosink: fix deadlock upon closing output window
qtdemux: fix edit list handling regression and AV1 codec box parsing
qtmux: fix extraction of CEA608 closed caption data from S334-1A packets
It’s not very often that we come to you, our users, asking for financial donations, yet here we are. We have fallen on some rough times here at the Ubuntu Studio project.
First of all, donations have dropped considerably. We understand the world financial climate has not been easy for any of us, and it has become harder for all of us to live. However, we do believe that if we all work together, we can help each other out.
Ubuntu Studio is given entirely free. Those that create it aren’t paid to do so; it is a completely volunteer project. It’s not perfect, but we do try to make it the easiest to use and lowest bar for entry operating system for creative individuals in the world. We do all of the research and configuration out of the box so you don’t have to. It should just work. At least, that’s what we strive for. It’s not always perfect, but for most people, it comes close.
With that, our two most active developers have been hit with some very hard times.
In December, our project leader, Erich Eickmeyer, was laid off from his regular job due to no fault of his own. Erich’s family is having trouble staying afloat. His wife, Amy, is the volunteer lead of the Edubuntu project, which Erich helps out with as technical lead.
In February, our lead developer, Len Ovens, had a major injury which caused medical issues.
With that, we ask if you could find it in your heart to donate some finances to the project to help support ongoing development, perhaps above and beyond what you would normally give for an open source project of this size. Even if you can’t, consider helping with donating enough for a tank of gas.
We have multiple ways to give, which are outlined below:
Donate using PayPal
Donations are Monthly or One-Time
Donate using Liberapay Donations are Weekly, Monthly, or Annually
Neural modeling in the context of guitar equipment refers to the use of artificial neural networks to create digital versions of analog amplifiers and effect pedals. By training a neural network on the responses of various amplifier circuits and effect pedal designs to different input signals, it is possible to create a model that accurately simulates the behavior of the original hardware.
This technique can be applied to a wide range of guitar amplifiers and effect pedals, including distortion pedals, overdrive pedals, and fuzz pedals, among others. The resulting digital models can be used in digital audio workstations (DAWs), as standalone software plugins or within your MOD Dwarf to create authentic guitar tones that replicate the sound and tone of the original hardware.
Neural modeling has become increasingly popular in the music industry, as it allows for the creation of high-quality digital versions of classic guitar AMPs that can be used in recordings or live performances. It also provides greater flexibility and control over the sound of the guitar, as digital amplifiers and effect pedals can be easily adjusted and modified to suit the musician’s preferences.
What does it sound like?
Available products with the technology
This technology is getting increasingly popular and used within the music and guitar tech industry. Here are some products that make use of Neural Modeling and AI:
A new emerging open-source plugin that you can use embedded in your MOD Dwarf, as VST in your DAW, or standalone as a desktop version. AIDA-X is normalizing the use AI in the world of guitar amps through tools that allow users to train their own models.
Neural amp modeler is an open source project that’s a plugin that runs AI models. NAM is also normalizing the use AI in the world of guitar amps through tools that allow users to train their own models.
In the world of audiophilia there are arguments that rage over the relative merits of particular components. Sometimes this can reach silly levels as in the high-end ALPS pot we once saw chosen as a volume control whose only task was to be a DC voltage divider feeding a pin on a DSP, but there are moments where such comparisons might have a bit of merit. To allow the comparison of different op-amps in a headphone amplifier, [Stephan Martin] has created a stereo amplifier board complete with sockets to take single or dual op-amp chips.
The circuit is based upon a design from the 1990s which as far as we can see is a pretty conventional non-inverting amplifier. It has an on-board op-amp to create a virtual ground, and three sockets for either two single or one dual op-amp to create a stereo headphone amplifier.
So the burning question is this: will you notice a difference? We’re guessing that assuming the op-amps under test are to a sufficient specification with a high enough impedance input and enough output current capability, the differences might be somewhat imperceptible without an audio analyser or the hearing of a ten-year-old child.
Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen, solo-exhibition The Metabolism of the Earth
at XM3 - rum for samtidskunst, Sallingsundvej 33A – Aalborg Øst , Denmark
The exhibition is from May 5. to May 29. 2023 Opening on May 5th at 18.00-21:00 (with a performance at 19:00)
The Metabolism of the Earth is a solo-exhibition by Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen which takes place in XM3 - rum for samtidskunst (space for contemporary art) from May 5. to 29. 2023. Through performative grips, it works with nature's own processes and its state as the thematic framework where the artworks are all created as dialogues and collaborative processes between matter, wind, and weather. Madsen here wants to focus on what is happening around us and how human and non-human agents are influencing each other, their affective states and relationships. The Metabolism of the Earth thus activates performance art, sound, video, bio art, notations and listening scores, all of which are linked to micro-meetings with the state of the earth, here described as a metabolism. These have all been started as fieldwork and at artistic residencies in the Nordic countries from approx. 2008 to the present (in Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland). The exhibition also includes the newly produced video work Hidden Agency and a publication with listening scores that moves across the mentioned conditions and is unfolding Madsen's methodical use of the potentials of listening.
