sonic-pi: v2.9.0 - Venster

Version 2.9 - 'Venster'

Thursday 31st December, 2015

Hot on the heels of the previous release comes v2.9 codenamed Venster (Dutch for window). This release has a specific focus on fixing all the known issues with Sonic Pi running on Windows. If you've tried Sonic Pi on Windows before and had issues, make sure to try it again with v2.9. If you're still having issues on Windows please do let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.

For all you Raspberry Pi and Mac OS X users - you're not left out. Sonic Pi is just as stable as it was before (if not more stable) and v2.9 comes with a surprising amount of tweaks and features for its short 1 month development cycle. There's two new FX to play with: tanh and gverb as well as a heavily revamped logging system which is much clearer about printing which opts are actually being used for your synths and samples. Finally, we now include of all the published MagPi magazine articles in the tutorial. We also now have Hungarian and Norwegian translations of the GUI.

Happy Live Coding!

Breaking Changes

• Rename fn invert_chord to chord_invert
• Sampler no longer mixes rate: and pitch_stretch: opts. It's now possible to set the rate: independent of the pitch: modification caused by pitch_stretch.

New Fns

• block_duration - returns the duration of the given block in seconds (not scaled with the BPM).
• block_slept? - returns true if the contents of the block slept or synced.
• synth_names - returns a list of all the available synths
• reset_mixer! - resets the main mixer back to its default values.
• sample_free - unload a sample from memory to free up memory usage.
• sample_free_all - unload all samples from memory.
• use_octave - similar to use_transpose but for whole octaves.
• with_octave - similar to with_transpose but for whole octaves.
• use_merged_sample_defaults - similar to use_merged_synth_defaults but for samples
• with_merged_sample_defaults - similar to with_merged_synth_defaults but for samples
• use_cent_tuning - uniformly tune all subsequent notes in cents
• with_cent_tuning - uniformly tune all notes in cents within the block

Synths & FX

• New FX tanh - for more distortion goodness.
• New FX gverb - a different reverb FX to play with.

GUI

• Synths and samples now also log defaults set by use_synth_defaults and friends.
• Opts are logged in the order they were defined with local opts first followed by inherited opts.
• BPM scaling is now accounted for in logging vals.
• Log metadata such as run number and time is now printed in a more code-like way: as a hash of key value pairs.
• C-k will now kill multiple lines if lines end with ,.
• When saving a buffer a .txt extension is automatically added to the file name if none specified.
• Add Hungarian and Norwegian translations of GUI.
• Add Spanish translation of tutorial.
• Add title to main window - enables Sonic Pi to be selected in screensharing app lists such as Google Hangouts and OBS.
• Add autocompletion for tuning systems.

Documentation

• Add 8 complete MagPi magazine articles to the tutorial in appendix A.
• Add new example 'ambient experiment' by Darin Wilson.
• Add new example 'chord inversions' by Adrian Cheater.
• Change tutorial license to CC-BY-SA 4.0.
• Add instructions for compiling and building on Windows.
• Many, many minor tweaks and improvements.

Improvements

• Add sync: opt to live_loop and in_thread. This now syncs the live loop once on creation. Similar to the delay: opt. If both sync: and delay: are specified then the delay happens before the sync.
• The synth fn can now play chords with the notes: opt such as: synth :dsaw, notes: (chord :e3, :minor). This will return a single controllable synth node representing all the notes similar to play_chord.
• BPM scaling and other normalisation is now honoured when controlling nodes
• The on: opt is now honoured when playing chords.
• Samplers sound signal now bypasses filter envelope when not used.
• It is now possible to use externally defined FX synths by passing a string as the FX name: with_fx "my_shiny_effect". This needs to be loaded manually via load_synthdefs.
• OS X now supports rates other than 44.1k provided they are similar for both audio in and out.
• Run code in ~/.sonic-pi/init.rb on launch if it exists.
  
• If environment variable SONIC_PI_HOME is set it will be used over ~ as the root of the user's .sonic-pi directory (used to auto-save files and store logs).
• Default sound card selection is now honoured on Raspberry Pi - so you may now use your IQaudIO hat (or similar) out of the box.

Bugfixes

• Fix number of synth validation errors.
• Fix sporadically failing boot issues on Windows
• Add auto-reboot functionality for audio server. This now detects errors in the server (such as a killed or zombied process) and automatically reboots it to enable Sonic Pi to continue without a full restart. Reboots automatically reload all loaded samples and synthdefs.
• sample_duration now correctly takes account of TL defaults set by use_sample_defaults.
• Sampler opts pitch_stretch, beat_stretch and rpitch can now be used in TL defaults.