THIS IS A FAKE PAGE, KXSTUDIO NEWS USES A DYNAMIC MODULE NOW

> DISTRHO-Ports 2021-03-15 and PawPaw v1.1 releases
On 2021-03-16 by falkTX

Hello everyone, I am happy to announce a new release for DISTRHO-Ports, and subsequently an update to PawPaw that adds the new plugins.
In this DISTRHO-Ports release we now have 2 new plugins: SwankyAmp and Vitalium.

SwankyAmp appears as a direct port contribution from Jean Pierre Cimalando, you can find the original plugin here.

As for Vitalium, this is an open-source and redistributable version of Vital, a spectral warping wavetable synth that has recently being made open-source.
We cannot use the Vital brand or connect to its vital.audio online services, so this fully disabled within the Vitalium source code with an alternative name and icon.

So with this release, I updated PawPaw so it now includes SwankyAmp and Vitalium.
In case you forgot or are not aware, PawPaw is a little project to build and package LV2 plugins for macOS and Windows.
Sadly due to technical difficulties I had to drop Windows 32-bit builds, which I imagine most will not care anyway.

So now you can enjoy 2 new plugins, no matter if you use Linux, macOS or Windows.
(for Linux builds, please refer to your distribution of choice, or grab them from the KXStudio repositories)

Oh, and some screenshots of course, everybody loves those.

Reaper with SwankyAmp on Windows

Zrythm with Vitalium on macOS

PS: Yes, Reaper supports LV2 now. And yes, Zrythm is quickly becoming a nice DAW too.

> KXStudio Monthly Report (February 2021)
On 2021-02-28 by falkTX

Hello all, another "monthly" report about the KXStudio project is here.
There is not a whole lot of stuff this time around, this being a short month and also me moving to a different place.
But there are still some things worth reporting, so let's get to that.

First, in case you missed it, Carla v2.3-RC1 was tagged and released, marking the first PyQt-based project of mine to have automated release binaries.
This is crucial for having more frequent releases, as it reduces the workload that each release requires.
It is now basically just setting the commit hash in the Carla-Releases project, and wait for the builds to be done.
And speaking of Carla, a few small issues were found and already fixed, so you can expect RC2 to be out very soon.

On non-KXStudio related news, Vital is now open-source.
Obviously I have interest on packaging it in the KXStudio repositories but, even though the project is released under GPLv3, there are restrictions on the use of the name and its trademarks.
So the idea right now is to (im)port it over to DISTRHO-Ports project, with a change of name to Vitalium and an alternative icon made by unfa.
This is already on-going, with one change required which was to update the DISTRHO JUCE fork to the latest upstream v6.0.7 - this is done now (including rebasing all of DISTRHO JUCE patches).
I will write something when the porting process is over, likely doing another release of PawPaw since simply having Vitalium as cross-platform LV2 plugin is worth an update.

Package updates in the KXStudio repositories are very few this time.
Basically soundtracker was added (as a special request from a friend) and Helio was updated to v3.3 (which served as a way to test the updated JUCE).

On a final note, I am experimenting with a public kanban-style board.
Not just to organize myself a bit better, but also as a way to let everyone know what I am working on at the moment and things that I will start to do relatively soon.
You can see what has already been done this month so far (let's pretend we are already in March) and what might be coming soon.
I am still playing with colors and tags, but general idea on the colors at the moment is:

• yellow: packaging stuff or something related to kxstudio repositories
• orange: articles or things to write (usually releases or news)
• green: coding task which is similar to something I did before, so "easy" to do
• red: bug-fixes
• blue: porting over something that already exists/was done before. involves boring, copy, paste and adjust work
• pink: brand new projects or things to do, which usually involve learning, research, testing, etc. can take long

I have recently been trying to get some sort of crowd-funding going (to help in terms of financial support).
If you are a sponsor/subscriber, you might have felt that these monthly updates are too spread out and too few.
So a public work-tracking board seems like a nice middle-ground, a way to indicate what is happening on a specific moment without having to wait for monthly reports or big splashy news.
For now you can access the board at board.kx.studio; later on I will see if it can be embed into the main website.

If you see anything you like in there or just simply appreciate the kind of work I do, please consider a donation.
I am not taking feature requests at the moment, as there is quite a few things in the backlog already, but once most of the DPF-related work is complete, I will revisit this idea.
Thank you in advance for your support, stay safe out there!

> Carla 2.3 RC1 is here!
On 2021-02-16 by falkTX

Hello again everyone, a somewhat small but important Carla update is here!
As there were many changes behind the scenes (specially for Windows builds) I am tagging it as Release Candidate for now.

So this is the announcement of the first release candidate of Carla version 2.3.
Carla is a fully-featured cross-platform audio plugin host, which itself can also run as a plugin (LV2 and VST2).
It is a project slowly growing and maturing for over 10 years now!

This release is the first step for automated releases of Carla, and other PyQt projects. Might not seem like big news, but it is!
I don't make Carla releases very often as it tends to consume a lot of time, besides writing the release announcement (like this one), there is a lot of manual building and uploading.
The situation got worse with 1 more build type for macOS universal support..
This makes it more difficult to do quick bug-fixes than it should, and thus they tend to not happen much.
There are still no automated Linux builds though, I will take care of that at a later point.
In any case, I always keep the Carla package on the KXStudio repositories up to date, and ArchLinux is usually very quick on the updates too, so for Linux users this is not that big of a deal.

With that said, let's go through some of this release highlights.

macOS arm64/universal build support Starting with v2.3, Carla natively supports the new macOS arm64 architecture, used in the new M1 hardware models. The Carla macOS universal build supports x86_64 and arm64 architectures at the same time, and should run on anything 10.12 or newer. As Carla has support for plugin bridges (even across architectures), I took care to make sure that the arm64 version can load x86_64 plugins. When a plugin fails to load in a specific way, Carla will try to load it again but now in x86_64 mode. This is currently working for VST2 and VST3 plugins. Additionally, for something that kept bothering me a lot, Carla will automatically remove plugins from macOS quarentine before loading them. This is not possible to do for AudioUnits as we do not have the full path to the plugin binary, but valid for all other formats. No more security theatre shenanigans here! :)

General improvements to AudioFile plugin The AudioFile internal plugin received some deserved attention this time around. Besides basically reworking how its disk-streaming functionality (more robust and much less CPU usage), it finally can do resampling so it will sound correctly no matter the sample rate. Additionally mp3 support was added via dr_mp3, as libsndfile used by it does not yet officially support it. Both Audio and MIDI file plugins are now exposed as LV2 plugins, allowing to load and use these plugins outside of Carla. It supports file parameter plus patch Get/Set with State mapPath as expected for these kinds of plugins. The experimental "inline-display" of the AudioFile is also exposed as an LV2 feature.

Reworked Windows builds The infrastructure used to build Windows binaries is now through PawPaw, as done with JACK2 already. With this, I have control over the whole toolchain and libraries that are used in Carla Windows binaries (previously msys2 packages were used). For users, this means these binaries are more robust and with less dependencies. (I am building with static libraries as much as possible, so no more ligcc/libstdc++6 mess). The Windows zip file download no longer ships with a single Carla.exe, instead please run Carla.exe inside the Carla folder, should be easy to spot. For developers, a nice side-effect is that we can finally tweak the behaviour of the startup executable, now allowing debug messages to be seen. (though you need to run it in Console/PowerShell for that) The libraries that allow to use and talk to Carla Host API are now provided on these builds. Finally, it should be possible to build Carla under msys2 on Windows now. I can make a quick tutorial if that is something that interests you, let me know if that is the case.

Use system/desktop theme icons (non-macOS/Windows only) Due to popular demand, there is now an option in the experimental settings to use system/desktop theme icons. This will remain as experimental feature for 1 release, so we can catch potential issues in the mean time, and fix them. Since I do not mind the default Carla icons (quite like them actually), this is not meant for me. Feel free to use it and report back if you spot something weird or incorrect.

