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AC Toolbox
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Additional information about algorithmic
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New tools and generators 1. Inside-OSC can be used when creating an OSC score. It allows a synthdef to be updated during a current OSC event, for example frequency could be changed during a sound. The methods for rendering, plotting, transforming, and making a histogram of an OSC score were adjusted to accommodate this possibility. 2. Attacks makes a list of attack times suitable for density sections, Csound scores, and OSC scores. It uses a method similar to what Xenakis did in his Stochastic Music Program. Intervals between attack points can be produced with various generators. The resulting list is scaled to be between a begin and end time. 3. Shuffle is a generator that returns a series of values from a reordered stockpile. The stockpile can be treated as one group or several small groups. Values are shuffled within the limits of the group. 4. Make-many-variants creates several variants of an object. Each new variant is given a name from a user-supplied list of names. Each variant is entered in the environment using the new name. 5. Generate-sum adds several values from a generator, etc. to produce the next value in a series. For example, the result could be the sum of several random numbers. Additions or adjustments to existing tools and generators 6. The keyword :interpolate was added to the generator lookup. Numbers not found in the lookup table will return a value interpolated between the two nearest values. 7. Keyword :curve was added to generate-line and exponential-motion. It controls the sharpness of the curve. 8. Keyword :always-less was added to gather-until. Normally, gather-until gathers values in a list until the sum is >= a specified total. If :always-less is true, the sum will be <= the total. 9. Expressions bound to the keywords :low and :high can now vary over time in map-text. 10. Optional parameter loop was added to jump. The chosen chunk of values can be looped some number of times before the next jump is made. 11. Keyword :between was added to get-intervals. Normally get-intervals returns the intervals from the first value to each other value in the stockpile. If :between is true, the intervals between each value in the stockpile are returned. 12. Keyword :first was added to all of the chaotic generators. If true, they will return the initial state as the first result. 13. Various other corrections and adjustments were made to on-the-fly, otf, cal, from-number, join, series-value, convert, convert/time, 2-masks, and notename. New shortcuts for
generators 14. Arc is a shortcut for exponential-motion. This means arc could be used anywhere where exponential-motion could be used. 15. Gl is a shortcut for generate-line. 16. Ev is a shortcut for exponential-value. Additions or adjustments to the interface 17. In the dialogs for Index and Annotated Index, the arguments of the current function are displayed at the bottom of the dialog. 18. In the Csound and OSC File options, it is possible to select the application to play the sound file instead of relying on the system default value. 19. A menu item Play Selection/Loop and a corresponding dialog were added to allow part of a section to be played and/or looped. 20. Various minor adjustments were made to the design of dialogs including the borders and default buttons. 21. Various corrections and adjustments were made to plotting routines, including the plotting of multi-controller objects, midi performance objects, and xy value pairs. 22. The issue of the disappearing cursor in edit windows was addressed. 23. A problem with cut/copy/paste when navigating a dialog with the cursor was corrected. 24. The kill menu item was made more effective. 25. Fixed a bug in displaying the Object dialog that caused the startup process to hang. 26. The processes behind the menu items for recent environments and recent examples were improved. 27. Discrepancies in the printing of floating-point pitch names were addressed. 28. Searching for argument names in a binary OSC file with multiple synthdefs produces more reasonable results. 29. A keyboard shortcut was added for saving lisp text files New in version 4.4.3 1. Several changes were made in regard to using cumulative spectrum data via the tool read-spectrum-file. In addition to importing data produced by Audacity and Amadeus, it is now also possible to read data produced with SPEAR and the Csound utility Hetro. In that case, read-spectrum-file will return one pitch and amplitude value per track. A cumulative or static spectrum is one set of values and is useful for producing chords or pitch sequences. This is not to be confused with the use of read-tracks-file which already could read data from SPEAR and Hetro and produce a continually changing output. 2. Read-spectrum-file now includes keywords to round the spectral data (e.g. to semitones, quartertones, etc.), to adjust the frequency value used for converting to notes (instead of using 440 Hz for a4), and the ability to filter the returned peaks to only include unique values (which may not have been the case after the data was rounded). 