Finally – after two and a half years there’s a new release of Calf Studio Gear – this time we dared to make a huge leap in versioning, after 0.0.60 from May 2015 here is 0.90.0:
+ New plug-ins: Multiband Enhancer, Multi Spread, Vinyl
+ Calfjackhost: important values controlable from rack
+ Calfjackhost: custom names for rack devices
+ EQ8/EQ12: Q for high and low pass
+ EQ30: linked mode
+ VintageDelay/Pulsator: new timing settings
+ Vocoder: Upper and lower tilt, higher Q, band related Q
+ All plugins: input/output meters and knobs
+ Themeing capabilities
+ New Designs: Default, Flat Default, 0.0.19, Hybreed, Lost Wages, Midnight, Orange, Wood
+ Knobs with ticks for better orientation
+ Scales attached to level meters
+ Bash completion for effect names
+ More readme and documentation
+ Lots of fixes and minor improvements
Download the source package
Calf Studio Gear @ GitHub
Calf Stdio Gear Website
This article was published
Samstag,, 4. November 2017 @ 21:46.
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24 comments on “Calf Studio Gear: Release 0.90.0 Is Here!”
Great! I look forward to trying these. KX Studios git version is still on the 0.60, but hopefully they will update soon!
The designs look impressive on teh Calf Studio Gear website. There really ought to be a mailing list with some kind of notification. I just happened to visit the Libre Music Production site on a whim and *BOOM* B I G news!
Thanks for putting these together!
Hi Markus and all the rest of the Calf team,
first, thanks a lot for the new Calf 0.90 – I was a little afraid for a while that development might have stopped/stalled :-). Good to see it’s still alive!
Now, my problem: After having upgraded my workstation to Linux Mint 18.2 „Sonya“, and building recent calf-git (master branch, commit d98c3bc92e58474829cdd8b5282f456c2e5b0a6a) from source, I noticed a problem with the new (and really SWEET ! 🙂 „Vinyl“ plugin: The „hum“ function gives me constant „looping noises“ (a short click) whenever the hum waveform is getting played back (and I am sure this is NOT intended noise :-). I was suspecting a problem in the .sf2 file, so I extracted the WAV data from it via Swami and checked in a sample editor, but that sample loops fine.
Then I suspected my „libfluidsynth“ that comes with Mint „Sonya“ might be outdated/buggy (it was still version 1.1.6), so I rebuilt that from source as well.
This worked, but then got me a compile problem in Calf since there was a small interface change in libfluidsynth, in function „fluid_synth_set_gen“ (it now takes 2 more parameters, see src/synth/fluid_synth.c, line 4994ff).
However, the fix was rather easy:
franky@silence:~/src/audio/calf-git/build> diff -u src/modules_dist.cpp.orig src/modules_dist.cpp
— src/modules_dist.cpp.orig 2017-11-12 18:11:02.008674380 +0100
+++ src/modules_dist.cpp 2017-11-12 18:29:28.185727635 +0100
@@ -703,7 +703,7 @@
fluid_synth_noteoff(synth, j, 60);
}
if (gain > 0) {
– fluid_synth_set_gen(synth, j, GEN_ATTENUATION, 200 * log10(1.0 / gain));
+ fluid_synth_set_gen(synth, j, GEN_ATTENUATION, 200 * log10(1.0 / gain), 0, 0);
}
last_gain[j] = gain;
}
With this small change, Calf is building fine, and – what’s even better – the loop crackle sound from the „Hum“ feature is gone :-).
Of course, you now have the tedious job of finding out what fluidsynth version a user is building against to know whether this patch has to be applied or not :-\.
Hope this help anyway.
Greetings, and hope to see you again some day,
Frank
Bah..I failed to see that this Fluidsynth interface change is in fact not in a public stable release so far (even the latest tagged 1.1.8 doesn’t have it yet). It was committed to Git in September already, but might only be published later, or never at all. Well, at least for those like me who sometimes build against „bleeding edge“ Git content, my statement is still true :-).
Hey Frank,
thanks a lot! Especially for reporting the issue. The glitch related bug was fixed in 1.1.7:
https://github.com/FluidSynth/fluidsynth/releases/tag/v1.1.7
I reviewed the SF2 and the wav without finding any problem, too.
However, we have to discuss the upcoming problem with > 1.1.8 internally, thanks for letting us know.
Best
Markus
Hello just wanted to say great work with the calf plugins. I’m always excited to see progress and new features etc. I wish I knew how to understand code. Would of loved to contribute to the platform. I wish calf had like a channel strip plugin with compression and eq and deessing in one plugin window and It would be nice if I knew how to simulate analog styled plugins thst just have threshold and input and a drive or saturation on the backup. I have a lot of cool ideas of plugins thst I would love too see on the Linux platform. Maybe I could collaborate with some of my ideas and designs, who Can I contact for this. I would love to create special edition plugins lol.
Cheers
Hey Dsb,
a fixed channel strip would only in some percentage meet the needs of the user. E.g. a deesser isn’t necessary in 95% of the channels of an average rock band or electro mix, only vocal tracks need it. And what about gating? Or saturation? Most of the effects would be bypassed most of the time only generating overhead on the CPU. Additionally the order of the effects differs from use-case to use-case. Since hosts allow custom order and multiple plugins it is much more target oriented the way it is.
