discord / News: Recent posts

I've added a few new features to discord without doing a release.

The code in subversion has support for multiple waveforms in addition to sin (triangle, square, saw, reverse-saw, half-saw, reverse half-saw, and their smoothed counterparts).
I haven't found these other wave styles particularly useful, but they are there now, so they'll remain.

Multiple soundstreams within the same file, instead of using listfiles -l to create them. ... read more

This is a bug fix only so is backward compatible, No new functionality.

The bug is the same one as 3.1.1 fixed except it fixes it for writing to a file instead of playing the sound. That is, under certain circumstances the synchronization of the multiple sound streams would create a segfault.

This release is backward compatible will all scripts designed to run with versions greater than 3.0.0.

There was a stream synchronization error in the latest release of discord. This release fixes that error. The error will cause a segfault if you encounter it. I ran multiple scripts without encountering it so it doesn't always bite.

A minor clean up in the html docs, removed a duplicate entry for the phase voice field descriptions.

While this release adds new features it is still backwards compatible. Old scripts will run without any modification.

Add -l/--listfile option that allows multiple scripts to be run from a file simultaneously. They can also be run by putting them all on the command line. Options from files in a listfile (has a chorus suffix) are not read, only the play sequences.

Add -s/--shift option. This allows all beat voice carriers and beats to be shifted up or down in synchrony. From just more than -100 to any reasonable positive percentage.... read more

There is no change in functionality.

This is a minor bug fix for include files so that the static compiles don't depend on system header files for libsndfile and libsamplerate.

Change some of the files verbiage.

This release is a maintenance release to make discord compatible with both 32 bit and 64 bit systems. It compiles cleanly and works fine on Fedora 9 i386 and Fedora 10 x86_64. It is completely backward compatible as no changes were made to functionality.

It appears that libsndfile has been altered to work with libFLAC properly in Fedora 10. Thus it should no longer be necessary to statically link in order to use FLAC files on that platform. You can still link statically if you so choose. Again, this worked on both Fedora 9 i386 and Fedora 10 x86_64 after quoting the AC_MSG_WARN macro in the acinclude.m4 files.... read more

The latest version of discord changes the phase and fm voices to use split logic, allowing them to pan and have split beats. But this means that scripts using phase and fm voices with the older format will not work with the new version of discord.

Spaces are now allowed as separators in voice descriptions for the time sequences.

Modified (modernized?) the beginner and intermediate scripts. Worked when I tried them but it is hard for me to judge anymore what would be effective for a beginner or an intermediate user.... read more

I've recently had some exposure to incompatibility issues between 32 bit and 64 bit systems. I suspect that discord is not 64 bit safe. When F10 comes out in a month or so I'll install it 64 bit and be able to resolve those problems.

In the meantime, there is a patch in subversion that should make discord 64 bit compliant. It works in 32 bit. It will go into the next release.

The README file in the latest release has an error in the description of how to statically link the included libsndfile and libsamplerate with discord. The line reads
./configure --with-static-libsndfile --with-static-libsamplerate
and should read
./configure --enable-static-libsndfile --enable-static-libsamplerate

You can see the legitimate command by running
./configure --help

This release is backward compatible with any of the other version 2 releases.

Reworked the split beat functionality for chronaural and pulse voices. Functions mostly the same, but have a lot more faith in it now. Found and fixed a bug in the base chronaural voice that had right channel at half the volume of left channel.

Chronaural now can slide on sin threshold.

Fixed a bug in the fm voice that prevented it from working when there was no phase shift between the channels.... read more

This release adds a new voice fm, for frequency modulation. This is related to phase but uses frequency to create the beat. It allows selection of the voice in left, right or both channels.

Error checking is improved for time sequence voice lines. And the output of an error is displayed to make it easier to find and fix.

Upgraded Fedora 7 to Fedora 9. Able to compile and run discord without problem. However, because it is an upgrade, it inherited many of my configuration settings. It is possible that a new install would still run afoul of a sound server. I tried installing from the live CD but there is a problem if you don't write the MBR, that is if you want to use an existing grub menu for booting. I will probably download the DVD iso image and perform a minimal install for testing at some point.