3. The spectral data read from SPEAR or Hetro can use all of the available spectrum tools, such as spectrum->pitch, spectrum->window, spectrum->structure, etc. and the generator spectrum->chord. The syntax of these tools was slightly adjusted since keyword round now occurs when the spectrum is read rather than each time a tool is used. The tools will reflect the choices made in read-spectrum-file. 4. Tool peaks? was added to return the number of peaks in data read from read-spectrum-file should that information be forgotten or unavailable. 5. Several changes were made to the treatment of spectral data which is read with read-tracks-file. A keyword average was added. This will average track data within a specified time span, such as 1000 ms. The result could be considered as a kind of chordal reduction of the spectral changes. A keyword filter will filter repetitions in each track. The keywords for rounding pitch data and changing the frequency base were moved to read-tracks-file and are no longer needed in map-tracks. 6. Data read with read-tracks-file can now be plotted. 7. A problem with map-tracks not producing accurate results at time 0 has been fixed. In addition, map-tracks enforces a minimum note duration of 1 ms. 8. When map-tracks is used to make a structured section, the clock unit is no longer ignored. The data returned by map-tracks is in ms. Any clock unit above 1 will slow down the data. 9. Tool pitch-track has been added. It will return a list only containing pitches from one or more tracks of data read with read-tracks-file. 10. Tutorial 20 about using spectral analysis data in the AC Toolbox was rewritten to reflect the above changes. The documentation for read-spectrum-file, read-tracks-file, etc. was updated. Previous users of the spectral analysis instructions may want to check this documentation for a discussion of the current syntax. 11. Some new generators were added: a. linear-value and linear-choice use a random distribution which favors lower or higher values depending on the value of the keyword direction. b. triangle-value and triangle-choice use a random distribution with a triangular density curve (the peak is in the middle). c. morph produces a straightforward interpolation between two values depending on an index value. This is simpler approach than what is used in the mutate generator. d. line is a shortcut for the generator line-segment. 12. Tool pick-editor-font was added. It does what its name suggests. One use for this would be in making presentations where a large font size is needed. Editor refers to the Lisp editor, not the various dialogs in the AC Toolbox. 13. Some adjustments to generators or tools were made. a. If take receives a negative number for one of the number parameters, the next value form will be used indefinitely. b. Keyword step was added to loop-through. It allows skipping values when looping through a list or stockpile. c. An optional parameter was added to jump to allow it to pick a new step size each time instead of only once per jump. d. The number parameter in produce can be a generator, stockpile, etc. 14. Some bugs were fixed including some in series-value, jump, combine, for-example; in dealing with Lisp editor fonts; and in the menu items for recent environments and examples. 15. The stopping of data flow to a Capybara has been changed to be less abrupt. 16. The source code was recompiled with a new compiler which solved several problems and probably has created many new ones. New
in version 4.4.2 1. A preference (Midi Scheduler Overdrive) was added. When off, it significantly reduces the cpu use of the Midi scheduler. Older, slower computers may not function as well when it is off, therefore the default value for this preference is on. 2. Generator grow was added. It can produce geometric and arithmetric series. By using time-varying input, the series itself can change over time. 3. The behavior of the round keyword in many generators and tools, in particular those related to spectral composition, was adjusted. In addition to rounding the values to integers or not, a value such as 0.5 can be bound to the keyword. This will round to quarter-tones. Other values are also possible. This change concerns spectrum->pitch, spectrum->chord, spectrum->structure, hz->midi, harmonic-chord, frequency-shift-chord, and ring-modulate-chord. 4. A facility was added to edit the contents of a stockpile. In the Objects dialog, when the popup menu for stockpiles has been selected, the Edit button will copy the values in the selected stockpile and enter them in a specify stockpile dialog. Values can be then be changed, deleted, etc. before making the stockpile (again). 5. Tool sum was added. It sums numbers in a stockpile or produced by a generator. 6. Tool extract was expanded to allow extracting a list of attack times in milliseconds (raw-attack). 7. Generator without was extended to allow the use with lists and stockpiles in addition to generators. 8. Tool predicate was adjusted to allow the function quote (#') to be omitted although it still can be used. 9. Tool get-object-duration was added to return the durations of sections and communities. 10. Tool get-length will now also return the number of events in a density section. 11. Bugs were fixed in act-if and in the Objects dialog for stockpiles. A bug concerning the use of 2 monitors where the menu bar is in the one on the right was corrected. 12. Issues regarding the labels for 2d plots as well the title for plot and histogram windows were addressed. New