Other notable changes

• Allow to run CV plugins in rack mode, with CV connected to a dummy port
• Carla-Control no longer has return remote url option, no longer needed after some fixes
• Clear up situation with nogui and carla-osc-gui script (explanation article to come later)
• Disable OSC by default on macos (needs to ask permission to use network, which may look suspicious)
• Do not build external plugins by default
• General improvement to LV2 parameter API support
• Many, many bug-fixes (not listed here, see the git commit history for the raw changes, including bug-fixes)

Notes for users

There are no binary releases for Linux at the moment, and the old Windows 32bit No-SSE builds are gone.
On Linux, use the packages from your distribution or ask the package maintainer to update.

The macOS and Windows binaries are not signed/notarized.
Carla-Control on macOS M1 fails to run natively, but is okay under rosetta2.

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

Final note

With finally the Carla release out of the way, I will start work on DPF very soon, as mentioned on the last monthly report.
If you appreciate the kind of work I do here, please consider a donation.
You can help to keep these projects alive and enthusiasm and motivation high by giving your support.
Thank you.

> KXStudio Monthly Report (January 2021)
On 2021-01-31 by falkTX

Hello all, another monthly report about the KXStudio project is here.
Last month I completely forgot to write a report, with the end of year and preparations for all the releases.
Speaking of releases...

A few things were released just 2 weeks ago.
From a quick update to DISTRHO/DPF-related plugins, to announcing PawPaw for cross-platform LV2 plugin builds.
I had an idea to release Carla v2.3 also at the same time, but a few things are still not ready.

And speaking of Carla now, good progress has been made to setup automated builds, at least for macOS and Windows (as those are the more annoying to build for, compared to Linux or BSD).
The dreadful issue of DLL hell causing Carla not to start on Windows seems to be fixed with this new updated build setup.
There are a few things in progress that I plan to finish before calling it final:

• macOS arm64 build loading Intel 64bit plugins (already working for VST2, but not VST3)
• revised and rechecked LV2 patch/parameter support (seems good to me, just needs more testing)
• expose/export the internal audio and midi file players as lv2 plugins (almost there, some bugs still present)
• allow to use desktop theme icons (mostly finished, just a few dialogs need to be adjusted)
• translations (but as other things take priority for me, this might skip v2.3)

I am not mentioning here things that are already completed, it is just to give you an overview of what is left.
Plan was to have it finished by the end of January, but obviously didn't happen, so we can say "coming soon", again. :P

Once more Carla stuff is finished and mostly only testing is left, I will begin some very much needed work and attention for DPF.
DPF is using a very old pugl version, modified along the way but mostly matching the version used in x42-plugins.
pugl API got revised and improved so much that feels worth the update.
I started this already, but had to dedicate my attention to other things in the mean time.
Target is to not only update pugl, but an overall cleanup and minor reworks of the API where suitable/needed.
By end of next month I will try to give a summarized report of the update status.

Regarding packages in the KXStudio repositories, finally there has been some updates. Those are:

• die-plugins added
• adlplug updated to 1.0.2
• dpf-plugins updated to 1.4
• distrho-ports updated to 2021-01-14
• drumgizmo updated to 0.9.19
• lsp-plugins updated to 1.1.28
• new-session-manager updated to 1.5.0
• x42-plugins updated to 20210114
• zam-plugins updated to 3.14
• cmt fixed (symbol visibility issue)
• setbfree small fix (removed unused b_conv vst)
• whysynth fixed for newer distros

That is all for now, stay safe out there.

> Announcing PawPaw: cross-platform LV2 ports for macOS and Windows
On 2021-01-15 by falkTX

PawPaw is an open-source project that builds and packages cross-platform LV2 audio plugins (among other things, but let's focus on this now).

It was created out of the need of many open-source developers to easily build their stuff for macOS and Windows, where usually dependencies are involved which need to be built manually.
In order to make audio plugins self-contained, these dependencies/libraries need to be built statically, which most packaging projects do not do.
Also, most open-source audio plugin projects do not have binaries for macOS or Windows, making it very difficult for users in these platforms to enjoy them.

That last part is crucial.
While on Linux LV2 is king, with so many plugins released as LV2, the same is not true for other platforms.
I want to change that, so that the usual excuse "but there are no plugins, we won't bother with LV2" of audio developers can no longer be used.
It is the typical circular-dependency problem. There are no hosts because there are no plugins and vice-versa.
Hopefully with a big set of plugins, the situation will change.

For the first release of PawPaw we have the following LV2 plugins: (note some of these are big collections of many plugins themselves)

• abgate
• artyfx
• blop
• caps
• die-plugins
• distrho-ports (arctican, dexed, drowaudio, klangfalter, luftikus, obxd, pitched-delay, refine, tal, temper, vex, wolpertinger)
• dpf-plugins (glBars, kars, max-gen, mini-series, mverb, ndc-plugs, nekobi)
• fomp
• mda

Every single plugin has automated meta-data validation and runtime testing to make sure they work correctly.
The quality of the plugins depends on the respective developer and project of course, but they should be safe from crashes.

A big question now is "how can I use them?".
At this moment, from what I am aware, only Ardour/ Mixbus and Carla support LV2 plugins on these platforms.
Some applications like Audacity, Kushview Element and Mixxx support LV2, but usually only in Linux builds.
Carla works as a VST2 plugin, so you can use it as a way to bridge these to regular hosts, but obviously not ideal.
But hey, one step at a time. We have a few more LV2 plugins now on these platforms, and moving forward the list is only going to grow.

Screenshots

Ardour + Windows

Mixxx + macOS, loading ArtyFX plugins

Downloads

You can find the macOS and Windows installers at https://github.com/DISTRHO/PawPaw/releases.
For macOS, 10.12 is required. These are universal builds that already support x64 and arm64 combined.
For Windows, Windows 7 or superior is recommended, and a CPU capable of doing SSE2 operations is required.

Future plans

For the future, I plan to rework the DISTRHO website so it contains all these details.
Mainly so that it is a better overall presentation.
And of course more plugins, though pull-requests are also very welcome for those.
Carla is slowly in the process of using PawPaw for automated release builds, more on that at a later time.

> A small set of plugin updates
On 2021-01-15 by falkTX

Hello hello, it is release day again!
Keeping up with the cool people, here is a set of plugin updates for the Quarterly Release Pact.
Do note that these are all source-only releases. For binaries, use your Linux distribution packages or the PawPaw project.
With that said, let's begin...

DISTRHO-Ports 2021-01-14

DISTRHO-Ports is a set of GNU/Linux and LV2 ports, imported into the codebase for easy packaging, maintaince and all that.
This is a bug-fix release, getting the project ready for cross-platform builds and automated validation/testing.
Changelog:

• Fix out of bounds buffer write in drowaudio-reverb (leading to memory corruption and/or crashes)
• Fix lv2 export preset meta-data validation
• Fix lv2 ttl generation when cross-compiling (e.g. using mingw and wine within linux)
• Fix exported symbols
• Fix build/compatibility with macOS 11 / arm64

DIE-Plugins v1.1

DIE-Plugins is a collection of plugins imported into the DISTRHO project for easy packaging.
Currently has only Ardour (Community Effect) plugins, mainly so you no longer need to build the entire Ardour codebase to get these plugins.
Changelog:

• Fix a-fluidsynth port names
• Sync with upstream, now features are listed in ttl thus passing plugin checks/validation
• Use -fopenmp for building internal fluidsynth (where possible)

DPF-Plugins v1.4

DPF-Plugins is a collection of DPF-based plugins, including Kars, MVerb and Nekobi.
This is yet another bug-fix release, tagging a release before a big DPF overhaul planned for next month.
Changelog:

DPF:

• Auto-detect compiler target, fixing as-is build with ARM systems
• Allow to use EXE_WRAPPER as makefile option, to help cross-compilation
• Fix build with headers in custom path
• Fix "make install" for macOS and Windows
• Fix exported LV2 metadata to pass checks/validation
• Make mouse-wheel delta independent of window size

Kars:

• Fix audio buffer reuse, causing bad audio in some hosts

Nekobi:

• Set default MIDI CC for all parameters

More releases coming soon, stay tuned!