The Metabolism of the Earth thus merges retrospective material with newly produced works which are all relating to XM3 and the local context. It is created and based on different processes (and primarily) natural materials, matter, and their transversal relationships and impacts under a given condition. These are anchored in the connections between, for example, the geological and lithic – here soil, gravel and rocks; ice, salt and melting(s); water and plants as natural indicators; as well as the shaping and sculptural forces of the wind. Additionally, there will be performances and performative happenings on selected days where elements of the exhibition are activated, as well as an artist talk. For the opening on May 5th, there will be a solo-performance by Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen, and on Saturday May 27th, there will be sound performances with TMS (duo with Madsen and artist Malte Steiner), as well as solo sound performances from both Madsen and Steiner.
In order to introduce and focus on a sensory approach to understanding the processes which are taking place around us, Madsen will during the exhibition facilitate local listening sessions linked to the exhibition's theme at selected locations in Aalborg and Nørresundby, based on the listening score publication "the composite geology of place – affective listening with a (post)industrial landscape" which Madsen has created specifically for this context. The planned listening sessions will here be dialogues with selected places, their characteristics and potentials, geology and mineralogy, construction and social communities.
Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen is a Danish artist, researcher, and lecturer, with a background as an art educator from The College of Arts Crafts and Design (DK) and a MA in Art History from Aarhus University (DK). Madsen is currently working on a doctoral thesis in artistic research at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department of Art and Media (FI). Madsen also works with Deep Listening and performance instructions as an artistic discipline and is certified from the renowned Center for Deep Listening, Rensselaer Polytech Institute (US). Madsen has worked within the performative art field since 1998, and founded in 2019 the nomadic platform performance protocols, grounded in instruction-based art, performance, and collaborative practices. Madsen has presented their art internationally in many formats and contexts, primarily within the field of performance art and sound art, with nature, environment, and the affective as their main focus point. Madsen is a member of BKF (Danish Visual Artists) and The Finnish Bioart Society.The Metabolism of the Earth is supported by Aalborg Municipality.
Program:
May 5 at 18:00-21:00 Opening with a performance by Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen.
May 7 at 14:00-15:30 Listening session I*
14 May at 14:00-15:30 Listening session II*
21 May at 14:00-15:30 Listening session III*
24 May at 18:00-19:00 Artist talk
27 May at 18:00-21:00 Sound evening with TMS, Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen and Malte Steiner (Notstandskomitee). At this event the Block 4 artists Madsen and Steiner will each play solo sets and collectively as TMS. Steiner here performs under his alias Notstandskomitee and will be creating (post)industrial rhythmic landscape for Madsen’s exhibition.
*To participate in the listening sessions, please write which dates in an email to info (at) tmkm.dk and you will receive further information about the specific gathering-point. All sessions will take place in the greater Aalborg or Nørresundby area (and not in the gallery). They will be outside and accessible by public transport.
The main goal of liquidsfz is to implement a library that supports playing .sfz files and is easy to integrate into other projects. We also provide a JACK client and a LV2 plugin.
This release fixes a crash triggered by Carla while saving without path. It also allows for overlapping notes during sustain, which makes sustain sound more realistic. A precompiled windows LV2 binary is now available.
Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS reached the end of its three years of supported life provided by the Ubuntu Studio team. All users are urged to upgrade to 22.04 LTS at this time.
This means that the Xfce, audio, video, graphics, photography, and publishing components of your system will no longer receive updates, plus we at Ubuntu Studio will no longer support it after today, 28-April-2023, though your base packages from Ubuntu will continue to receive security updates from Ubuntu until 2025 since Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu Core continue to receive updates.
Please note that Ubuntu Pro has no bearing on the three year support length of official Ubuntu Flavors.
Unfortunately, due to the change in desktop environment from Xfce to KDE’s Plasma Desktop, there is no supported in-place upgrade path. The only supported upgrade path is to back-up your /home/{user} folder and reinstall the operating system.
No single release of any operating system can be supported indefinitely, and Ubuntu Studio has no exception to this rule.
Long-Term Support releases are identified by an even numbered year-of-release and a month-of-release of April (04). Hence, the most recent Long-Term Support release is 22.04 (YY.MM = 2022.April), and the next Long-Term Support release will be 24.04 (2024.April). LTS releases for official Ubuntu flavors (not Desktop or Server which are supported for five years) are three years, meaning LTS users are expected to upgrade after every LTS release with a one year buffer.
Ardour 7.4 is now available. This is mostly a bugfix release — several important ones have accumulated since 7.3 — but there is also a sprinkling of new features, notably MIDI subgroup busses.
There has also been a lot of work on features that we had hoped to have ready for 7.4, but will now be officially released in 7.5. The curious may find some of them already, but we’re not ready to announce or document them yet.
One other small change for this release: people interested in just trying Ardour out via our free/demo build will no longer have to wait to get an email containing the link. We’ve decided that after 10 years of asking people for their email address and doing nothing with them, we’ll just stop asking and provide the download link directly.
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.
QjackCtl
Qsynth
Qsampler
QXGEdit
QmidiCtl
QmidiNet
