We’re proud to introduce our new web „experience“ – a new website with a new domain and a new repository. Unfortunately we lost lots of great reviews, all bugs and feature requests and so on but we couldn’t stand the actual behavior of SourceForge anymore. There was a discussion among us about this topic and today Krzysztof made me aware of this one so we decied it’s time to finally leave SF and to publish the new website in that course.

The most promising solution was GitHub, so we moved the repository over there and we will use its issue system for tickets in the future.

https://github.com/calf-studio-gear/calf

The new website is now available at:

http://calf-studio-gear.org

…which is also much faster than the SF webserver. I informed all owners of open bugs but once again: sorry for any inconvenience!

If you are experiencing any problems with the new website feel free to report them here. Thanks in advance.

And please remember to update your Git config to „url = https://github.com/calf-studio-gear/calf.git“!

Hint: This is not what I meant with „what I was working on the last few weeks“ yesterday…

Finally! Calf 0.0.60 is here! Get out all your party hats and do the moooo style!!1

Release Notes

Just in time for Linux Audio Conference 2015, we are presenting the new 
release of Calf. This release features:

* a large number of new plugins from the Calf Team members and some new 
contributors
* technology updates to reflect the evolution of the LV2 plugin 
specification
* many improvements, both in terms of user interface and the plugin 
functionality
* bug fixes for the framework and the plugins

Thanks to: jhammen, falkTX, distrozapper, SadKo, David Robillard, Pere 
Ràfols Soler, domohawk, Adrian Knoth, drgreenthumb, Bill Kirkpatrick, 
Wladimir van der Laan and others for all the patches, bug reports, 
testing, investigative work and other valuable contributions.

16 New Plug-Ins:

* Emphasis
* Mono Compressor
* Compensation Delay
* Transient Designer
* Tape Simulator
* X-Over 2 Band
* X-Over 3 Band
* X-Over 4 Band
* Crusher
* Vocoder
* Ring Modulator
* Haas Stereo Enhancer
* Sidechain Limiter
* Reverse Delay
* 30 Band Graphical Equalizer
* Envelope Filter

Updates To Plug-Ins:

* EQ: seamless frequency changes
* EQ: M-S and L/R filters
* EQ: Analyzer and individual filter graphs, zoomable graph
* Multiband devices: Linkwitz-Riley crossovers
* Analyzer: new viewing modes, zoom fader
* Limiters: oversampling
* Sidechain devices with dedicated inputs
* Fluidsynth: dedicated Preset per MIDI channel
* Reverb: increased pre-delay range
* Wavetable: lots of improvements (still considered experimental)
* Vintage Delay: tap tempo button, sync to host
* Monosynth: Unison in OSC2, transpose in OSC1
* Saturator/Exciter/Bass Enhancer: autmatic oversampling
* Transient Designer: filters for envelope detection
* Lots of updates to different UIs

Updates To Rack:

* Connect window
* Plug-in menu with submenus and icons
* Multi column layout

Updates To Framework:

* Seamless bypass
* MIDI control for parameters
* Jack session support
* Automation
* Value entries for all widgets
* Frequency handles in graphs
* Rewrite of line graph (more features, better performance, better api)
* Rewrite of the GTK user interface to get rid of gtk engines
  (everything is drawn in Cairo now)
* Rewrite of knobs for better accuracy
* Design updates in UI
* VU-Meters with dB
* Manuals: better menu, more plug-in descriptions, new design
* Connect window for calfjcakhost
* Check RDF files with Sordi

Other:

* Better appearance of plug-ins in Ardour menu
* New icon

Lately I added a requested feature to Transient Designer – A high pass and a low pass filter to narrow the frequency range of the signal Transient Designer uses to determine the envelope. This is useful if there are some cross-talks in the signal (e.g. hi-hat on a snare drum track) or if you want to edit single instruments in a drum sample. A „Env Listen“ button lets you monitor what you’re doing. Additionally the UI has changed and the waveform graph was cleaned up – optically and in the code.

Furthermore Chrischi and me had an extensive session where we fixed a reported and quite tricky bug – Transient Desinger sometimes lost its output due to rounding errors on floats. We raised the accuracy of the transient detection in the course of the fix.

Thanks to Chrischi the new Envelope Filter has a response curve for the transformation from gain of the envelope to the frequency of the filter. This means that one is able to adjust the behavior of the filter exactly to the dynamic the material provides. 0% response means that a signal of -6 dB will set the filter to the frequency in the middle of upper and lower frequency, -12dB to 1/4 of the range. A positive response curve lets the filter reach higher frequencies on the same input, a negative setting reduces the frequency – all without moving the bias point set by the Activation knob (which simply moves this point). The graph shows the aprox. settings -100% (purple), -50% (green), 0% (blue), 50% (red) and 100% (yellow). This feature gives total control over the response of the auto-wah effect according to your material.

Chrischi, I want a child from you!!1

I’ve created two Calf Studio Gear videos lately, one more to come. The next one will focus on „real“ instruments, I’m planning to play some drums, bass, guitar and a drawbar organ. While doing the concept for it I stumbled over a gap in the Calf world – we didn’t have any Auto-Wah like effect by now! So I built Envelope Filter yesterday. One function is missing – taking the response curve of the envelope-to-frequency calculation into account which Chrischi hopefully will create later this evening. Other features are:

* Display for the frequency response
* Lower and upper frequency – switch them to have a downwards filter
* Different filter types (HP, LP, BP and Notch with different slew rates)
* Optional sidechain
* Resonance knob
* Mix knob

It’s in the GIT repository atm and hopefully it will make it into 0.0.60 \o/

The result is far from being perfect but you can at least see some of the Calf devices in action.

Some of the Calf plug-ins have made it into MOD.

Looks like very solid and cool gear, seems I have to get one for myself.

Once again Krzysztof, Chrischi and me met on the Chaos Computer Conference at the CCH in Hamburg/Germany. This year we decided to go for another release, namely 0.0.60. We managed to prepare the pre-release version and to update website and sourceforge with the latest developments. All in all there are about 44 plug-ins in the package now.