News

New in this release

This is a bug fix release, containing the following changes:

• Fixed bounds checking of mode in speex header. relates to: oCERT 2008-002.
• Fixed bug preventing device dialog being reopened when closed via the window manager.

All users with Speex handling enabled should upgrade.

New in this release

• ALSA is now the default driver. see README.OSS for oss
• minimum supported gtk version raised to 2.4
• added the "hand tool" for panning the display with inertia (Radoslaw Korzeniewski)
• can now open multiple files via the gtk file selector
• implemented accel editing via the usual gtk method
• added tdb lock override (Takashi Iwai)
• remove support for libsndfile0 (Erik de Castro Lopo)
• remove direct flac support as it's supported by libsndfile now (Erik de Castro Lopo)
• added a new splash screen (Pascal Klein)
• fix segfault when closing windows while others were still loading
• other bugs addressed and changes made. run "svn log" on a copy of svn trunk for details, or check the timeline

New in this release

This is a maintainance release.

The previous release (0.9.0) had a bug that prevented sweep from populating the ALSA devices in settings. The bug was only apparent when you built with ALSA and didn't have a previous installation of sweep that used ALSA.

If you installed sweep 0.9.0 and had problems getting any sound output then please upgrade to 0.9.1.

New in this release

This release is the first in a new unstable series. Changes include:

• sweep now uses gtk2 for it's interface
• improved mp3 detection and loading
• a new SVG icon for sweep (Alex Kloss)
• corrected a note to key mapping for pc keyboard playback (Paul Brossier)
• an updated Spanish translation (Waldo Ramirez Montano)
• an updated Polish translation (Radoslaw Korzeniewski)
• more minor tweaks and improvements.

Release plans

This first release based on gtk2 begins what we hope will be a short lived unstable series, leading up to the stable 1.0 release. The priority will be ensuring that the gtk2 port really is complete and bug free, but it's likely that a few important or useful new features will be squeezed in. Hopefully including:

• jack support
• simple file loading via drag and drop
• some form of LADSPA plugin browser (with bookmarks, search etc)
• modular drivers (no more hardcoded default)

When 1.0 is released, work will begin on what will become sweep 2.0. this will be based around Conrad's libremix library and will enable sweep to perform on disk editing (removing the need to load entire files into memory), non destructive editing and much more besides.

Development news

The only significant change over 0.8.4 comes from the use of gtk2 for the interface. as such, you will now need gtk-2.0 (version 2.2.0 or greater) and it's dependencies to use sweep and the associated development packages to build sweep 0.9.0 from source.

See here for information on accessing or contributing to sweep's development code.

You can find a nice overview of recent changes or report bugs here.

And of course, drop by our irc channel #sweep on irc.freenode.net and you can talk to us directly.

New in this release

This is maintainance release, including:

• updates for ALSA 1.0 (Daniel Dreschers, Charles Turner),
• a new Polish translation (Radoslaw Korzeniewski),
• an updated russian translation (Alex Prokoudine),
• a small fix to the German translation, and
• various minor tweaks and improvements.

Release plans

This is likely to be the last Sweep release based on GTK+-1.2. Further development will use GTK+-2.0 for the interface.

Over the last year, Peter Shorthose has developed a comprehensive set of GTK+-2.0 patches for Sweep, and will handle their merging and ongoing release management towards Sweep 1.0. Welcome Peter!

Development news

The trunk of sweep CVS has been migrated to a new Subversion repository. See the development pages for details.

New in this release

This is a maintainance release, including a new Spanish translation, various bugfixes and no new functionality.

Sweep has moved back into CVS at SourceForge. Five new developers have been added to the project: Yuri Bongiorno, Erik de Castro Lopo, Torben Hohn, André Pang, and Alexandre Prokoudine.

Internationalization (i18n) improvements

• a new Spanish translation by Juan Manuel Martinez
• an updated Italian translation by Yuri Bongiorno

Bugfixes

• resampler bug fixed by Erik de Castro Lopo
• made main scrollbar arrows useful (bug #821596)
• seven other bug reports closed
• compile warning fixes for GCC3

The dependency on libtdb has been removed. TDB sources are now pulled directly from the upstream Samba subversion repository.

New in this release

This release contains support for ALSA 0.9; this is configurable and could do with widespread testing.

To build with ALSA support, simply configure with:

./configure --enable-alsa

Note that this will build a binary which will work with ALSA only, and not attempt to use OSS. In future this will be replaced with plugins for different pcm i/o methods, which should ease binary distribution.

