Ann Hell Ex Machina Release Notes
1.0.13
1.0.12
- Added support for SoundFont 2.0 (.sf2) files.
- New
L command, to add directories to the library path (analogous to the -L switch).
- New
master_volume command, to set the software syntesizer master volume (analogous to the -v switch).
1.0.11
- Uses
ffmpeg as a fallback converter in case all others fail.
- New PulseAudio output driver.
- Very big internal changes; instead of having many different event lists (raw song, softsynth or midi), all events are the same (still kept in different lists, though). This simplify the internal storage greatly. This is not a user-visible change.
- Other minor changes to the C API were done, as using const wherever possible; as above, no user-visible changes.
- Random volumes are no longer architecture-dependent (Bug #1146).
1.0.10
- The volume (
v) command can now have two arguments; next volumes will be set as a random value from that range.
- New softsynth directive
attack, to set the attack time for notes, analogous to sustain (this directive was introduced in 1.0.9, but was left undocumented here).
- The
wav command now accepts a file name starting with a pipe symbol (|), interpreting the string as a command to be executed, that will end up creating the .wav file that will be used as a sound source. The command must include a %s where the command wants the output file (it will be filled with a unique, temporary name).
1.0.9
- The wobble effect now accepts a 'gain' argument, to control the amount of effect applied to the signal. If not set, it uses a default of 0.8 (previous versions acted as if a 1.0 value was set).
- The way of ending a softsynth song has changed; instead of waiting for the end of events and then abruptly ending (which led to adding fake silences and notes until all sound is off), now the instruments are monitored and only exits when no more sound is generated.
- Three new distortion effects,
atan, distort and overdrive have been added.
- A new special mark is supported, START, that can be defined anywhere and used as the starting point for the following new tracks.
- A new special mark is support, END, that will be automatically set to the longest time seen on a track. So, combining the START and END marks, it's possible to mix different songs to play one after the other, as in
/* first song */
`song1.ahs`
/* move to the furthest point */
@END
/* set start of new tracks there */
^START
\
/* second song */
`song2.ahs`
1.0.8
- Big rename; main executable has been changed from 'annhell' to 'ahxm', the personal sample library changed from
$HOME/annhell to $HOME/ahxmlib, and the temporary cache moved to /tmp/ahxm-$PID.
- Paged wave loading now include an adaptive algorithm that sequentially increases the memory block assigned to that wave if it pages frequently. This way it's much less possible to be bitten by bug #1108.
- New command 'A' to set the key signature as a list of alterations to natural notes.
- New effect 'half_wobble'; same as 'wobble', but letting pass only the first pass of a period.
- New directive 'portamento', allowing notes to slide up or down.
- New distortion effect 'foldback'.
1.0.7
- Number of channels no longer default to 2, but to all the channels used in the song (this way, WAV files are automatically generated with all the defined channels and not clipped to 2). Other output devices are still silently clipped to 2 and the rest of channels dropped.
- The arpeggiator subcommand @ (track) has been changed to /, as it was confusing the parser. Also, the track is relative instead of absolute (now it means a track offset), so it can be reused.
- Midiin has been fixed, as it was severely broken (no initializations).
- OSS's fragment changed so that real-time applications (as midiin) work again. This seems to be necessary when using ALSA's OSS emulation.
- A new midi2ahs.pl script, to crudely convert MIDI files to .ahs scripts.
1.0.6
- Minor internal changes.
- First public version.
1.0.5
- Channel spreading of wave files into instruments can now be partially controlled with the optional "first channel" and "skip channels" parameters. This allow using samples where the left and right channel are in different wave files.
- New randomized blocks.
1.0.4
- A new directive, 'song_info', to add author and name metadata to a song.
- A new command line option, -C, to generate a .cue file.
- Fixed a critical bug when loading .wav files directly (instead of converted from other formats as .flac).
1.0.3
- This release allows working with huge wave files, as they are loaded page by page instead of full in memory (but beware of bug #1108).
1.0.2b
- This release includes no new features, but just some internal refactoring (towards supporting paged instruments).
1.0.2
- Tempo changes has been fixed.
- New '-P' command line switch to show time progress.
1.0.1
- The performance of the 'skip seconds' option has been dramatically improved; but take note that output will sound differently, as notes that started playing before the time boundary will no longer sound (this will also happen with a real MIDI synthesizer, where note on events will never be sent).
1.0.0
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