ANNOUNCE: BEAST/BSE v0.4.1

[Tim Janik <timj beast gtk org>]

BEAST/BSE version 0.4.1 is available for download at:

  ftp://beast.gtk.org/pub/beast/v0.4
or
  http://beast.gtk.org/pub/beast/v0.4

BEAST (the Bedevilled Audio SysTem) is a graphical front-end to
BSE (the Bedevilled Sound Engine), a library for music composition,
audio synthesis and sample manipulation. The project is hosted at:

  http://beast.gtk.org


Much has changed in the new development version of BEAST.
In brief (specifics can be found further down), the
GUI was majorly polished, many new synthesis features have
been added and support for various external wave file formats
was implemented.

The current version is already good enough to perform
interesting synthesis tasks and to have lots of fun with
songs, external MIDI devices and samples.
However, this is still an ALPHA version, so things might
not always work as expected, reports about misbehaviour
are welcome.

Be warned though, the .bse file format hasn't fully stabelized
yet, so incompatibilities whith future versions may occour.

A good starting point are the test files shipped in the
tests/ subdirectory of the source package.


In other news, Alper Ersoy put lots of work into improving
the website and the documentation appearance. Thanks Alper!


Overview of Changes in BEAST/BSE 0.4.1:

* Added cool startup splash-screen from Jimmac
* Added GSL - a common sound routine library for BSE and aRts
* Added part support for songs with piano roll editor
* A Guile based scheme shell for BSE has been added: bswshell
* Added support for execution of scheme scripts in BEAST
* Added MIDI synthesis support
* Added sample/wave display and preview facilities
* Added sample loaders for .wav, .ogg, .mp3 and .gslwave files
* Added file descriptor caching layer to lessen the impact of
  unix' MAX_OPEN_FD limitation
* Added sophisticated sample caching layer to spare file I/O
  and mp3 or Vorbis decoding
* New threaded sound engine which can process synthesis
  modules in the background or on a seperate processor
* Many (not yet all) synthesis modules got ported to the
  new engine and got improved in quality and speed
* New synthesis modules:
  FreeVerb        - a reverb based on code by Jeremy Wakefield
  BiquadFilter    - various basic IIR (resonance) filter types
  ADSR Envelope   - a simple envelope generator
  IIR Filter      - various IIR filter types
  Ports/SubSynth  - allows synthesis network rerouting
  Constant        - constant value output module
  WaveOsc         - Anti-aliasing wave playback
  Sequencer       - a mini sequencer for harmonic tone switches
  Amplifier       - a VCA equivalent with featurefull control variants
* Joint (multi-connect) channel support, allowing multiple input
  connections per channel on some modules
* Major speed improvements to the threading layer by using pthreads
  directly where possible
* New 19"-rack alike GUI front-end for customized GUI presentation
  of .bse projects
* Major GUI cleanups and improvements
* Major documentation improvements
* Ported BEAST/BSE to Gtk+2.0 and GLib-2.0
* Moved the BSE type system into GLib-2.0 as GObject
* A huge amount of bug fixes


---
ciaoTJ