Kangas Sound Editor

This minor release, which is for Windows and Linux, includes a few changes to bring the software into line with Kangas Sound Editor 4.2.0 for Mac OS X.

What's new in version 4.1.0 of the Kangas Sound Editor

1. Bug-fixes and improvements to WavePlayer (internal audio player)
that was introduced in 4.0.0

2. Improvements in the handling of Recorded Sound boxes, including
a new combo box that allows choice of compute method. The compute
method 'New' allows .AIFF and .AU audio files in addition to .WAV
files to be specified as the raw sound file.

3. Clicking on the 'Tracks' node now functions as a 3-way toggle. This
toggles between closing all tracks, opening all tracks, and closing
tracks that do not have any views open.

4. Fixed bugs that resulted in SQL syntax errors if a single quote or
backslash were used in a name field.

5. New installs now include examples of the four additional graph types
introduced in version 3.2.0 ('Square root', 'Cube root', 'Power' and
'Geometric sequence') in the initial database.

6. Improved error report when an attempt to insert duplicates into the
database is made.

7. Fixed bug in sound-engine graph calculations in Compute Stereo and
Recorded Sound.

8. Improved format of fields shown in Duration dialogs.

9. Fixed bug in Sound engine when the bits-per-sample is not an exact
multiple of 8, and another when the bits-per-sample is exactly 8.

10. Waveform, Amplitude and Pitch views - handling for 'Cannot locate
intermediate file' messages improved.

11. Closing the program and starting a new composition now only prompt
the user if there are unsaved edits.

12. The user actions of load/re-load composition, delete composition and
XML import of a composition no longer have the side effect of closing
track nodes and associated views.

13. Fixed bug with setting the Composition parameters from its dialog and
then saving. This bug was introduced in 4.0.0

14. Fixed bugs that prevented successful XML import of a composition.

15. Fix to bug where Waveform, Amplitude, Pitch, Channel and Master views
were not always cleared on new composition or change of composition.

What's new in version 4.0.0 of the Kangas Sound Editor

1. Inclusion of WavePlayer, an internal audio player for the .WAV
files generated by the software. The software can still be
configured to start an external audio player, such as Windows
Media Player, when the user presses a 'Play' button.

2. The inclusion of a new menu item on the 'Track 0' menu called
'Show properties'. This is a gateway to new functionality that
allows a master track to be computed from track zero, the latter
of which represents the aggregate of all the remaining tracks.
The user can set-up the computation of the master to have graphs
(e.g. for fade-in or fade-out on the entire composition), channel
limits and other parameters, in a separate phase from the computation
of track 0. Another significant new computation is the ability to
compute all other tracks that have the 'Include in track 0' checkbox
selected from the 'Compute' button or 'Compute-kwik' button (a
faster, but less thorough computation) of the track 0 properties.

3. Changes to the Waveform, Pitch and Amplitude views. These now show
more information (Sample rate, Duration and Start time for channel
views), and in a different colour from the data. Tooltip labels (ie
when mouse hovers over) have been added to the cryptic labels at the
start of a view.

4. The software is now configured by default to re-use filenames (see
'Configure -> Configure other parameters'). This has the practical
effect of economising greatly on disk space. It is sometimes necessary
to (temporarily) unset this, in order to break the link between a sound
which has been copied-and-pasted elsewhere, but has been subsequently
customised independently of the original sound.

5. The software can now be configured to compute child sound and
intermediate files. For example, all the Sequence boxes of a track can
have individual sound files generated by one click on the Compute button
of the containing track. Note this is not available for Compute-kwik
(which instead tries to save computation time by using any intermediate
sound files it comes across).

6. The 'Configure sound file parameters' dialog has changed.
Bits-per-sample and 'Number of channels' are now combo/edit boxes, and
the 'Sample rate' combo has many more choices (note, however, limits
such as memory are likely to be hit with the highest sample rates, but
thankfully the need for these should be rare).

7. Layout of 'Variations', accessible from the 'Variations' Create/Edit
menu, has been improved.

8. The 'Time ruler start' on the toolbar is now a spinner field.
Increments/Decrements correspond to the current time unit selected.

9. A bug in Waveform and Amplitude views, which were missing some samples
from the display, has been fixed.

10. An irritating 'beeping' bug, that could occur when modifying the
Sound-box properties 'Pitch calc freq' and 'Vol. calc freq' to have a
value of 1000 or greater has been fixed.

11. An installation bug that prevented successful installation on 64-bit
Windows machines has been fixed.

New graph types 'Square root', 'Cube root', 'Power' and 'Geometric sequence' have been added.

An octave/note selector for the MIDI start pitch of Sequence boxes has been introduced.

Numeric fields in the Properties window now have spinners for incrementing or decrementing values, and sliders for major or minor adjustments to values.

Graph evaluation has been improved, including a fix of a possible divide by zero error.

Bugs in the rendering of Waveform, Amplitude and Pitch views, including a failure for these to be resized properly, have been fixed.

Property window fields now have a cream background colour (previously white).

Links to web pages in the Help on the Web dialog have been updated, fixing some links which had become broken in the process.

The operation of dragging Sequence boxes has been made smoother, by fixing a bug which resulted in the Properties window being re-displayed needlessly.

Registry keys for this program are now stored under a key of com->kangasound in the Java preferences section of the registry; previously there was a possibility of a key conflict with another Java program.

Precision of numbers displayed and input-able with Graphs, Anti-harmonic Bases and Variations has been increased from 3 to 6 decimal places, precision of Harmonic/Anti-harmonic factors has been increased from 3 to 8 decimal places.

A new display-only column 'Frequency Multiple' and an additional validation check on save have been introduced to Anti-harmonic Bases.

Graphs, Harmonics, Anti-harmonics, Anti-harmonic Bases and Variations have a new color scheme, and their finder dialogs have a new slider control 'Axis detail level'.

Axis labels now have a grey, semi-transparent background to improve their readability whilst not totally obscuring the data.

Rendering of Anti-harmonic and Anti-harmonic Bases has been improved.

A bug in the XML import of 'Keep intermediate file' flags has been fixed.

A bug relating to the input/validation of columns 'Initial interval' for Variations has been fixed.

XML import/export facility added, allowing Kangas Sound Editor users to collaborate with and build on the work of other Kangas Sound Editor/QI users.

Improvements to the installation program, which now includes the previously separate database setup script.

Edit Panels now have vertical scroll bars if needed, and have a white background.

New functions to delete tracks, and copy/move/delete a range of Sequence boxes have been added.

An indicator (*) now appears next to the composition title if there are unsaved edits.

Edit Panel tree-nodes are now topmost for a given track.

New configurable parameters are: Default Edit View duration, Property view width, Transparent toolbar icons, Host name and Port number (the last two allow MySQL server and Kangas Sound Editor to run on different computers).

Toolbar buttons and search buttons have redesigned icons.

The Sequence button is now topmost/leftmost in the toolbar (depending on its orientation).

General improvements have been made to dialogs.

"Help on the web" and About dialogs are now modeless, and have been redesigned.

New dialog "Configure all parameters" added.

Main program dividers now remember their location.

Properties toolbar displays the track number of the displayed properties, but is no longer draggable.

Bugs in Nimbus look-and-feel fixed.

Bug in MySQL password recognition fixed.