in version 4.4.1 1. This release contains some minor adjustments to facilitate use with Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard). 2. Tool pitch-interval-filter was added. It can be used to filter sections to remove notes reflecting certain pitch intervals. The filtering can also be limited to simultaneous events. The tool is a generalization of pitch-repetition-filter. 3. Generator metric fractions was added. It produces groups of values that equal 1 to simplify some kinds of rhythmic organization. 4. Tool duplicates was expanded to allow the diversity value to vary over time. 5. The formatting of the html output of tool help->file was improved. 6. The editing possibilities for Csound .csd and
.orc files were expanded. New in version
4.4 Additions and clarifications 1. The tutorial included with the application (Using the AC Toolbox) was updated to reflect the current Universal Binary version of the program. 2. The different versions from the beta release (standard and programming) have been replaced with only one version of the AC Toolbox which includes a complete Common Lisp interpreter. 3. Menu item Make (Default Button) was added. This allows objects to be made with a keyboard shortcut. Other dialogs with a default button, such as Test Value, can be perform the operation associated with that default button with this shortcut. 4. Keyboard shortcuts were added to the menu items Evaluate Selection and Evaluate All. 5. Menu items Find and Find Next were added. 6. An option was included for histograms to round off the values to some arbitrary unit before making the histogram. 7. The situation concerning Emacs key bindings has been clarified. Key bindings which are known to refer to non-available commands have been removed. A button was added to the Lisp Editor window to produce a list of available Emacs bindings. The help text for the Lisp Editor window was also updated. 8. Documentation was added for the programming tools act-choose-file-dialog and act-choose-directory-dialog. Bug fixes Some of the bug fixes fall into the following five categories: Specification 10. Specifying various objects (as opposed to making them) did not always work as expected. Forgetfulness 11. Midi source and destination did not always get reset properly on startup. 12. The options for the Other histogram dialog did not get remembered. 13. Editing commands such as cut/copy/paste were forgotten if Options had been selected. 14. Midi Controllers did not always get reset at the end of playback. 15. The Toolbox forgot how to plot shapes and masks if they had been loaded from an Examples file. Housecleaning 16. The cursor is now reset as part of the Kill sequence. 17. The interruption of Capybara playback is handled more smoothly. 18. The General Midi setup is cleared during Kill. Dialog Errors 19. Minor errors in the dialogs for Csound Analysis, Multi Controller, and the help button (?) were fixed. Actions 20. Interpolate now prints its finish value (if requested with a keyword) in the Text Output window. 21. Show applies a generator properly if it is used with the number-per-line keyword. 22. Various issues with respect to closing previous windows (if that option is selected) were resolved. 1. This is an Universal
binary and works on MacOS 10.4 or higher
with Intel or PPC processors. 2. This is a beta version. 3. Two versions exist of this release: 4.4b1 and 4.4b1-prog. The latter version contains a more complete Common Lisp interpreter and is primarily intended for users wishing to add a lot of their own Lisp code to use with the AC Toolbox. 4. A different Lisp development environment was used for this version. All of the GUI code, the scheduler, and various bits of other things were rewritten for this Lisp environment (LispWorks instead of MCL). This could lead to a lot of new issues and bugs. 5. A few tools have been renamed (to prevent conflicts with LispWorks): plot (formerly display) element (formerly current) load-sound-file (formerly read-sound-file) 6. The default value for middle C (Midi note number 60) is c4 instead of c3. This can be changed in the Preferences. 7. Preferences The Preferences dialog allows some new choices: The window style (which by default is brushed metal) can be reset to the standard, Aqua style for new windows. The amount of window transparency can be set for new windows. The behavior for the expressions used in help windows (plot, histogram, and for-example) can be set to always close the previous result window or not. The size of most fonts and dialogs can be adjusted to one of three settings: normal, small, big Small reduces the size for those cramped for screen space. Big increases the size and is suitable for using with a projector. There is a slight change in the format for saving objects in files. The current version can read files in the old format. However, for a previous version of the AC Toolbox to read files for the current version, the environment should be saved in the Old Format. 8. Compatibility Files produced by the AC Toolbox, using either an Intel or a PPC processor, are interchangeable. Environment files produced by earlier versions of the AC Toolbox, can be read in the current version. Objects saved in the New Format (see Preferences) cannot be read in older versions. To read environment files produced by the current version in older versions of the AC Toolbox, save the objects in the Old Format. Csound hetrodyne analysis files should be made on the same type of processor as the one used by the AC Toolbox. This means, hetro files made on an Intel processor can be read by the AC Toolbox running on an Intel processor.
