[ecasound] [ANN] Nama recorder-mixer version 0.995

Hello Ecasound users, abusers, tinkerers, developers, testers,

Another version of Ecasound/Nama is available for your
recording and testing pleasure. For those who prefer
a more personal way of refering to releases, this one
is informally named 'Fatalistic Frog', in the Ubuntu
style.

Once again, special kudos to Julien Claassen, who has
persistently tested and prodded Nama towards it's
current near-production-ready status.

Problems related to GUI color selections are fixed,
so GUI users will now have a better chance for a positive Nama
experience.

I would appreciate any comments, bug reports, feature
requests, etc., any feedback at all. See the end of this
mail for details on installation and my comments about
future development.

Thanks to all who have helped and inspired.

--joel

Abbreviated changelog:

- enable auxiliary track sends to soundcard channel or JACK client
- add normalize, fixdc commands
- add doodle mode (live inputs only) similar
  to preview mode, but without any WAV file playback
- insert command places an effect between existing effects
- recognize all ecasound chain operators
- new use_group_numbering option in config file
- improved preprocessing script (Julien Claassen)
- fixes for get_ladspa_hints
- set OFF status for tracks with input set to JACK client
  when no corresponding JACK port is found
- major speedups: cache WAV directory contents, poll
  periodically for jackd status.
- allow vol * 1.5, vol / 2 in addition to vol + 20, vol - 30
- similar syntax to change effect parameters (modify_effect, mfx)
- many commands now report on their actions
- the parser reports bad commands
- debug GUI palette selections save/restore

The Future:

There are a number of advanced features that Nama _could_ support
with a modest programming effort.

Some months ago someone mentioned wanting to use Ecasound
for phase-accurate recording/mixing. That would involve
getting latency values from plugins that report latency, and
using the artificial latency plugin as required to
maintain a phase-accurate relationship among tracks.

Another feature would be automatic volume scaling of tracks
prior to mixdown to avoid clipping. This could be done using
Ecasound's -ev plugins and parsing the output of the
cop-status command, again with a modest programming effort.

A third feature I imagine would be connecting the engine as
soon as possible to enable the user to hear output as she
adds tracks and effects. The WAV file recording chains would
be added in a final REC-enable step. The preview and doodle
modes are experiments in that direction.

Nama would like to be a platform for implementing these
higher-level functions that Ecasound makes possible, but
are not all that convenient to conduct through
Ecasound's interactive mode.

To install from CPAN(*Note)

        cpan Audio::Ecasound::Multitrack

To install from repository:

        git clone git://github.com/bolangi/nama.git

        cd nama/src

        ./build

        ./ui # test

        cd ..

        make && make test && make install

(*Note) I'm not sure about whether CPAN will install
all of Nama's dependencies. I append a script that should
install all needed modules.

#!/bin/sh
cpan -i \
Carp\
Cwd\
Storable\
Getopt::Std\
Audio::Ecasound\
Parse::RecDescent\
Term::ReadLine\
Term::ReadLine::GNU\
Data::YAML\
File::Find::Rule\
File::Spec::Link\
IO::All\
Time::HiRes\
Event\
File::Spec::Unix\
File::Temp\
Module::Load::Conditional\
Data::Rmap\

-- 
Joel Roth
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