> Another DISTRHO-Ports update
On 2020-12-28 by falkTX

Hello again, another release of the DISTRHO-Ports project is here.
DISTRHO is an open-source project with the goal of making cross-platform audio plugins and GNU/Linux + LV2 ports.
This release relates to the GNU/Linux and LV2 ports.

Just like last time, this is yet again a more packager-focused release rather than user-focused.
The biggest changes this time relate to bringing DISTRHO's JUCE fork up to date with upstream, together with updating the LV2 wrapper.
Additionally, macOS and Windows support was fixed and tested to work, at least for LV2 plugins.
(most of these plugins already have VST2 or AU for those 2 platforms, so the focus in on LV2 here)

A new plugin was added, CHOW, but mostly only because I required a fresh plugin to test the new JUCE codebase.
Do note that new plugins can now build as LV2, VST2 and VST3 for GNU/Linux, which is nice to see.
I want to create a little article/tutorial explaining how to port existing plugins into this project, but that will come at a later date.

For now, the intention is to have all the ground-work needed for fresh plugins and LV2 ports.
This ties up nicely with the upcoming PawPaw project, as we will soon have all these ports working as LV2 in macOS and Windows.

Here is a quick screenshot I just took on macOS, Ardour loading a couple LV2 versions of DISTRHO-Ports.
PS: This is a arm64/M1 build.

Because everyone loves changelogs, here it is for the full changes since last release 5 months ago:

• Add CHOW plugin (used to test updated JUCE)
• Include new and legacy JUCE in source code (legacy JUCE will only receive bug-fixes)
• Rebase DISTRHO-Ports patches against JUCE6 codebase, available in libs/juce-current/patches
• Fix LV2 wrapper to build against latest JUCE
• Fix build for macOS, including universal builds
• Fix build for Windows (using mingw)
• General cleanup to build system

There are no pre-compiled binaries for this release, though the plugins are fully up-to-date in the KXStudio repositories.
You can find this 2020-12-27 release at github.com/DISTRHO/DISTRHO-Ports/releases.

> DIE-Plugins v1.0 released
On 2020-12-25 by falkTX

Hello everyone, I would like to announce a new project: DIE-Plugins.
This is a collection of plugins imported into the DISTRHO project for easy packaging.

"DIE" stands for DISTRHO Imported Effect.
It is a play on words from the first imported plugins, "ACE", from the Ardour project.
These are LV2 plugins only. License is the same as the original plugins, so GPLv2+.
They are simply to die for ;)

Now, on a serious note, this project was created when I was looking to package the Ardour built-in plugins (a.k.a. Ardour Community Effect) for MOD and the (still to be announced) cross-platform LV2 plugin project PawPaw.
The biggest difficulty was having to build the entire Ardour codebase to get these plugins.
While it seems possible to force the build of only the plugins, the build system still expects all sort of libraries for the main Ardour codebase.
Since I am quite comfortable setting up custom Makefiles for quick little projects, that is how it started...

Worth noting that all imported plugins have their bundle and URIs renamed, in order to make them compatible with the originals.
The source code fetching and patching is also scripted, so it is easy to keep in sync with upstream.

Downloads

The source code plus issue tracker is hosted at https://github.com/DISTRHO/DIE-Plugins.
Only glib2.0 and sndfile are required to build.
If you have the KXStudio repositories enabled, you can install these with the package name "die-plugins".
They are not available in binary form anywhere else at the moment, as the project is brand new.

> KXStudio Monthly Report (November 2020)
On 2020-11-30 by falkTX

Hello all, another "monthly" report about the KXStudio project is here.
There has not been once since July and even though there are not many new details to share, I did not want to let another month pass without one.

The main reason for the delay on writing is that my attention has been mostly focused on getting the MOD Dwarf software all ready for release, including new LV2 features on the MOD software stack.
This usually does not affect me working on other open-source stuff, but the race to get everything ready on time drains more energy than usual.
In order to not stress myself out, progress on other fronts has been a bit slower, though stuff like Carla 2.2 final release still happened.
Some of this MOD work involved understanding the LV2 spec better and fixing or making new test plugins, so this will be useful outside the MOD platform too.
(I already learned that the way Carla handles some LV2 features is wrong and started some work towards fixing that)

Last month (October 2020) marks the first release of JACK2 with me as maintainer that provides macOS and Windows binaries.
I have been setting up automated builds for a few open-source projects for a bit of time now, and that is now re-used for JACK2.
There is progress to make this usable for cross-platform plugins, which I was hoping to have a release for by now, but the travis-ci is having some issues against homebrew...
Whenever that works again, I will make the official announcement of that new project.
Later on this will be used for automating the builds of my PyQt projects like Carla and Catia.

On the Cadence project, I began the work for splitting it into smaller, easier to maintain projects.
The idea is to allow Catia (the patchbay-only application) and the small tools to be packaged and maintained separately.
This will allow to have new releases of Catia, Cadence and its tools all separately.
There is only 1 nasty bug to fix in Catia use of JACK2 meta-data before an official release is made, but it is not an easy one, so I am leaving it for later.
Likely no public release on this until next year.

And that is it for now.
Usually I would write about the KXStudio repositories package update list, but there really has not been much happening there at all..
Christmas holidays are not too far off, which will bring some time to try to get a few more things out.
So expect some proper news again after that.

> Carla Plugin Host v2.2 is finally here
On 2020-10-12 by falkTX

Hello everyone, this is the announcement of the 2.2 version of the Carla Plugin Host.
If you do not know, Carla is a fully-featured cross-platform audio plugin host, which can also run as a plugin.

This release announcement comes quite a few days after it was initially tagged and builds uploaded.
I moved to a different place, everything got a bit delayed with that, and also me getting a small but well-needed break.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand...

Contrary to previous releases, there were not many graphical changes this time, but lots of stuff under the hood.
One very important note for developers is that the "native" API to access carla as plugin (as used by LMMS) is still ABI and API-wise backwards compatible with 2.0, but the ABI and API of Carla as a library is not.
This is because all host functions now have a "handle" prefix, so they can be reused for standalone, plugin and other variants.

Special thanks to everyone that did testing during the release candidate phase, some with very complex setups! (as seen below)

Now with that said, let's go through what's new, first the bigger changes and smaller stuff for last.

Multi-Client + multi-instance improvements In order to allow multiple instances of Carla to work without conflicts, proper JACK multi-client multi-instance support was implemented. What this means is that you can have a name prefix for all plugins when in JACK multi-client mode, so that it is easier to understand where a plugin belongs to. Starting with v2.2, extra Carla instances will get a dedicated JACK client name suffix. On projects created with v2.2 and above, Carla will know which saved connections belong to which plugins, making it possible to load a session correctly where multiple Carla instances are involved. As a way to make this easier to manage and control, a new command-line argument was added, "--cnprefix=...". So now you can have a dedicated Carla instance that has its created JACK clients more globally recognisable. Also, when Carla runs under NSM, the JACK client name prefix is set automatically (coming from NSM). This is not enabled when loading pre-2.2 projects though, in order to keep backwards compatibility.

Linux VST3 plugin support As new VST2 plugins can no longer be officially licensed and VST2 is very, very, very slowing being phased out, it is important to have VST3 support. So now you can now scan and load Linux VST3 plugins under Carla. It is no longer limited to macOS and Windows. Worth noting is that this is not a custom implementation, but leveraging JUCE VST3 host support on Linux. It recently got supported as part of their JUCE6 update. There are no plans for a custom implementation at this point.

Small UI/UX improvements all around

The built-in keyboard right-click menu got a bit better. Everything is presented in a single menu, no more sub-menus are used.

The plugin built-in editor dialog now shows the currently mapped parameter type+value directly. No more clicking around needed to find out what the parameter is mapped to.

MIDI learn implemented, triggered via parameter mapping menu. Note that this is per plugin, not global, due to how Carla handles each plugin individually.