No changes in functionality, backward compatible.

This is a small bug fix release. I got a seg fault. When I compiled to debug there were three deprecated functions in alsa. They weren't essential to the functioning of the program. When I removed them , the seg fault cleared. I am using a beta version of the alsa lib, so they could have been the problem. On the other hand it could be a pointer error in the program that a certain configuration of inputs triggered and it is coincidence that removing them solved the problem. :-) ... read more

There are no changes to discord itself in this release.

This version of the discord package includes a patched libsndfile that will allow FLAC support. It can only be statically linked to prevent issues with dynamic libraries already installed. Also included is the package libsamplerate.

The workaround text has been updated for the latest alsa-lib version, and the README has instructions about how to get FLAC support into discord.

Backward compatible with the 2.0.0 version.

The 2.0.1 release of discord adds only one new feature - a modify option that tells discord to change every carrier and beat of binaural, chronaural, pulse, and phase voices within a percentage band provided. It selects a random value from half the band below the script value to half the band above the script value. Great for quickly altering a script without editing.... read more

The latest version of discord, 2.0.0, is not backward compatible. This is because it added phase to the chronaural and pulse voices, and flipped the order of beat and amplitude in chronaural and pulse voices. There are substitute scripts for vim in the README and beginner.discord files to convert from the old style to the new style.

Volumes for all voices except binaural will be twice as loud as they were formerly because of a change in the way amplitude is used.... read more

Looping samples of binaural, chronaural, and pulse voices were placed on the project web site. They each have a corresponding explanation file. Using xmms, audacity, or sweep you can listen to these samples for as long as you want. They have been edited so the join from end to start is seamless.

There is a sample on the website that is similar to part of the nightcap.discord script included with the download. It has been edited so that it can be run in a loop seamlessly, allowing you to listen to it long enough to entrain. Here is a link:
http://discord.sourceforge.net/nightcap_sample.wav

The voice type pulse is a chronaural voice which uses a pulse time instead of a sin threshold and behavior. The behavior is always square wave. Because it is easier to use this will probably supplant chronaural voice type.

This release is because of the fix of an intermittent bug in the compensation option setup.
Added some description of EFT to the documentation as well.

This release is mainly a bunch of bug fixes.
Added a new behavior to chronaural in the form of an extreme dirac approximation.
Changed the way that chronaural calculates the beat so that it is more accurate and works properly for lower beat rates.
Modify noise and bell to always start at zero volume.
Make the fade out for noise and chronaural always be 1 millisecond regardless of frame rate.

discord fails on the latest version of rawhide (Fedora's perpetual beta) because pulseaudio won't let it access the default audio device.

This was because the ALSA default device has been replaced by pulseaudio. To restore the ALSA default device, go to /etc/alsa and move pulse-default.conf to something like pulse-default.conf.bak. Then run /sbin/alsactl restore. discord will work again at this point.... read more

The latest version of libFLAC (actually any version >= 1.1.3) has an altered API. The current version of libsndfile (1.1.17) will not work with this API. Erik has a beta versions of libsndfile on his website at: http://www.mega-nerd.com/tmp/ that hacks the FLAC library and adds statically the FLAC functionality he uses. Fedora will not use this for security reasons. I have submitted a patch to Fedora to upgrade libsndfile 1.1.17 so that it will work with libFLAC from 1.1.1 to 1.2.1. This new version of libsndfile has not been released yet. The patches are here if you want to apply them: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=237575... read more

A new sample file and explanation have been placed on the discord website. It is called nightcap.wav, you can read nightcap_explain.html for an explanation.

The download file is now a GNU autotools format package. So to create the executable and install it follows the standard
./configure
make
make install
route.

Everything is still backward compatible, the shift to 1.3.0 is just to reflect the change in package format.

Subversion is not yet converted.