About „analog“ stuff – most plugins available replicate analog gear. It is just a marketing gag, some kind of name dropping for making people pay more money. It has nothing to do with having just a single parameter control, it’s what your preferred closed source software (Waves I guess?) tells you to believe. Removing control might make it a bit easier to use the effects but narrows the sound to a point where in the end everything sounds the same. That’s why Calf offers as much control as possible. One-size-fits-all attitude is absolutely not in the scope of Calf, it offers freedom to your sound while being tools to get a job done. No fancy shit, nothing for plugin collectors. Just DSP with usable and not too ugly interfaces. Since it is open source we don’t need to fool people into buying more and more useless but shiny shtuff.
I fear only learning how to code and dive into DSP will help you out. I don’t know about any developer lacking of ideas what to do next to make the dreams of other people come true since this is no paid job but open source.
But I might be totally wrong in other peoples opinions.
Hello, thanks for your reply, I’m not sure if your upset or not but I understand what your saying. I would not want to harm the creativity of calf or the focus for it. I just thought it would be nice to have, I certainly am slowly moving away from proprietary stuff. I really like the idea of open source, I also like helping others. I will just stay in my lane and let calf be calf
Thanks
Hey Dsb,
I didn’t take anything offensive and if I sounded a bit pissed I apologise, please bear with me – it’s not because of your comment but because of my history with „fancy“ closed source plugins. Probably this interview explains a bit what I’ve been talking about in my previous comment.
Best
Markus
oh ok no worries,
and I have read that interview a while back so I understand fully, I read your story lol.
ya proprietary is a handful, I just hate when I reinstall my computer I have to install and activate this and that and authenticate this, and log in here and do this and that. its sooooo annoying, and even when I clone my drive and use it as a backup it detects my computer is different and then I have to reinstall all over again some of them lol.
I do appreciate what you and others have done with calf, they say things happen for a reason. we definitely needed this. I hope clay continues to grow in the future and still come out with cool new plugins here and there.
I had a question,
what is your opinion on vocal automation plugins, is it just laziness,
I have one where it automatically levels my audio track to my music.
have. you ever used those types of plugins.
Hopefully. The time I have to spend on it is vanishing, same with Krzysztof. But as you can see there’s still movement.
No, never used such tools. Normally things fit quite well on my productions. Sometimes I have to raise the fader of the lead vocals in the chorus but that’s no hassle and done in a blink in Ardour. If I would be in the need of such thing I would try Calf Sidechain Gate first:
* put a send in the master channel
* route it to the side chain
* set the range to something like 3 dB
* use quite high attack and release times
* play with the threshold
A higher volume in the mix will „open“ the gate (which means adding the range of 3dB) – done. Since there’s a filter in the side chain route you can even make the activating frequency range fit your vocals which means it doesn’t open the gate when only the bass range goes crazy while no additional mid range loudness appears. This would mean quite an improvement over the vocal rider plugins. Additionally there’s the „New York“ knob (mix): decide how much of the volume enhancement really hits your signal afterwards.
Nothing fancy, just making use of the already available tools. I don’t have a mix on my machine to test it but it should work.
Best
Markus
right, I thought about finding alternate ways as well.
sad to hear your time with calf is limited. are you working on other projects or just life has you?
how many are actively working on the project.
Life and work, sometimes smaller sideprojects. ATM it’s just Krzysztof and me.
Oh ok that’s cool. I will have to try that Multiband gate one day. It sounds like it would work.
Do you still take feature requests.
https://github.com/calf-studio-gear/calf/issues
Had a question about calf plugins and it’s Cpu usage, I notice calf to be very light on Cpu usage. Is their a reason for this, I would assume it’s a good thing. I’m still in the process of testing out all the plugins and use them in real mixes. Some of my proprietary plugins use up a lot, probably because of the emulation and some offer over sampling which is supposed to be better from my understanding. Are their any calf plugins that are Cpu intense?
How does calf do such a good job of optimizing their plugins.
Some say so, some say so.
Less CPU means more plugins per mix. So yes, that’s a good thing.
It dedepends on the process of the plugin. Most of them don’t suffer from inter sample problems which is the reason why only the limiters have oversampling. Probably Saturator and Crusher would benefit, too. But no need for it in EQ, Reverbs, Delays, Compressors, …
Again, it’s about marketing.
Hopefully not. The GUI (especially the yellowish graphs) needs some CPU for looking fancy but even this is quite optimized.
The question should be „how does someone rape my CPU like that even if I’m paying him a shitload of money“. But maybe I’m just ignorant again.
Well, I have to correct myself. The saturation rotuine already has oversampling implemented which means that Saturator, Exciter, Enhancer, Multiband Enhancer and others already benefit from not producing any inter sample clipping.
Oh ic, they use more Cpu, usually I turn them on in plugins that I use. And I can understand your frustration with proprietary plugins lol
Do any calf plugins benefit with having a 64 bit Cpu over a 32 bit.
Another question, some eq plugin say they are linear eq or something like that and if it’s not enabled it causes phase issues . Do you know anything about this
No.
There are lots of different filters out there all with different pros and cons. You could read more about it on Wikipedia, a good starting point might be here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_(signal_processing)
followed by this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_filter
which brings you over here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_filter
And so on. Some filters are linear in phase response, some shift the phase around center frequency. This normally is no problem but if you mix some EQed signal back to the original there will be cancellation around the frequency of the filter.
Calf by now uses biquads which do phase shifting.
Does any of the plugins for calf have automatic gain compensation
The limiters raise the output level in reverse to what the limit parameter is set to. No other plug-in has gain compensation.
Does calf plugins need 3D hardware graphics acceleration to use the plugins, and also will their be any Binary install of the latest version on the website to use instead of having to compile.
No and no. For the latter: I’m no maintainer so there’s no infrastructure to build Calf for all the architectures, kernels and operating systems out there. So please refer to the package management of your operating system or use repositories like KXStudio for the latest stuff.