Other "quality of life" improvements:

• Added a 12400x9600 canvas size
• Added a 2x and 4x canvas image export mode
• Added a menu action to save current Carla canvas as image in the clipboard
• Added "Send MIDI notes" option to plugin built-in editor dialog
• Canvas positions are now always saved and restored, including in the plugin version
• Canvas positions are kept in sync across multiple Carla JACK instances and even Carla-Control
• Built-in plugin edit dialog tab state is kept when parameters are reloaded
• Implemented NSM "optional-gui"
• Plugin custom GUI Window title changes dynamically when renamed
• Package macOS plugin version, making Carla-Plugin usable with macOS 10.15

Other notable changes

• Added new xycontroller plugin
• Added a "carla-osc-gui" script that starts a Carla instance in the background and connects to it using OSC.
  Closing the GUI does not close the engine, and it can be run again to reconnect later on.
• Always use maximum amount of channels for VST2 plugins
• Better handle the case of JACK server stop (or killed)
• Better implementation of LV2 state path, now saving files in the same directory as the Carla project
• Changed the way plugins are deleted, so they are now safely deleted only when no longer in use
• Implement MIDI CC and CV source parameter changes for bridges
• Improve the (still experimental) JACK-apps-as-plugins implementation, now mapping show/hide gui to NSM commands, sending arbitrary MIDI events and making it work on more systems
• Increase max value of the internal LFO plugin, so we can get reeeeeeeal slow
• Raise limit of plugins that can be loaded (512 default, 64 in rack)
• Tweaks for automatically converting internal Patchbay mode projects in JACK multi-client mode and vice-versa
• Working HaikuOS build, but no audio support yet

Many other bug-fixes and small under-the-hood improvements (too many to list here).
See the git log for the full list of changes.

Notes for users

When using JACK, the newly added features around the canvas require at least JACK v1.9.13.
This is because Carla relies on JACK meta-data in order to store information about each plugin/client, and meta-data was only added to JACK2 in version 1.9.13.
Alternatively, you can use JACK1 instead of JACK2, which has meta-data support since a long time.
Note that the "extras" KXStudio repository (which provides an updated JACK2) now supports Ubuntu 20.04 along-side 18.04.

The code for scanning plugins had a little rework yet again, making some internal data structures change.
Because of this, a full rescan of your plugins is needed after the update.
This should fix previously missing plugins that happened in v2.1.

The official Linux binary build does not provide native Linux-VST3 support.
Packages from regular Linux distributions do not have this issue.

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

> Carla 2.2 RC2 is here!
On 2020-09-07 by falkTX

Hello everyone, this is an announcement for the next release candidate for Carla v2.2.
Comes after a few issues were reported and fixed, and as an exception a new plugin is added.

The new plugin is actually "XY Controller" from the Cadence project.
It works pretty much the same way, except that received MIDI data will not change the UI elements.
This is because this is a plugin now, not a standalone application anymore. But everything else remains.
As a bonus, the X and Y are now plugin parameters, and work as parameter outputs too, so they can control other stuff in Carla.

Why the plugin was added so suddenly will be explained in detail in a future Cadence release.
But in short, I am splitting Cadence into easier to manage sub-projects.
The "Meter" and "XY Controller" tools are now part of Carla, so they can be removed from Cadence.

Besides the new plugin (which again is an exception, due to Carla v2.2 already being in Release-Candidate state) we only have bug-fixes.
The full list of changes is:

• Add xycontroller plugin
• Auto-select text in plugin search entry when focused via shortcut
• Compress canvas clipboard image saving (as PNG)
• Disable OSC by default on macOS
• Fix crash when receiving unexpected VST2 time information
• Fix current project filename persistence after engine stop
• Fix deadlock when using VST3 plugins inside Carla as plugin
• Fix listing LV2 plugins on Windows (2.2 regression)
• Fix oddities with MIDI learn
• Fix potential crashes when opening or hiding plugin UIs
• Fix some plugins not having all their audio ports exposed
• Fix some plugin UIs not in front of Carla when first shown
• Fix wine bridge build against winehq-stable and winehq-stable
• Overall fix to midi pattern plugin
• Package macOS plugin version, making Carla-Plugin usable with macOS 10.15

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

Final note

Just a reminder that this is a release candidate, and not the final release yet.
There are still a few known issues, but since they are specific to certain workflows, the amount of users affected is limited.
If you find any more of them, please let me know in the github issue tracker, thanks!

> KXStudio Monthly Report (July 2020)
On 2020-07-31 by falkTX

Hello all, another monthly report about the KXStudio project is here.
This actually covers June and July, since there was not much to tell during June.

So... first, for those that did not notice, there was quite a few linux/opensource-audio releases on July 15, for the Quarterly Release Pact.
The "Quarterly Release Pact" is an informal agreement between developers to do releases of as much software as possible on a common day.
This is a nice way to:

• Keep the software in the public eye
• Increase trust, as people see that the software is in development and is cared for
• Increase motivation of the developers, as seeing a group working (by their releases) is a good way to push them to do something too
• Engage in a kind of "Swarm Marketing": A small release does not have much impact and won't get featured often by news sites, but a whole group of software releases demands more attention.

I can speak for myself that the release day is a great motivator to push releases.
When such date is near, everything that has reached a certain point where a release is perhaps worth doing (but usually would be hold-off due to not being "perfect enough"), just gets released.
Because to be fair, there is no point on holding off a release for long periods of time.
If something really goes wrong, a quick bug-fix can be done, so why not. It is software, these things happen sometimes..

With that in mind, the DISTRHO-Ports and WineASIO projects got new releases.
I worked (with some help) to move the DISTRHO-Ports build system from the super-old premake3 build system to meson.
While irrelevant for users, it is very important for Linux distribution packagers because premake3 is simply no longer maintained (and thus not even installable in some cases).
The other changes were not really that substantial in my view, but why not release anyway?
As someone who has done a few packages myself, I can understand the pain of those that want to package something but have their work made difficult by this kind of problem.
(If all goes well, DISTRHO-Ports provided plugins will be installable as packages in the next Ubuntu version already!)

DISTRHO-Ports has been reworked in a way so that we can keep the existing plugins untouched, while adding/supporting new plugins made with JUCE6.
The "legacy" plugins will have LV2 and VST2 formats, while new ones will support LV2, VST2 and VST3.
I plan to write a tutorial on how to add a plugin to this project, so that other people than me can contribute.
This will increase the number of ported plugins drastically, as it does not have to wait on me to to do it. (I have a lot on my plate already..)
Once we have a good number of new plugins, or the next release day comes (in 3 months), you can count on yet another release! :)

Regarding The WineASIO, it was ready for release for some time, so I did the release in more of a "why not?" state.
You can read more about this release here, but in short, I am now maintaining the WineASIO project. :)
This is because the previous maintainer wished to step down doing so, and I was already fixing WineASIO for packaging in the KXStudio repositories anyway, which basically involves maintaining it.
It is important to note that it is really only maintaining the code (so that it keeps working on new Wine versions).
So there is not going to be any new features added to it, only bug-fixes.

In other news, Carla 2.2 Release Candidate 1 is out.
It was a bit more rushed than I wished for, with a late release because I had to fight with some macOS incompatibility issues.. but that should not happen too much in the future.
I already have in mind what to focus on for version 2.3, but I really hope that with this 2.2 release I can kinda already leave Carla a bit on the side (which was already supposed to have happened in version 2.1 by the way), because other projects really need my attention right now.
The final Carla 2.2 release is just siting on a timer now in a way.
My target is to make it available for Ubuntu 20.10, so I will fix whatever bugs I can until the time arrives for Ubuntu 20.10 package freeze. (So final release in October 2020)

Unrelated to the release pact now, I am working on automated builds for a few projects, learning along the way how that is usually handled.
This is not that useful for Linux users, because distributions can build and package up stuff quickly; it is more for macOS and Windows users for whom it is much harder to build stuff.
The automated builds will cover plugins (distrho-ports, dpf-plugins and more), Carla and even JACK.
It is not completely ready yet, but very, very close to done. Expect a few announcements regarding this in the coming weeks!