9. GUI issues: Input panes do not balance parentheses in Lisp expressions. Most panes do have a check box which opens an editor pane which does balance parenthesis and allows more extended editing. Even many Emacs commands can be used in the edit pane. To move the cursor to a new line in an input pane, use the menu item Edit>Insert Newline (CMD-RETURN). The Play dialog was removed. To play an object, select it in the Objects dialog (Tools > Show Objects). The menu item Tools>Play will play or stop playing the item selected in the Objects dialog. A Remake button was added to the Objects dialog. This is to remake the selected object (i.e. use the input specification to produce new output). The Input button in the Objects dialog will search for an open, unchanged dialog for the object before it opens a new one. The category Verbs was added to the Annotated Index. Parallel sections can have an offset time number between the sections. Help windows have been split into two panes: one contains text and the other contains examples which can be evaluated to values produced with the generator, tool, or transformer. To evaluate the examples, put the cursor at the end of the expression and select ENTER (not RETURN). Alternately, COMMAND-ENTER could be used. Or the example expression could be selected and the menu item Edit>Evaluate Selection could be used. The menu item File>Text>Open opens a Lisp edit window. Lisp expressions can be entered and evaluated in the same way as described above for examples. The result of the evaluations will be appear in the echo area at the bottom of the editor. Various Emacs expressions are available for editing. CTRL-S allows incremental search. The symbol to search is entered in the echo area. The echo area can be cleared with ESC.
The check box to the right of many input panes opens an editor. The symbol ! in some windows indicates that the line wraps around to the next one. Increasing the size of the window may remove this indicator.
Options buttons have been added to various dialogs to control their behavior. In particular, they control whether previous windows of the same type as the ones produced, should be closed. This means, that choosing help for a generator in the Index dialog, could cause the previous help window to close. Plotting with the Plot dialog could cause the previous plot windows to close, etc.
A Listener can be opened via Other>Listener.
10. A few tools and generators were added: print-result prints a single result in a help window. clear-preference-file erases the current preference file and will restart (eventually) without any preferences. lehmer-value generates deterministic patterns. lehmer-choice chooses from a stockpile using lehmer-value. bv is a shortcut for beta-value. 11. A few changes were made to existing generators and tools: read-spectrum-file requires a keyword to read Amadeus files. The default value is for Audacity. notename a bug concerning octave numbers was fixed. ring-modulate-chord keyword :block0 was added to remove 0s from the result. 12. Miscellaneous If CSound is to be used, Csound 5 should be installed in /usr/local/bin. This is the location used by the installer from SourceForge. The tutorial included with this release is the old one. The pictures of dialogs, etc. do not match the current program. The changes described in the release notes are also not reflected in the tutorial. Nonetheless, it should help a new user to understand the basic workings of the AC Toolbox. A few examples in the tutorial examples folder have been adjusted to work with this version of the AC Toolbox. The stream control object is not implemented. The File>Last File Name? menu item has been renamed File>Current Environment File. Help->window has been replaced with help->file. Various anti-clutter keyboard shortcuts involving CTRL-CLICK have been replaced with options, either in the Preferences dialog or in the Options for various dialogs. 13. Issues Occasionally, errors messages may not be caught by the AC Toolbox and will be printed in a window of the Terminal application. Ignore the contents of the Terminal window, close it, and continue in the AC Toolbox. On rare occasions, the
printing in the Terminal window may be followed by a message from the system
that the AC Toolbox crashed. Close the Terminal Window, click on Reopen in
the crash message, and you can continue working where you left off in the AC Toolbox. 1. A bug concerning the
selection of the sample file directory in the Csound file options dialog was
fixed. 1. Bugs in the menu items for drawing shapes and masks were fixed. Intel 1. There is still no support for Macs with Intel processors. Spectral Track Data 2. Track data can be imported from SPEAR, a sound analysis/resynthesis program which can export partial data as text files. Read-tracks-data will import the data. Tracks? can return the number of tracks imported. 3. Map-tracks will map the track data from SPEAR into melodic and rhythmic material. Velocity can be mapped to any desired range. Pitch can be rounded to any desired unit. Repetitions can be filtered. Tracks can be selected and matched with various Midi channels. 4. Read-tracks-data and map-tracks can also deal with tracks produced with the Csound hetro analysis program. Therefore they also replace the former tools read-adsyn-file and map-adsyn. Csound 5. All Csound facilities assume that the user has installed Csound5. The help item Installing Csound available via the Index explains the procedure. 