Internationalization (i18n) improvements

• a complete audit of untranslateable strings, including mis-configured source files and unmarked strings, by Silvia Pfeiffer.
• a new Greek translation by Dokianakis Fanis
• a new Russian translation by Alexandre Prokoudine
• an updated Italian translation by Yuri Bongiorno
• an updated German translation by Silvia Pfeiffer

There is a new mailing list: sweep-i18n. List information is here.

Additional changes

• added VBR without DTX option for Speex 1.0 speech encoding
• improved accuracy of sliders in processing dialogs

Events

Conrad will presenting and demoing Sweep at the following upcoming events:

Jul 10-13	LinuxTag 2003 (Karlsruhe, Germany) Conference and Linux Audio Dev (LAD) exhibition booth
Jul 31 - Aug 3	UKUUG Linux Developers Conference (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Plus, the Call for Participation for the Linux Audio Mini-Conf @ LCA2004 (Jan 12-13 2004, Adelaide, South Australia) is announced at metadecks.org.

New in this release

This release contains performance improvements for basic editing operations, including reduced memory consumption during cut and paste insert. It also includes support for creation of new files on the command line, updated handling of raw file loading through libsndfile, and updated support for voice activity detection and intensity stereo coding features of the Speex speech codec.

Around the Net

Mstation.org this month features two Sweep-related interviews:

• with Conrad Parker about the history and development of Sweep, and
• with Erik de Castro Lopo, the author of libsndfile and libsamplerate which are used by Sweep.

This is the first milestone release for Sweep 1. Please test it thoroughly for both general sample editing and live performance!

New in this release

• a new monitoring subsystem for use in DJing and live performance. Users with two sound cards can use headphones for monitoring, to prepare mixes and cue samples without disrupting the main output.
• A usability bug was fixed in keyboard playback controls
• the Italian translation of the user interface was updated by Yuri Bongiorno.

New at metadecks.org

Notes for the tutorial "Using Sweep: Fun with Scrubby" are now available online in HTML, PostScript and PDF formats here. This is a brief overview of the tutorial given at linux.conf.au 2003 in Perth, Australia; the real thing is live and very, very loud.

Sweep has been selected as the killer app of the month for January 2003 by Open Sound System (OSS), developers of the most widely used digital audio architecture for UNIX.

This release contains build fixes for NetBSD and cleanups by Erik de Castro Lopo to fix preprocessor pasting warnings.

It also features new fade in and fade out filters.

Conrad will be presenting two sessions at linux.conf.au, January 22-25 2003 in Perth, Australia; a tutorial titled "Using Sweep: Fun with Scrubby", and an overview of Sweep's internals and plugin development.

New in this release:

• an updated Italian translation from Yuri Bongiorno
• resample (sample rate conversion): change the sample rate of a file, for example from CD format to DAT format, or to any arbitrary sample rate. This requires Erik de Castro Lopo's newly released libsamplerate.
• preview cut: hear how the area around the selection will sound after the selection is cut out, including the parts between selection regions for multi-region selections.
• preroll to cursor: play one second of sound leading up to the cursor; useful for hearing the cursor position without moving it.

Bugs were fixed in MP3 loading and pitched playback (using QWERTY keys).

New features in this release include:

• mixing and crossfading paste methods: copy a region from one file and mix or fade it into another file or elsewhere in the same file, with control of source and destination levels and phase.
• navigation shortcuts to move between selection edges: move the cursor between the start and end of selection regions, and to the next edge of a multi-region selection, with Ctrl + Arrow Left/Right
• view memories: assign the viewable area to a number on the numeric keypad with Ctrl+, and zoom back to it later by pressing that number. (NB. Num Lock must be on on your keyboard).
• support for Speex 1.0beta3 ultra-wideband mode (32kHz). Speex is a high quality, patent-free and open source voice codec.
• support for full-file application of Secret Rabbit Code

Additionally, minor bugs were fixed affecting portability of system error handling and detection of MP3 files.

This is an update to 0.5.10 which fixes a compilation error in the default build.

New features in this release include vertical zoom with a draggable dB scale and mouse wheel control, and some basic channel operations: Duplicate to stereo/multichannel, Swap left and right, Remove left/right, Mix down to mono, and Add/Remove channels.

This release also includes compile fixes for Solaris, and a bug fix for first-time file 'save'.

A new section for screenshots contributed by users was recently added to the screenshot tour.