Something I need to mention... I know people have been asking about an ardour package update (in KXStudio repositories).
I will get to it eventually, yes, sorry for the delay.
Ardour is a different kind of build, so I need to find a nice way of handling it. (I want to repackage the official binary, as authors are ok with it)
Previously it was all very manual work, it is better to avoid that this time around.
My focus in the past few weeks has been on Carla and now the automated build setups, so packaging got put aside for now.

And speaking of packages, here is the list of updates and additions in regards to June and July 2020:

• helio-workstation added
• new-session-manager added, replaces non-session-manager
• fluajho updated to 1.6.1
• lsp-plugins updated to 1.1.24
• mod-host updated to latest git
• patroneo updated to 1.6.1
• sequencer64 updated to 0.96.8
• vico updated to 1.2.1
• x42-plugins updated to 20200714
• zam-plugins updated to 1.13

That is all for now, stay safe and sane out there!

> Carla 2.2 RC1 is here!
On 2020-07-16 by falkTX

Hello again everyone, it is release day! (casually late again, but only 3 days late this time, yay progress!)

This is the announcement of the first release candidate of Carla 2.2.
Carla is a fully-featured cross-platform audio plugin host, which itself can also run as a plugin.
As done with 2.1, there is no beta release for v2.2 and we are going straight into a release candidate.

Contrary to previous releases, there were not many graphical changes this time, but lots of stuff under the hood.
One very important note for developers is that the "native" API to access carla as plugin (as used by LMMS) is still ABI and API-wise backwards compatible with 2.0, but the ABI and API of Carla as a library is not.
This is because all host functions now have a "handle" prefix, so they can be reused for standalone, plugin and other variants.

Now with that said, let's go through what's new, first the bigger changes and smaller stuff for last.

Multi-Client + multi-instance improvements In order to allow multiple instances of Carla to work without conflicts, proper JACK multi-client multi-instance support was implemented. What this means is that you can have a name prefix for all plugins when in JACK multi-client mode, so that it is easier to understand where a plugin belongs to. Starting with v2.2, extra Carla instances will get a dedicated JACK client name suffix. On projects created with v2.2 and above, Carla will know which saved connections belong to which plugins, making it possible to load a session correctly where multiple Carla instances are involved. As a way to make this easier to manage and control, a new command-line argument was added, "--cnprefix=...". So now you can have a dedicated Carla instance that has its created JACK clients more globally recognisable. Also, when Carla runs under NSM, the JACK client name prefix is set automatically (coming from NSM). This is not enabled when loading pre-2.2 projects though, in order to keep backwards compatibility.

Linux VST3 plugin support As new VST2 plugins can no longer be officially licensed and VST2 is very, very, very slowing being phased out, it is important to have VST3 support. So now you can now scan and load Linux VST3 plugins under Carla. It is no longer limited to macOS and Windows. Worth noting is that this is not a custom implementation, but leveraging JUCE VST3 host support on Linux. It recently got supported as part of their JUCE6 update. There are no plans for a custom implementation at this point.

Small UI/UX improvements all around

The built-in keyboard right-click menu got a bit better. Everything is presented in a single menu, no more sub-menus are used.

The plugin built-in editor dialog now shows the currently mapped parameter type+value directly. No more clicking around needed to find out what the parameter is mapped to.

MIDI learn implemented, triggered via parameter mapping menu. Note that this is per plugin, not global, due to how Carla handles each plugin individually.

Other "quality of life" improvements:

• Added a 12400x9600 canvas size
• Added a 2x and 4x canvas image export mode
• Added a menu action to save current Carla canvas as image in the clipboard
• Added "Send MIDI notes" option to plugin built-in editor dialog
• Canvas positions are now always saved and restored, including in the plugin version
• Canvas positions are kept in sync across multiple Carla JACK instances and even Carla-Control
• Built-in plugin edit dialog tab state is kept when parameters are reloaded
• Implemented NSM "optional-gui"
• Plugin custom GUI Window title changes dynamically when renamed

Other notable changes

• Added a "carla-osc-gui" script that starts a Carla instance in the background and connects to it using OSC.
  Closing the GUI does not close the engine, and it can be run again to reconnect later on.
• Always use maximum amount of channels for VST2 plugins
• Better handle the case of JACK server stop (or killed)
• Better implementation of LV2 state path, now saving files in the same directory as the Carla project
• Changed the way plugins are deleted, so they are now safely deleted only when no longer in use
• Implement MIDI CC and CV source parameter changes for bridges
• Improve the (still experimental) JACK-apps-as-plugins implementation, now mapping show/hide gui to NSM commands, sending arbitrary MIDI events and making it work on more systems
• Increase max value of the internal LFO plugin, so we can get reeeeeeeal slow
• Raise limit of plugins that can be loaded (512 default, 64 in rack)
• Tweaks for automatically converting internal Patchbay mode projects in JACK multi-client mode and vice-versa
• Working HaikuOS build, but no audio support yet

Many other bug-fixes and small under-the-hood improvements (too many to list here).
See the git log for the full list of changes.

Notes for users

When using JACK, the newly added features around the canvas require at least JACK v1.9.13.
This is because Carla relies on JACK meta-data in order to store information about each plugin/client, and meta-data was only added to JACK2 in version 1.9.13.
Alternatively, you can use JACK1 instead of JACK2, which has meta-data support since a long time.

The code for scanning plugins had a little rework yet again, making some internal data structures change.
Because of this, a full rescan of your plugins is needed after the update.
This should fix previously missing plugins that happened in v2.1.

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

Final note

Just a reminder that this is a release candidate, and not the final release yet.
I did my best to fix all issues that I was able to reproduce, but some can still happen.
Please let me know if find any, thanks!

> A DISTRHO-Ports update
On 2020-07-15 by falkTX

Hello again, another release for the Quarterly Release Pact is here.
This one is a "small" update of the DISTRHO-Ports project.
It is a more packager-focused release rather than user-focused, because the (super old) build system was finally updated.
This alone warrants a new release by itself, as it finally becomes possible for the project to be packaged in regular linux distributions.

There are a few new plugins and fixes with this release, bigger changes are coming at a later date.
I want to update the DISTRHO-Ports website and have "nightly builds" of the plugin binaries, but this will take time.
For now, at least we have the plugins building and working on modern distributions.

Here is a resume of the full changes since last release in 2018:

• Add HiReSam plugin port
• Add ReFine plugin port
• Add Temper plugin port
• Fix build for ARM NEON target
• Fix LV2 UI notifications happening in non-GUI thread
• Fix LV2 meta-data to pass lv2lint errors
• Update JUCE (current plugins frozen in a known good but slightly old version, with cherry-picked fixes)
• Switch build system from premake3 to meson

There are no pre-compiled binaries for this release, though the plugins are fully up-to-date in the KXStudio repositories.
You can find this 2020-07-14 release at github.com/DISTRHO/DISTRHO-Ports/releases.

> WineASIO v1.0.0 released
On 2020-07-15 by falkTX

Hello everyone, a perhaps unexpected release is here.
This is a release of WineASIO, as a way to announce maintainer change as well as making it up to date with current Wine.

The previous maintainer, Joakim Hernberg, publicly said that he was looking for someone to take lead on the project.
When I was doing packaging of WineASIO to the KXStudio repositories, there were a couple of fixes needed... and eventually just decided to maintain it since I was in a way already doing that.
With the green-light for taking over the project, I did a couple of changes that seemed (to me) relevant and useful.
The Cadence-specific WineASIO settings were also split off to become a standalone tool, and it is now the ASIO "control panel" for the WineASIO driver.

I do not plan to make new development for WineASIO, only maintain it to keep it alive and working.
The new "control panel" was an exception due to it being, in my opinion, a user experience fix.
(understanding the Windows registry can be hard, so the "panel" allows us to skip on having to deal with that)

This is what changed compared to the previous official release:

• Add custom GUI for WineASIO settings, made in PyQt5 (taken from Cadence project code)
• Add packaging script
• Fix code to work with latest Wine
• Fix control panel startup
• Rework Makefile, common rules for 32 and 64bit builds

There are no pre-compiled binaries for WineASIO, though it is available as a package in the KXStudio repositories.
You can find this v1.0.0 release at github.com/wineasio/wineasio.