6. The AC Toolbox can render csd files to audio as files or in realtime (with certain practical limitations). Various options such as sample format and audio header can be specified in the Csound File Options dialog. An option for automatically generating file names is also available. 7. The Csound File Options dialog also contains buttons to render existing Csound files, to replace the options in existing files and then render them, to open the Csound manual, and to access the Csound analysis programs pvanal and hetro. 8. The methods for transforming and filtering Csound scores can also render those files to audio. 9. Section->Csound was expanded to allow reversing the order of the amplitude and frequency p-fields. 10. Generator par can be used to access values from lower p-fields that have just been generated. This facilitates expressing relationships among parameter fields. 11. The tools csound-table-size and csound-frame-size help find appropriate data values for gen1 statements and for pvanal frame size. OSC Files 12. Binary OSC files can be transformed via the menu item Methods>Transform>OSC File. Values for up to four arguments can be transformed. 13. Binary OSC files can be filtered via the menu item Methods>Filter>OSC File. Filter types can be chosen via pop-up menus and their results logically connected via and or or. Simplifications and Extensions 14. Cal is a tool that allows arithmetic operations with stockpiles, generators, lists, and constants. (cal '(10 20 30) * 2) would return (20 40 60) (cal '(10 20 30) + (rv -1.0 1)) could return (10.201 19.207 30.589) 15. On-the-fly, also available as otf, is a generator which works in a similar fashion to cal. The difference is that on-the-fly will keep producing (new) values each time it is applied. 16. Generator act-if allows a nested series of IFs which understand how to read and produce data with Toolbox objects. One application would be to consult conditions to determine which generator to use. (act-if '(10 20 30 40) >= 30 (rv 50 100) else = 20 (rv 20 30) else 1) 17. Harmonic-chord was expanded with a keyword for harmonic distortion for stretching or compressing a spectrum as described in Joshua Fineberg's dissertation Sculpting Sound. 18. Sound files can now be read and/or written in either AIFF or WAV format using read-sound-file and create-sound-file. The menu item File>Write Sound File can write in either format. These tools replace read-aiff-file and create-aiff-file. 19. Probabilities for tables used by transition no longer need to add to 1. Whatever positive values that are used are scaled appropriately. 20. Interpolate-chords was adjusted to treat exponential interpolation in a more straightforward way. Support for printing note names was also added. 21. The use of a generator, etc. to pick peak numbers in spectrum->chord was changed to be more consistent with the practice in other generators. 22. Produce makes a list by applying a generator some number of times. It is a simplification of create. Repetitions 23. Pitch-repetition-filter filters repeated pitches from a section, whether they occur at the same time or in succession. 24. A keyword was added to make-chord to block repetitions in successive chords. 25. Transformer remove-successive will remove repetitions in successive chords. Clean-up-blanks could be used (though it is not necessary) to clean up any empty chords made by remove-successive. 26. A help item is available via the index entitled Repetitions: Prevent or Remove which describes various strategies to do what the title suggests. Reducing Screen Clutter 27. CTRL-CLICK can be used in a number of cases to close the previous window when a new one is made. CTRL-CLICKing a DISPLAY button causes the previous display to be closed. CTRL-CLICKing an item in the Index will open a new help window and close the previous one. CTRL-CLICKing the MAKE button when making an object will close the previous object definition dialog. A more complete list can be found in the help item for Keyboard Shortcuts. Help tags for buttons may mention what happens if you CTRL-CLICK on them. 28. Holding down CONTROL while selecting an object definition in the Define or Methods menu will close the previous object definition dialog. 29. If the name of a generator, tool, or transformer is selected, CTRL-= will open the help window for that item and close the previous one. 30. The For Example dialog will print to the same window instead of opening a new one each time. There is an option to revert to the old behavior. The help window utilities for-example and show-transformation will always write to the same window. Display, in a help window, will replace the previous window. 31. Holding down OPTION when closing a window, will close all similar windows. Closing a display will close all display windows. Closing an object definition window closes all object definition windows, etc. Miscellaneous 32. The preference for font size was expanded to include small font (also available with the tool small-font). This will not only reduce the font size in the edit boxes but it will also reduce the size of most static text items resulting in a somewhat leaner look to the interface. 33. Two options which had existed for CTRL-CLICKing (to specify objects instead of making them, and changing the way that stockpiles display lists) have been changed to COMMAND-CLICK. 