ANN: Freewheeling 0.5.1 RELEASE -

["JP Mercury" <swirlee@stickist.com>]

Hello Loopy Folk,

Time again for a software release.
Here is the long awaited...

Freewheeling 0.5.1
------------------

http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/

Summary:

FreeWheeling is a Linux audio tool for live looping. It provides a highly
configurable, fluid user interface for instrumentalists to capture loops in
real-time. 

Article:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8445

Changes:

v0.5.1

            (CHANGE LOG AS OF MARCH 22, 2006)
        
            Thank you to all for good ideas and inspiration over the summer
            and winter. Many thanks to Paul Davis for hooking me up with
            a great Linux Audio development gig. And thanks to an anonymous
            donor for his contribution, and to Dubphil and Paul Brossier 
for 
            beta testing.
        
            ** FreeWheeling now requires libgnutls11-dev (gnutls-openssl)
               instead of openssl (Thanks, Piem).

            New Features
            ------------
        
            * Significantly less memory usage-- more than 20 megabytes 
less.
              Thanks to Drobilla for pointing out the issue with thread
              stack size.

            * New scripts (see scripts/ folder) to help you manage
              a library of loops. You can now bath move, delete, and 
              archive loops & scenes by date.
               
            * Jack transport sync-      
        
              - Master and slave mode

                For sync to work, you must first create a pulse,
                either by recording a loop and pressing F1, or by tapping
                a pulse by tapping F2 twice.

                Freewheeling tries to become the Jack timebase master,
                but if another app is master, it switches to slave mode.

                In master mode, Freewheeling generates beats and bar counts
                for every repetition of the currently selected pulse.
                In slave mode, Freewheeling receives beats and bar counts
                and syncronizes the currently selected pulse to them.
        
                For both master and slave modes, you can adjust the number 
of 
                bars/beats per pulse using:
        
                Ctrl/Shift + S - adjust timebase

                You can also switch between sync to bars or sync to beats
                using:

                Alt + S - switch bars/beats sync
          
                Note that in master mode, FW is currently hard-wired to
                generate 4 beats per bar. Since this is preliminary code,
                not a big deal.
        
            * New user interface 

              - Progress bar for saving and loading loops and scenes
        
              - Better organization of help page with clear sections      
            
              - Mouse support
                - Click on loops triggers them. 
                - Space + Click erases loops. 
                - Mousewheel on loops now adjusts loop volumes--
                  very convenient when you are mixing and playing with
                  improvisations.
        
                  These can be configured.
                  See 'loop-clicked' in .fweelin.rc.
                        
              - Joystick support
                - Joystick buttons can now trigger events.
                  For example, I have used FW with a DDR dance mat to 
                  trigger loops. 
        
                  See 'joybutton' in .fweelin.rc.

              - New 'engage' and 'shot' options in trigger-loop.
                'Engage' forces a loop to ON or OFF,
                overriding the default toggle behavior.
                You can use it to create triggers that play short bursts,
                rather than long loops.
                
                'Shot' to be implemented.
        
            * Stability improvements

              - Better thread safety and design improvements to the 
real-time
                memory manager have improved stability.
        
            * Significant improvements to loop/scene management and 
browsing
          
              - You can now give loops and scenes your own names
                - New names are stored within the filename of library files
              - Expanded browser window shows several items at once
              - Browser now sorts so that newer loops and scenes are first

            * Better handling of looppoints

              - Resolved issue with clicking at the looppoint on reloaded
                loops.
              - Resolved sporadic clicks on syncronized loops.
              
            * Better handling of loading/saving loops

            * Adjustable video loop delay
            
              - You can now adjust the performance of FreeWheeling
                by changing the delay between video refreshes.
                Several people asked for this feature, because
                FW is processor-heavy on the video side.
         
                The video thread does run at a low priority,
                and so it should not affect the performance of other
                realtime audio threads. However, the system may get
                sluggish, and if this happens, you may want to increase
                the delay in .fweelin.rc:

                <var videodelay="20"/>

            Fixes
            -----

            * Fixed 'glibc double free' segfault- FW should now run
              when compiled with GCC 4.0.
        
            * Adjusted the way F2 tap tempo works-
              tapping a new tempo with F2 is now more responsive,
              but less tolerant of mistakes 
        
            * Fixed 'pure virtual method called' segfault
        
            * Fixed segfault when browsing past end of FluidSynth patch 
list
        
            * Various fixes to reduce CPU hogging
        
            * Merged patches from Piem's debian package:
              MaxVol, compile fixes for GCC 4.0, and removal of non-free
              elements

            * FW can now run without physical JACK inputs or outputs.
              Thanks to Piem for this patch.

Enjoy!

-- JP Mercury


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