FluidSynth Files

Starting with 2.5.0, a C++11-compliant compiler and standard library will be required to compile fluidsynth! Additionally, users now have to link Fluidsynth's library libfluidsynth against the C++ standard library that was used when compiling fluidsynth.

It is now possible to compile fluidsynth without GLib! Pass -Dosal=cpp11 -Denable-libinstpatch=0 to CMake when compiling fluidsynth. In addition, if you use a C++17-compliant compiler, fluidsynth will be compiled with native DLS support! Precompiled Windows binaries will be provided for both flavors: glib and C++11 as OSAL.

Support for GLib and libinstpatch is hereby deprecated. They will be removed in 2.6.0.

New Features

• Add a C++11-based OS abstraction layer as a replacement for glib, bringing these minor limitations when C++17 is unavailable (#1570, thanks to @mmlr)
• Add native support for Downloadable Soundfont Format (#1626, thanks to @rsp4jack)
• Fluidsynth now recognizes the DMOD INFO-subchunk (#1582, thanks to @spessasus)
• A new positional flag has been introduced: -b, --bank-offset, (#1538, refer to UserManual for details)
• Fluidsynth now natively supports the long CLI option flags on Windows (#1544)
• Fluidsynth now supports native Android logging (#1621, thanks to @neoharp-dev)

Breaking Changes

• Support for SDL2 has been removed - pls. use SDL3 instead (#1594)
• The processing order of fluidsynth's configuration files has been changed (#1573, refer to wiki for details)
• The legacy shell commands for reverb and chorus have been removed (#1659, refer to UserManual for details)

Musically Breaking Changes

• It was discovered that fluidsynth was mapping some modulators slightly inaccurately into their normalized range (#1651, thanks to @baskanov)
• Some Roland GS NPRN Params are now mapped to CC numbers (#1519, refer to wiki for details)
• Fluidsynth now auto-detects whether Portamento Time is 7bit or 14bit wide - this fixes the infamous Descent Game08 tune (#705, [#1232], [#1311], [#1456], [#1495], [#1517], see synth.portamento-time for details)
• Previously, fluidsynth's default behavior was to use portamento only for those notes, that were played in a successive / legato manner; to further improve the portamento experience, this was changed and fluidsynth now plays portamento for all notes by default (#1656)

Other Changes

• Fix drum kits not always being selected after SysEx GS Rythm Part (#1579)
• The LGPL license now uses the remote-only FSF address (#1568, thanks to @musicinmybrain)
• The logic for parsing INFO chunks has been revised to improve handling of unknown INFO-subchunks (#1644)
• Fix a race condition in fluid_synth_alloc_voice() public API function (#1664)
• Fix installing static and shared libs cmake targets on the same prefix (#1648, thanks to @pedrolcl)
• The auto-generated lookup tables - that vcpkg and cross-compiling users have learned to love so much - are gone! (#1620)

For changes related to the public API, pls. consult the API docs.