Sweep now supports Speex, a special purpose speech codec designed for efficient Voice over IP (VoIP) and file-based compression. Speex is free, open and unpatented; more information is available at http://www.speex.org/.

This release also includes improved handling of the main volume and pitch sliders, contributed by Zenaan Harkness.

MP3 import is now supported. Minor bugs have been fixed in rendering of record position and playback mixing.

There is a new page of audio demos made with Sweep. These demonstrate the sounds of Scrubby, a tool which allows vinyl-like manipulation of digital audio:

http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/demos.html

This version includes support for Ogg Vorbis import and export, including both variable and average bitrate encoding modes. There are many other user interface updates, including new input controls for sample rates and channels, and question, information and system error dialogs.

There is a new Screenshot tour of Sweep, including many screenshots of the new dialogs and general editing:

http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/screenshots/

Changes in this version include monitoring of file modification, "are you sure" dialogs, file revert, and many minor bug fixes.

There will be a demo of the latest Sweep features, including live DJing and experimental music techniques and the Sydney LUG meeting on Sep. 27 2002; see http://www.slug.org.au/ for details.

Changes since version 0.5.4 include major bugfixes for LADSPA plugin handling and improvements in scrubbing usability.

Changes since version 0.5.3 (September 5 2002) include bug fixes for playback during destructive operations and for edits of tiny regions, and improvements in configuration checks for libsndfile-1.0.0.

Additionally, scrubbing is now working for reverse playback, and has been tuned for responsiveness independent of sample rate.

There is now a web page introducing Scrubby and outlining a few simple editing and live performance techniques:

http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/scrub.html

This release incorporates robust configuration checking to help new users compile from source. After a long period of quiet development we are now beginning to roll this out for general public usage, and your testing and feedback is very welcome!

Changes since 0.1.1 (October 2000) include interactive scrubbing, recording, support for LADSPA 1.1 effects plugins and multichannel sound files, multithreaded background rendering, unlimited undo/redo, mouse wheel zooming, reverse playback and overall stability and usability improvements.

Changes since version 0.5.0 (August 12 2002) include preferences saving and support for libsndfile 1.0.0.

Changes since version 0.5.1 (August 29 2002) include improved configure checks and porting fixes. Additionally, Sweep now remembers the last used file load and save directories between sessions.

Changes since version 0.5.2 (September 4 2002) include the fixing of a bug in "save as", and (NEW) audible scrubbing when selecting regions.

Bram Dumolin has built RPMs for PPC. They are available from the download page.

There is now a sweep-users mailing list for discussions and help with using Sweep. This is in addition to the sweep-devel mailing list. Check out the mailing lists page for more details.

A Quick Tour of Sweep is now available. This is an introductory guide to using the program, and explains the screen layout and how to do basic operations. I went through this during a demo at last night's SLUG meeting.

Released version 0.1.1. This contains all the features listed in earlier news items, and fixes a configuration error in version 0.1.0. See the Release Notes for more information.

Random updates to sweep in CVS over the last month include LADSPA support and a change in colours.

Over the weekend I used sweep (in conjunction with aube(/metadecks)) to make some sounds for Gnome desktop events. You can grab them from here.

I've populated the CVS repository at sourceforge, check here for details.

I've been working on a plugin infrastructure recently. The aim is to make plugins as simple to write as possible. Dialogs for setting parameters are generated on the fly by sweep, and various kinds of parameter types and constraints are available. The code is in CVS, and more details are in this message on sweep-devel.

ASCII Corp of Japan will be including Sweep 0.0.9 in their "COOL Software for Linux" bundle with TECH Linux, a Linux Magazine for Japanese Linux Gamers. Thankyou to the editor of that magazine, Satoshi Turuo, for letting me know. I look forward to receiving my copy!

Also, I received a Hungarian translation from Gergely Nagy this morning which will be available in the next release.

Sweep 0.0.9 released. New in this release: Support for Solaris audio, French translation, new gnome-style pixmaps. i386 and source RPM packages now available.

Sweep 0.0.8 released. Bugfixes related to viewing large files.

Sweep 0.0.7 released. Documentation updates, mailing lists up.

Mark Taylor writes "sweep was used to document some decoder bugs in winamp," as shown here. (Screenshots on this page show sweep version 0.0.6). I'm glad to see someone is finding it useful already :)

Sweep 0.0.6 released. Minor interface changes, bugfixes. Debian packages available.

Sweep 0.0.5 released. Initial public release.