34. Two categories were added to the Annotated Index: stockpile and spectral. 35. The tools render-csd and replace-csd-options correspond to the buttons found in the Csound File Options dialog. 36. Example files which can be used with the help items for Csound, read-tracks-file, OSC, and the various spectrum tools can be found in the folder Support/FileExamples. 1. This version is primarily a maintenance update. The connection to Symbolic Sound Corporation's Capybara has been changed to be compatible with their recent firmware update of the Flame firewire interface. It is not necessary to update the Flame firmware to use this version of the AC Toolbox. The Toolbox should work with either version of the firmware. 2. A preference was added to change the symbolic naming convention for Midi note numbers. Traditionally in the Toolbox, c3 has always been note number 60. This remains the default behavior. In the Preferences dialog, it now possible to choose having middle C (note number 60) be c3 or c4. All corresponding symbols and functions which print note names are adjusted by this preference. 3. Some minor additions were made to the tool help->window. A few other minor features were adjusted. New in Version 4.2.1 1. Some additions were made regarding the use of binary OSC files. a. A menu item and dialog were added to plot one argument of an OSC file over time. b. A menu item and dialog were added to make a histogram of one argument of an OSC file. c. Both of the above dialogs have a button to search OSC files to determine which synthdefs and arguments were used. d. The tool render-osc was added, It will render an existing OSC file using the options regarding sample rate, etc., that are specified in the OSC File Options dialog. e. Various bugs and features concerning the production of OSC files were adjusted. 2. The tool read-aiff-file returns a list of values read from a 16-bit, mono AIFF file. The values from the file can either be sampled or averaged. The size of the window for averaging the absolute values can be specified. 3. All-intervals returns a list of all possible all-interval combinations of some list of numbers. It is also possible to limit the number of all-interval combinations returned. 4. Select-patterns is a generator which chooses among available patterns and returns the values one at a time. After all have been returned, a new pattern is chosen. 5. Skip-rests is a generator to circumvent a feature of data sections: when a rhythmic value is a rest, the corresponding pitch value is deleted. With skip-rests, it is possible to only assign pitch values to notes which are not rests. 6. Apply-function is a generator which is similar to combine except that the function can be applied to any number of arguments. 7. A few keyboard shortcuts were introduced for those who want to reduce their dependence on a mouse or mouse-pad. a. Tables such as found in Annotated Index or Index can be scrolled by holding down the option and down arrow keys. The table must be selected for this to work. b. An item can be selected from a table by using the right arrow key. c. The keyboard shortcut for Other Display was changed to command-option-O. This allows the combination command-` to be used by the system to select the previous window. 8. Menu items were added to the File menu to display recently loaded or saved environments and example files. These files can be reloaded from these menus. 9. Read-spectrum-file was adjusted to ignore a feature of current versions of Amadeus which include values for frequency 0. 10. Lisp functions for making and using Csound objects and OSC score objects were documented. This information is available via Help > Lisp > Csound Objects and Help > Lisp > OSC Scores. A help item Keyboard Shortcuts was added describing miscellaneous shortcuts. Some other help items were clarified. 11. A feature by which multiple copies of the same help window could be opened was changed. New in Version 4.2 1. The primary addition to the AC Toolbox is the possibility to write binary OSC files and render them within the Toolbox to audio files (in non-realtime) using the SuperCollider server. 2. A dialog Section->OSC File was added. An existing section can be converted into a binary OSC file and rendered to an audio file. Additional arguments for the SuperCollider synthdef can be added to the existing section data before writing the file. 3. Dialogs for various OSC score objects were added. An OSC score object allows the user to generate OSC messages to control a synthdef. Any number of arguments may be generated or specified using generators, lists, stockpiles, etc. The OSC score object saves the specification (but not the values). When the object is applied, a binary OSC file is produced and rendered to audio. The basic approach is similar to the use of Csound objects in the Toolbox. In this case however, a sound model expressed as a SuperCollider synthdef is fed arguments provided by the Toolbox in a binary file. 4. OSC score objects can be joined in sequence and in parallel. Both sequential osc score objects and parallel osc score objects can be generated as well as specified. 