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2050 Stabilized

I've just put up a new experimental build with more bug fixes for the issues in 2050. I'm pretty sure this now addresses all the important problems and also introduces a couple of refinements:

  • The default audio driver is now the first driver after the Null Audio driver.
  • When selecting the Null Audio driver, a warning message is displayed to indicate that there will be no audio output.
  • A new Restore Defaults button in the audio driver settings to set the buffer size back to the driver preferred settings and the number of extra buffers to 1.

(the first two points are an attempt to reduce the number of support enquiries asking "why no sound").

I'm awaiting confirmation on a couple of bug fixes, after which 2051 should be available.

Posted on February 8, 2010

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Cantabile Lite Intro Video

Eric Krueger of blackgrand.com has posted an excellent introductory video tutorial on using Cantabile Lite.

Update: Eric has been kind enough to let me put these videos on the Cantabile website http://www.cantabilesoftware.com/videos . Thanks Eric.

Posted on February 4, 2010

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New Audio Buffering in 2050

Well it's been a long time since I've posted here, but I now have a number of other projects out of the way and am gearing up to do some more work on Cantabile.

Recently I released build 2050 which introduces a new audio buffering scheme into Cantabile's audio engine. Unfortunately, although the new buffering itself seems to work quite well, it required a considerable rework of some of the core parts of the audio engine and there's been a few bugs introduced as a result - most of which didn't get picked up in the experimental builds which had this functionality.

Anyway, I'm actively working on fixing these issues. If in the mean time you're having trouble, build 2049 is available from the down page - http://www.cantabilesoftware.com/download - you can just install it over the top and you're set to go.

Hopefully a new build should be available in the next day or two...

Posted on February 1, 2010

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Cantabile Lite Re-released

Cantabile Lite is back! The feature set has changed somewhat however.

The intention here is to make a really simple scratch pad type host. The host to go to when you just want to quickly test a plugin, or as a flexible tool for preset and bank management.

As such all recording and playback capabilities have been removed, but a whole set of new capabilities revolving around plugin, preset and bank management have been added:

  • Unlimited racks and plugins.
  • Preset morph and randomization tools - inspiration for sound designers
  • Program organiser - easy management of plugin banks
  • Custom controllers (sliders and buttons) on the on-screen keyboard
  • Partial send support - ability to peel of part of a rack's output and send to up to two other racks (Cantabile Solo inherits this too)
  • User tools - ability to launch external programs
  • Fast session switching - where plugins are re-used between sessions
  • Incremental save - for saving presets/banks and sessions with an automatically increasing counter in the filename
  • A/B preset toggling
  • Ability to set the default state for new sessions
  • Ability to show plugin editors as topmost windows
  • Ability to re-open plugin editors when reloading a session
  • Ability to restore a plugin to the state as loaded from session or factory default state
  • Ability to undo all edits to a plugin since opening the plugin editor

Cantabile Lite is available now - http://www.cantabilesoftware.com/lite

Enjoy!

Posted on August 19, 2009

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MIDI-In Port Recorder

Recently I've been trying to resolve an issue with MIDI clock synchronisation that I've not been able to reproduce myself. The user has a somewhat complex setup and although I've tried a number of things to reproduce it I've just not been able to. So I've added a new diagnostic option called "MIDI In Port Recorder". When enabled, Cantabile will generate a recording file for each enabled MIDI-In port.

My initial thought was to write these out as standard MIDI files, however some real-time MIDI events can't be represented in standard MIDI files. Eg: MIDI Clock events. Also I wanted to be able to capture the input from multiple MIDI-in ports and replay them all correctly synced and the time encoding formats in standard MIDI files is not really up to this (although I guess I could put the recording of all ports in the one file).

Anyway, I've invented a new file format (.port) which is a very simple raw copy of exactly what's coming into Cantabile.

Of course these port recording files are useless without a way to play them back so I've also knocked together a very simple command line tool - PortPlay. Typically I'll use this to replay the recordings back into Cantabile using a virtual MIDI cable.

So now whenever someone reports a compatibility issue with another app or external device, I can simply ask them to turn on the port recorder, send me the generate files and I should be able to easily reproduce the problem. Well that's the plan, I'm yet to see how well this works in practice...

Posted on August 3, 2009

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