ReZound / News: Recent posts

For the past couple of weeks I have been working on new audio output code which will allow me to prebuffer more data (and still know the play position) to hopefully prevent clicks and pops when playing many files at once (future multitrack editing will demand this). The whole problem of prebuffering chunks of data and having that data stretched according to the play speed (from the shuttle wheel) is just one BIG border condition (avoiding audible artifacts between chunks in the stretching/shrinking interpolation). So, needless to say, I've been carefully working this out so that hopefully ReZound will have a robust and good quality output. After this I hope to work on more new features. Besides the new audio output, I have actually added a few useful features and a several bug fixes in CVS.

It may be useful to run this binary (at least your first few times of running it) from a terminal window so you can see any output that is sent to the screen. It may inform you of any problems. Well, I worked around the apparent bug in glibc that I mentioned in the previous news posting. I just wrote my own popen/pclose (actually I used what was a lab assignment in an operating systems class long ago). Thus, I can release a working standalone 0.2.0alpha binary now. Also, I fixed a potential segfault in the source. It's in CVS now and will be in this released binary.

New Release 0.2.0alpha which mainly adds Ogg/Vorbis and MP3 support and includes other various changes. Check it out at http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=97727 -- The standalone binary is not working right now. The mp3 support has some conflicts with threading when linking to glibc statically which seems to be a bug in glibc. I am looking into it and a fix to glibc (with the application being statically linked) would not require anyone else to update their glibc.

After much experiementing and compiling, I have (I think) determined how to make a working standalone executable for ReZound (except for X calls still needing shared objects). Hopefully this will allow more people to run ReZound without running into the compile problems that sometimes require working around or installing libraries that no one has packaged for his distro. For now, the only precompiled release is for linux. Others may appear in the future for BSD, OS/X, Solaris or even Windows. **NOTE** I highly recommend being in the /usr/local directory when untarring ReZound-bin-x86-linux...tar.gz . This isn't required, but otherwise the REZ_SHARE_DIR env var needs to be set to the location of the presets.dat file from the tarball.

Minor changes due to some user feedback and compiling on the sourceforge compiler farms. See http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=96455 for details

Well, I finally released ReZound. This is an alpha release, but it should be quite useful already (if it will compile). The purpose of this alpha stage is to obtain feedback on configure/compiling issues. Get it.. Try it..

Well, this week I decided to change the GUI's layout to be more minimalistic. This will reduce the need for so many icons. The most oftenly used editing functions will have assigned a hot-key which the user should commit to memory to speed his use of the application. All file operations, effect actions and editing functions are now under pull-down menus instead of each having its own button under a tabbed bar. This greatly shrinks the necessary screen realestate. I have also been reading up on formal DSP techniques and hope to create some quite advanced DSP operations... maybe not for the initial release, but not too long afterwards. Will has said that he should have time to work on the icons that I still do need this upcoming week.

This past week and a half or so I have been working on a dynamic-range compressor. After many implementations I am finally happy with one. There is still, however, some enhancing to do by adding more parameters for greater Control. I am still delaying an official release due to no icons yet. If my graphics designer decides it will be a while before he can dedicate proper time to it, then I may make an 'ugly' release after all.

This week I did a pretty large code reorganization pushing more code to the backend so that a replacement frontend gets more and more easy. Also, got rid of an unnecessary level of management (always a good thing ;) ). And I increased the efficiency of one of the fundamental data structures which speeds the whole loading/saving of files.

I have almost completed the recording features of ReZound. Now I am actually jusified in listing ReZound in the "Capture/Recording" trove category. Icons should be arriving some time not too far away. I realize that creating icons isn't the simplest task. Let's beautify this thing! ;)

Development steadily continues for ReZound. I'm working on a few more major features and waiting on the first go at icons before making a prealpha release to people I know. In that release, we will work out any remaining issues compiling on other linux distroes on which we have not already tested ourselves.

The code base is coming right along. I'm not wanting to make a public release until ReZound is presentable to make a GOOD first impression. Also, the website will hopefully be getting some updates in the next few days.

Anthony has shown me the first go at the autoconfiscated code. It works very nicely so far. I hope to very soon have it in CVS. Will has created a nice design and logo for the webpage, and I will be updating the news whenever something of interest happens.

Currently, Anthony is autoconfiscating the code - a task which I am not equipped to to handle. So, his work is much appreciated. I will post some screen shots when icons are added to beautify its look. Will Jayroe (http://jayroe.com) has graciously volunteered to maintain the website and design the much needed icons for ReZound.

Well I'm finally ready and able to put ReZound up on http://sourceforge.net for anyone to try out. I have steadily been working to make it useful even in this alpha stage although many things are still to be done. I am in need of an autoconfiscator and an icon/logo artist (he can maintain this webpage too if he wants ;) )