5. Specific OSC messages and SuperCollider server commands can be gathered in an OSC score bunch which can contain one or more bundles of OSC data. The tools bundle and message were added to facilitate the expression of this information. If a user wishes to allocate a buffer and read a file to it as part of an OSC score object, bundles and messages can be used to do this. 6. A dialog was added for OSC File Options. Here, information about the audio file can be specified: header, sample format, number of channels, and sample rate. An audio input can be chosen. Other options for automatically generating file names, specifying folders, and controlling the printing of information from SuperCollider are also included in this dialog. 7. A generator, osc-frame, was added to facilitate the translation of time expressed in seconds to frame positions for reading a buffer in a synthdef. 8. A new chapter was added to the tutorial describing the creation of OSC files. 9. Examples of OSC score objects were added to the Dialog Examples. 10. A tool named unix was added to allow the use of Unix commands. This simple facility was implemented for the internal use of the Toolbox to communicate with the SuperCollider server but creative users might find something else to do with it. 11. The AC Toolbox Options dialog was renamed Preferences and the menu item was moved to the 'proper' OS X location in the Application Menu. 11. Text windows are now metallic - they can be dragged on all sides. The use of metallic windows can be turned on/off in a preference found in the Preferences dialog. 12. Menu item Last File Name? was added to remind a user of the name of the current environment file. 13. The Toolbox was compiled using a more recent version of Macintosh Common Lisp. This solves some problems and will add some others. As a result of this compiler switch, Mac OS 10.3 or higher is now required to use the AC Toolbox. One improvement that should come with the new compiler is increased reliability on dual processor machines. 14. Various minor adjustments were made: a bug in the behavior of the scheme button in the Objects dialog was fixed; a repetitive quit dialog was eliminated; display windows can now zoom; the category in the Annotated Index for Csound was renamed Csound/OSC; various help files were adjusted to reflect the addition of OSC score objects; the Add Comment dialog is now positioned correctly; some file types were adjusted to work better in 10.4. New in Version 4.1.2 1. Tool 2-masks was added. It can generate values with one mask but allows a second mask to block some of the choices. 2. Menu option Save All Objects As was added. This asks for a new file name to save all objects. The menu item Save All Objects was changed to only ask for a file name the first time or if certain other conditions are met. Subsequent applications of Save All Objects will write to the same file without prompting for a name. 3. The tools show-text and show-info were added. Show-text prints a text representation of a section, community, or midi object to a window. (This is equivalent to the Text button for the respective objects in the Objects dialog.) Show-info prints information about sections, communities, and midi objects in a window. (This is equivalent to the Info button for the respective objects in the Objects dialog.) 4. Scale-tempo, extract, and find-range were adjusted to work with midi objects. 5. Map/time, translate, convert-stockpile, find-range, and test-generator were adjusted to work with both chords and multi-dimensional lists (such as those produced by the chaotic generators). In the latter case, each element of the multi-dimensional list is mapped, converted, etc. separately. 6. Translate was expanded with a key word to control clipping behavior. Values being translated can either be clipped at the specified range or not translated at all if they are outside the range. The latter situation allows part of the data to be translated while the rest is not. 7. Sieve-filter was expanded with a key word to allow all values in a event-list with the same start time to be treated as one item in regard to the sieve index. 8. A key word was added to select-generator to allow a chosen generator be repeated a number of times before a new choice is made. 9. The dialog for importing a Midi file will now accept comments. 10. Some problems displaying objects containing chords were solved. Also, a control-click option was added to switch between displaying chords and multi-dimensional lists in the Objects dialog if appropriate. 11. Various minor adjustments were made: a problem which occasionally occurred when example files were loaded was fixed; a possible warning after objects were renamed was also removed; some minor modifications in dialog examples and help files were made; a bug concerning the limits in cauchy-value was fixed; adjustments were made to the way sections and midi objects print to a window; a bug in the way input was displayed for the Join dialog was fixed. New in Version 4.1.1 1. Some modifications were made in regard to Csound. A Section -> Csound menu item and dialog were added to facilitate the writing of a Csound file based on a section. The existing tools section->csound and create-csound-file were also modified to work with the Csound File Options dialog and produce files in the unified file format if desired. 