> Carla 2.1.1 has been released
On 2020-06-11 by falkTX

This is a bugfix for Carla version v2.1 series, fixing many bug reports and stuff I found along the way.

Carla is an audio plugin host, with support for many audio drivers and plugin formats.
It has some nice features like automation of parameters via MIDI CC (and send output back as MIDI too) and full OSC control.

Changelog

• Fix carla-control not handling CLI argument for custom address
• Fix carla-plugin not handling all callbacks
• Fix carla-plugin LV2 UI not showing up if host supports touch feature
• Fix for some plugin formats having 0 audio ports
• Fix occasional crashes due to canvas shadow (Qt bug, shadow is disabled by now)
• Fix canvas ports text width calculation with new Qt
• Fix wrong assertion with size 1 MIDI messages
• Fix errors in the icons
• Fix incorrect base conversion for MIDI CC assignments
• Fix rpath specification in pkg-config files
• Fix build with Qt 5.15
• Discovery: Force language to be "C" (English) so we can parse errors
• Discovery: assume midi inputs = 1 if VST plugin is synth
• Make canvas ports and groups ignore middle mouse clicks
• Improve performance of canvas "inline display" rendering
• Other miscellaneous bug fixes

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
Carla v2.1 is available pre-packaged in the KXStudio repositories, ArchLinux and Ubuntu since 20.04. On those you can simply install the carla package.
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

> KXStudio Monthly Report (May 2020)
On 2020-05-31 by falkTX

Hello all, another monthly report about the KXStudio project is here.
It has been a few months since one of these, which I apologise for.
It was wrong of me to assume I will have news every single month, some are just a bit slow on news due to external circumstances.

Anyway, a lot of work is going into Carla, lots of bug-fixes.
A good collection of them are piling up, which makes a v2.1.1 release worthy, so expect that in the next few days.

One of the new features in Carla is Linux VST3 support, already available if you use carla-git.
There is also a category filter in the add-plugin dialog now, and better handling of high-dpi mode.
That is basically it in regards to frontend/GUI changes, everything else is on the backend/audio-host side.
All of this will be in Carla v2.2, with a tentative release date of July 15.

Other developments happening behind the scenes are a DISTRHO-Ports update (setting old JUCE aside and using new juce6 branch for Linux VST3 plugins), plus updating its build system to meson.
The WineASIO project was finally given to me officially, so expect a release soon for that too.
There is also a big DPF rework going on, and a new project for cross-platform LV2 plugin binaries.
Those will be announced at a later point in time, once ready.

Regarding package updates in the repositories, there have been a few since the last monthly report. Those are:

• element added
• impro-visor added
• ladish fixed to work on systems without python2
• amsynth updated to 1.10.0
• avldrums.lv2 updated to 0.4.1
• bsequencer updated to 1.4.2
• bshapr updated to 0.9
• bslizr updated to 1.2.6
• carla-git updated
• fluajho updated to 1.5
• geonkick updated to 2.1.1
• lsp-plugins updated to 1.1.22
• mod-host updated to latest git
• patroneo updated to 1.5
• vico updated to 1.1
• x42-plugins updated to 20200411

Not so much work got done in regards to the website and documentation.
Perhaps for next time.

That is all for now, stay safe out there.

> Carla 2.1 is here!
On 2020-04-15 by falkTX

Exactly one year after 2.0, Carla version 2.1 is here!

Carla is an audio plugin host, with support for many audio drivers and plugin formats.
It has some nice features like automation of parameters via MIDI CC (and send output back as MIDI too) and full OSC control.

This is a small but significant update that builds up on top of what was released in 2.0.
Please see the 2.1-RC1 announcement for details on what is is new in 2.1.

Unlike last time, there are no official plans for version 2.2 just yet, my focus will now be going into the DPF and JACK projects instead.
The master branch of Carla's code repository is now for 2.1, while the previous 2.0 master got renamed "hotfix-2.0.0".
No new features will be added to 2.1 series, only bugfixes.

Changes since 2.1-RC2

• Add a simple cv2audio plugin
• Brown color for CV ports, to make them more easily recognizable
• Fix crash loading LV2 plugin with CV and latency ports
• Fix mingw/gcc-9 build

Changes between 2.1-RC2 and 2.1-RC1

• Fix crash on stack unwind for a few operations
• Fix duplicate data (name, label, uid) used in VST synth/fx Shell plugin
• Fix JACK metadata usage for multiple carla instances and plugin renames
• Fix MIDI CC assignment showing wrong selected value (base 16 vs 10)
• Fixup carla-control (was broken in RC1)
• Optimize and reduce memory usage of UI bridges
• Overall fix of postponed RT events
• Give focus to bridged UIs when first shown
• Ignore any LV2 patch:writable that is not an lv2:Parameter
• Rename experimental "prevent bad things" option and give it a tool-tip
• Support the new LV2 UI requestParameterValue API
• Support the new LV2 UI background/foreground color API
• Many other miscellaneous bug fixes, see the git log for details

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
Carla v2.1 is available pre-packaged in the KXStudio repositories, ArchLinux and Ubuntu since 20.04. On those you can simply install the carla package.
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

> KXStudio Monthly Report (February 2020)
On 2020-02-29 by falkTX

Hello everyone, it is time for another monthly report in regards to the KXStudio project.

First, there were many bugfixes made to Carla, we are very close to RC2.
I only have 2 things that I want to do before the RC2, first being fixing multi-instance under multi-client mode and second is to finalize the last couple of bugfixes.
So the RC2 should be out in a few days, maximum weeks.

Second, something that came out of (re-)packaging WineASIO (and moving away from Cadence, but that is a story for another day...).
I am taking over as maintainer of the WineASIO project.

WineASIO is something that is mostly "done", there is not much that we can add to it.
Since I have to keep it building in order to package it, I spoke with upstream and let them know I was available to take over.
(maintaince work is pretty minimal, just got to make it build basically)

We are trying to take over github.com/WineASIO organization, so we can place the source code repository in there.
If that takes too long, the repository will just end up at github.com/falkTX/WineASIO as it is for the moment.
In any case, we will see v1.0.0 release of WineASIO quite soon!

The KXStudio repositories' armhf build of surge has been fixed.
I have opened a pull request on upstream surge to discuss the armhf/arm64 needed changes (basically a SSE2 to NEON conversion).
They are quite open to it, which is nice to see.
We just need to fix some minor things now and that could likely be part of 1.7.0 release later on.

Finally, these are the package updates made in the repositories:

• carla-git updated
• mod-cv-plugins updated to latest git
• sequencer64 updated to latest git, midi_control branch
• surge updated to 1.6.6
• cv-lfo-blender-lv2 added
• g2reverb added
• invada-studio-plugins (LADSPA) and invada-studio-plugins-lv2 added
• setbfree added, including VST2 version through lv2vst
• wineasio added
• zlfo added

That is all for now. Have a great weekend everyone! :)

> KXStudio Monthly Report (January 2020)
On 2020-01-28 by falkTX

Hello all, another monthly report about the KXStudio project is here.

A few days ago, Carla 2.1-RC1 was announced.
As mentioned in that post, Carla's frontend move to C++ has started, for performance, reliability and debugging reasons.
It is going to be something that, even though means a lot behind the scenes, visibly nothing will change. (except performance)
Because of this, do not expect many UI related changes in Carla for the time being.

There were more package updates in the repositories. Those are:

• lsp-plugins updated to 1.1.13
• x42-plugins updated to 20200114
• distrho-ports updated (added Temper as LV2 and VST plugin)
• bchoppr added
• bslizr added
• bsequencer added
• bshapr added
• geonkick added
• mod-cv-plugins added
• noise-repellent added
• regrader added

A few of those were made possible thanks to LibraZik project, from which I imported a few.
I am quite grateful for them, and you should be too! :)

On a more personal side of things, I have started renting an office for work (both for employer and FLOSS stuff).
Its setup took most of the time on the holidays, and quite a fair bit in January too.
It is mostly done now, only final touches needed. It certainly helps as a kind of motivation boost, and as a way to keep focus too.