2. Some additions related to sieves were made. The tool sieve-intersection produces a list consisting of the intersection of two or more lists, etc. in ascending order. The transformer funnel forces the value being transformed to be the closest value in a list (sieve) of possible values. If two values are equidistant, a random choice is made between the two options. This was inspired by athenaCL. Shortcuts for dealing with some sieve tools were added: sv can be used in addition to sieve, su can be used in addition to sieve-union, and si can be used in addition to sieve-intersection. 3. A tool shortcut was added to allow users to define text shortcuts for existing AC Toolbox generators, tools, and transformers. A text shortcut is just another version of the existing name. In addition to the shortcuts for sieves mentioned above, the AC Toolbox also supports rc for random-choice, rv for random-value, and tv for test-value. The shortcuts do not replace the original names, they are just available in addition to the existing ones. 4. Make-permutation was adjusted to allow permutations of subsets of the specified elements, e.g. groups of 3 chosen from 4 possible values. 5. Loop-through was expanded to allow the loop values to be mapped over time. 6. Generate-line can now also do exponential interpolation between points. 7. Create-text-window is similar to create-text-file except that the data is printed in a window instead of a file. 8. Force-int is a transformer that forces the data to be an integer value. 9. The documentation for create-text-file was updated to show how it can be used to write a Max coll file. 10. A bug which prevented playing microtonal chords in QuickTime was fixed. 11. Various bugs and features were adjusted in show-transformation, display, and transform/time. Several minor adjustments were made to the user interface. New in Version
4.1 1. Support for
Symbolic Sound's Capybara has been added. All Midi data for notes,
controllers, and program changes can be routed via the Flame firewire
interface directly to the Capybara. This allows the use of floating-point
values for pitch and controller values. Details can be found in Tutorial 19
of Using the AC Toolbox. 2. QuickTime output can also perform floating-point values
for pitch. The resolution is less than that of the Capybara. For Midi files
and other Midi output destinations (besides Capybara and Quicktime), pitch
and controller values are rounded to integers. 3. To support the use of floats for pitch and controller
data, changes were made in the AC Toolbox data format. Environments saved in
version 4.1 cannot be read in older versions of the Toolbox. Older environments can however be
read by 4.1. 4. Various
tools and generators were adjusted to accomodate the possibilities of
microtones: hz->midi, harmonic-chord, spectrum->chord, spectrum->pitch, spectrum->structure, ring-modulate-chord, frequency-shift-chord, read-adsyn-file, and map-adsyn. 5. New tools were added: rearrange-stockpile
allows values in a stockpile to be rotated, shuffled, swapped, or placed in
an arbitrary order. mingle interleaves
two or more stockpiles. duplicates is a
filter to use with generator without. It produces a filter to remove any
value that has already occurred. It is not limited to adjacent values. find-range returns
the minimum and maximum value of object open-url opens an url expressed as a string in
the system's default browser. This works in any case with Safari and Explorer
in 10.3. 6. A new transformer was added: fill-gaps fills
gaps between notes by increasing the duration of the first of the two notes. 7. 'Chaotic' parameters for generators henon, standard-map, logist, and logist2 can now vary over time. 8. Features and bugs were dealt with for random-intervals, without, transform/time, for-example, display, and round-off. Issues
concerning the generation of sequential and parallel sections were addressed. 9. A problem in presenting the available Midi options when
the user was using a non-Roman system such as Japanese was solved. 10. Minor improvements were made to the Midi scheduler. 11. Adjustments were made in the user interface: a. Most windows are now resized 'live', i.e. continuously
during resizing. b. Some keyboard shortcuts have been added and changed. c. A menu item was added to open the Tutorial (Using the
AC Toolbox) in a separate browser window. d. An option was added to the AC Toolbox Options to allow
the selection of dialogs to open when
the program starts. e. An item in the tables for Index, Annotated Index, etc.
can now also be selected by hitting return. f. Option-click produces a help-tag rather than a separate
window. g. Text Score can now optionally print fractional values
for pitch. 12. The link with MacCsound was improved. Support was
added for MacCsound 1.1 which uses Mach-0 file paths. 13. Additional documentation was included within the
program concerning microtones and controlling the Capybara. Various other
online help information was updated. 14. Three tutorials were added to Using the AC Toolbox: Tutorial 18 Expressing microtones Tutorial 19 Controlling a Capybara Tutorial 20 Reading spectral data from other sources. 15. A problem which some users had when running the
Toolbox from a disk not the system disk was corrected. The ACToolbox.framework was moved to the folder Support within the AC
Toolbox folder so that the Toolbox can find it even if it is not running from
the system disk. The framework used for older versions of the AC Toolbox
can be removed: /Library/Frameworks/ACToolbox.framework. The old framework has no effect if it is not removed. |
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