Next month will be slower than usual, as I plan to focus more on "boring" stuff like updating the website and documentation.
That is all for now.

Since I mentioned it, I leave you with a picture of the office (the working area).
See you next month!

> Carla 2.1 RC1 is here!
On 2020-01-19 by falkTX

Hello again everyone, it is release day! (kinda, just a casual 4 days late...)

This is the announcement of the first release candidate of Carla 2.1.
I am skipping the beta phase as done for the 2.0 release and going straight into a Release Candidate.
This means there will be no more changes in the graphical user interface or engine/backend features, except when required for fixing bugs.

Carla projects/sessions are meant to be fully compatible between between 2.0 and 2.1 versions, except for features marked experimental.
The "native" API to access carla as plugin (as used by LMMS) is ABI and API-wise backwards compatible compatible with 2.0.
If this is not the case, consider it a bug that needs to be fixed.

As with the v2.0 release, the list of changes is a little big, so let's split it by parts.
First, the highlights and major changes, in no particular order of relevance.

Better CV Support CV ports are now supported in the internal patchbay mode, meaning you do not need to use JACK with Carla in order to use CV plugins. Automable parameters can now be exposed as a CV port, so they can be controlled by regular CV sources or other plugins. This is a kinda feature preview, as there are some limitations at the moment: Parameter changes are not sample accurate (in a later version, Carla will split buffer up to 32 frames for more fine-grained control changes) Not all plugin formats and parameter types are allowed to be controlled this way (to be extended as I test more compatibility) Only available for parameter inputs, not outputs In order to make CV more useful by default, a new internal "MIDI to CV" plugin was added, originally created by Bram Giesen. More plugins will be added as needed, for now I recommend to use ams-lv2 and mod-cv-plugins as they already do a lot. Also, a new variant of Carla as plugin was created that provides audio, MIDI and 5 CV ports (for each side). This allows CV signals to flow in and out of Carla as a plugin.

High-DPI support (work in progress) Initial work was done to support high-DPI screens. Note that this was not tested very extensively, due to lack of proper hardware, but the requirements in terms of code are all there. There are still a few "normal" resolution bitmaps in use, to be replaced in future releases. You can click on the screenshot on the left to see Carla rendered at 3x the resolution. So for now, the situation is: Most of the icons changed to scalable format UI will scale with the desktop automatically, as Qt takes care of that for us Some bitmaps still remain, to be replaced by vector images in a future release Not extensively tested, feedback is welcome

Proper theme and Carla-Control for Windows The Windows build stack changed from using official Python and PyQt5 packages to msys ones, allowing us to link against them using mingw (Carla does not support MSVC) This makes it possible to use the proper "pro" theme like Linux and macOS already did, and also get Carla-Control finally working on Windows. Previously, the Carla Windows builds were using Qt's "fusion" theme (which the Carla "pro" theme is based on), which looks very similar but misses all of custom tweaks made for Carla. This includes, for example, preventing pop-up menus from taking the entire screen or ugly thick lines being drawn where a small one was expected. A small but important step towards cross-platform feature parity. \o/

VST2 plugin for macOS and Windows, plus exposed parameters This is the final item that was missing for cross-platform feature parity. We now have Carla as VST2 plugin running on both macOS and Windows! Embedding of the full GUI on these systems is not possible, so a small "middleware" window is shown as the plugin custom UI. Not the best experience, but allows Carla to finally work as VST2. Additionally, 100 parameters are exposed to the host, dynamically used in the order of the plugins loaded. So for example, if the first plugin in the rack has 20 parameters, the first 20 parameters of carla-vst will be mapped to that plugin. This continues in order for the remaining plugin parameters until we reach 100 of them. When Carla is loaded as an internal plugin, parameters will be dynamically available too. This feature is not available in the LV2 version of Carla though, at least not yet. Note: Carla plugins are not "notarized" yet, so they will not run under latest macOS 10.15/Catalina where this is a requirement.

Wine-native bridge, sorta experimental This is a way to load Linux binaries under Windows applications running with Wine, in case you need that for some reason Personally I made it so that I could run the native Carla inside FL Studio, which allows me to use its sequencer but not have to deal with Windows plugins. This is available in the KXStudio repositories as "carla-vst-wine" package, you need to copy /usr/lib/winvst/Carla* into your Wine VST dll folder to make it work. It requires Carla to be installed system-wide, so it cannot work if Carla is downloaded manually. Building it is kinda tricky, as it requires building a native-windows dll first, and then a few things with winegcc... Packager documentation will be added soon to Carla's source code repository, so other Linux distributions can pick it up. I demoed this feature at Sonoj last year (2019), you can watch it as the 3rd part of this video.

Refreshed add-plugin dialog and favorite plugins The add-plugin dialog had a major overhaul, now looking much better and with more content visible at once. Target was to improve the user experience, making clear that there are filters available. (it was not so obvious in previous versions) The star on the most-left section of the table is to mark a plugin as a favorite, which will add it as a shortcut to the right-click menus on empty rack and patchbay areas.

Single-page and grouped plugin parameters The dialog for the generic plugin parameter view also had an update. All parameters are now placed in the same tab (separated only by input and output types), and grouped when supported by the plugin. The options for mapping a parameter to a MIDI CC were taken out and replaced by a button that triggers a menu with the relevant options. Note that, at the moment, only a few LV2 plugins support parameter groups. This is because most hosts do not support this feature, so plugins do not have many incentives to support such a thing. And with not a lot of plugins supporting it, hosts also do not care that much. The usual circular dependency deal... But since the feature applies quite nicely to Carla, made sense to add it. The group can be collapsed by clicking on it. A similar feature will be added to the patchbay in a later release, so we can group audio ports too. :)

More UI changes

The rack items will dynamically show as many knobs as possible
You can now change the "skin" and color of any rack item, making it easy to identify certain plugins
Added buffer-size, sample-rate and xrun information to the status; clicking on the xrun counter will reset it to zero

Canvas changes

Right-clicking on a canvas group will show options for quickly connecting all ports to another group
Many small tweaks and fixes, plus a few extra actions, as contributed by Nikita Zlobin (to be documented on the user manual)
Support for Ardour-style inline-displays, marked experimental in this release (sadly cannot be made stable until Carla v3.0)

Carla-control and OSC rework

Carla's OSC support has been reworked, now has its own dedicated page in the settings.
Carla-Control has been extended to support all non-local-dependent features of the main Carla (like patchbay management and transport controls).
This will be extended even further in future releases.

AU and VST3 support is back, by leveraging JUCE

Disabled during a previous 2.0 beta release, support for the JUCE library was removed and replaced by a heavily stripped-down version of it. (while it was still GPlv2 licensed)
The reasons for that decision still remain relevant, but in order to keep in mind with Carla's goals, I decided to add back JUCE support - but now completely optional.
It will always be possible to build Carla without JUCE, it is only used for extra hardware and plugin format support.
In fact, Linux builds by default do not use it, as there is no need for it.

Anyway, the published macOS and Windows Carla builds do use JUCE, which means Carla supports VST3 under macOS and Windows, and AU under macOS.
As a bonus, it is now possible to show the custom control panel of ASIO devices. :)

Worth noting is that JUCE does not support VST3 under Linux at this point, so neither does Carla even if you build it yourself with JUCE enabled.

Other changes

Within a bunch of small fixes and new implementations, here are some changes that deserve to be mentioned:

• Carla now requires Qt5, can no longer work with Qt4; but can still use LV2 Qt4 UIs with its built-in bridges
• NSM is now supported for JACK applications
• Added a 16 MIDI port mode for JACK applications
• Added "Cancelable actions" during project and plugin bridges load, so they will no longer time-out; instead the user has the option to cancel them at anytime
• Initial support for LV2 parameter API
• Initial support for LV2 file paths, assuming plugin has no custom UI (click on the show-gui button to open a file dialog)

Notes for developers and packagers

• Linking against the JACK library directly is now possible by using `make JACKBRIDGE_DIRECT=true`, which allows for building Carla as an internal client

Notes for users

The code for scanning plugins had a little rework, again, making some internal data structures change.
Because of this, a full rescan of your plugins is needed after the update.

Downloads

To download Carla binaries or source code, jump on over to the KXStudio downloads section.
If you're using the KXStudio repositories, you can simply install "carla-git" (plus "carla-lv2" and "carla-vst" if you're so inclined).
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! Jump on over to the Carla's Github project page for those.

Future and final notes

I have started a change of the Carla's frontend coding language, from Python to C++ (for performance, reliability and debugging reasons).
There are a few canvas related things, currently experimental, that can never be made stable or fast due to how Python/PyQt works.
Also Carla is not scaling very well at the moment, and the addition of CV controlled parameters and inline-displays does not help its case.
So a move of the entire frontend to C++ makes quite a lot of sense.
Whenever this is finished a new release will be made.
But it is going to be something that, even though means a lot behind the scenes, visibly nothing will change. (except performance)
Because of this, do not expect many UI related changes in Carla for the time being.

A user manual for Carla has been started.
It proved to be quite helpful for development too, as I had to justify why things are the way they are, and explain how they work too.
Now that Carla UI should not change too much for a while, it is the right time for such thing.
I personally dislike writing such things, but understand it can be quite useful.
The work-in-progress manual is at https://kx.studio/Documentation:Manual:Carla.
(Not much to see there at the moment though, give me time)

That's it.
Please remember that this is a release candidate, and not the final release.
Some issues are expected, I will do my best to fix all reports that get to me.
If I don't know about the issues though, I can't fix them. So please report any issues you find, thanks!

> KXStudio Monthly Report (December 2019)
On 2019-12-16 by falkTX

Hello all, another monthly report about the KXStudio project is here.

There is not a whole lot of new exciting stuff this time around, as most of the time was spent on Carla new features and bug-fixing.
I am doing a push towards CV support in Carla (a "MIDI to CV" internal plugin was added, for example),
with only 1 new feature to be implemented - allowing to automate any regular parameter with CV.
The idea is to make it easier to automate things in Carla, by exposing individual parameters in the patchbay as CV ports.
There is only 1 month left for the planned release, so going to be tight on time, but still seems doable, specially with holidays coming.
(so more free time to work on this)

There were a few minor package updates in the repositories. Those are:

• x42-plugins updated to 20191215
• zam-plugins updated to 3.12
• sequencer64 added (Qt5 build from git master)

A new small extra repository has been created, one I have been using for some time now.
This came out of the necessity to update JACK2, but JACK not being something we can distribute in generic packages like KXStudio does for applications and plugins.
A few pieces of software, like JACK2 and other libraries, cannot be made into generic deb packages.
So, I want to create a few small but nice repositories for basic utilities and nice-to-have things.
For now, I have created a first, small one for Ubuntu 18.04 users (which includes me, obviously :P) which contains an updated JACK2, Wine-RT, among other small things.
You can find more details about this repository and all future ones coming soon at https://kx.studio/Repositories:Extras.

In some news regarding the JACK2 project, it has its own news page now, so I won't be posting JACK2 related stuff here anymore.
The latest about it, which is worth mentioning, is that its mailing list is back online once again! \o/

Cadence v0.9.1 was released, just tagging it in its git repo so distributions can pick it up.
It was mostly needed due to an incompatibility with Python 3.8.

And finally, donations for the KXStudio project (basically myself) are open once again, now even with a Patreon page.
In the past I mentioned that, due to legal costs, it was not worth having them while in Germany and I would open them again once I moved.
That happened a few months ago, but I dislike dealing with these things, so it took some time...
They are open once again now, though I removed the PayPal subscription option and counter for now.
(I am intentionally not posting the link here, I trust that if you care enough, you know where to find it)

Next month hopefully a new Carla release will be here.
Catia will be made into a standalone project, leaving Cadence behind. But that is news for another time... :)

> KXStudio Monthly Report (November 2019)
On 2019-11-16 by falkTX

Hello everyone, it is time for another monthly report in regards to the KXStudio project.

First, the most important I think, some small repository changes have been made.
I added a "KXStudio" suffix to the repository names, so you get stuff like "KXStudio Plugins" in your package manager now.
This was requested by a user, and makes a lot of sense.
The bad news is that your package manager is likely to complain about the changes, as it thinks it is a sign of trouble.
That is not the case though, as I am here just informing you of that. :)
A quick "solution" to this is to simply delete the cached apt list information, so the package manager will not have the previous repository title, like so:
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

There were a few new packages added to the repositories.
First, for the basic infrastructure, we got meson 0.51.2 and premake5. A few projects need this in order to build, so we got to have them first.
The more exciting ones are added and updated application and plugins, the changes on that are:

• drumgizmo updated to 0.8.1
• fluajho updated to 1.4.1
• moony updated to 0.30.0, enabled inline display
• patroneo updated to 1.4.1
• vico updated to 1.0.1
• surge added
• dragonfly-reverb added
• hybridreverb2 added
• wolf-shaper added
• wolf-spectrum added

Lastly, preparations for the next Carla release are well under way.
I was able to update and build generic Windows and Linux binaries (with Qt 5.9), and macOS is mostly working but still needs some fixing.
In the past I used to do a bunch of beta releases until the final one was declared stable.
I am going against this now, and will directly do a "Release Candidate" where no more new stuff can be added, only bug-fixing.
The next "Linux Audio release day" is January 15, so that will be the target date.

PS: Many of the new packages were imported from the LibraZik project, for which I am extremely grateful for.
The surge armhf build fails at this point, to be fixed soon.

> KXStudio Monthly Report (October 2019)
On 2019-10-15 by falkTX

Hello all, today is October 15, a Linux/Libre-Audio release day.
I do not have anything to actually release (that is ready anyway), so I thought to instead start something new.

Every month, starting with this one, we will have a monthly report regarding the latest stuff in KXStudio.
This will involve new releases, package updates to its repositories, important bug-fixes and short-term plans.
So let's begin...

First of all, in case you somehow missed it, a new JACK2 release is here!
This finally brings meta-data support into JACK2. More information about meta-data in JACK can be found here.

On the repositories, "helm" package had an issue where the plugin could not find its own presets.
(This was caused due to KXStudio repositories going ahead on renaming "helm" to "Helm" as the former already exists)

ZynAddSubFX got (re-)added, using its nice and fancy Zyn-Fusion UI.
In the old repositories there was "zynaddsubfx" for old UI, and "zynaddsubfx-git" for the new one.
The "git" package is gone, only "zynaddsubfx" is there now and it has the new UI. +1 for progress!

x42-plugins got updated to 20191013 release.

Fluajho, Patroneo and Vico were added. (nice simple tools from Nils Hilbricht)
These last ones were tricky since they use python libraries.
In order to make it a generic package I resorted to cxfreeze which makes it run independent of the system python.

Coming soon is Carla 2.1-beta1.
The actual software is ready for the beta1 release, but setting up the infrastructure for an updated Qt5 build is taking longer than expected.
The current 2.0 builds use quite an old Qt version: Qt5.5 on macOS, Qt4(!) on Linux, which I do not accept for new releases going forward.
Windows builds are ready to go though, you can find test binaries on Carla's github.
Once I finish setting up the builds for Linux and macOS, I will make the announcement. Very likely in mid-November.

Finally, Sonoj is coming!
Sonoj is an annual event/convention in Cologne, Germany, about music production with free and open source software.
It features demonstrations, talks and hands-on workshops.
You can meet like-minded people, learn insider knowledge and tricks, participate in their one-hour production challenge!
It is only a few days from now, so please get ready! :)
I will be doing a talk in Sonoj about the past, present and future of JACK.
So please come and say hi, registration is free!

Note: Since the KXStudio website has been internally reworked (removed mediawiki, much simpler PHP code now), the old news have been removed.