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Sonic Visualiser Changelog

What's new in Sonic Visualiser 4.5.2

May 3, 2023
  • Support multi-line text labels on time instants
  • Improve refresh and rendering of text labels in various layers
  • Improve abbreviation of layer names in the key at bottom-right of a pane
  • Fix repeated writes to settings file when rendering time-ruler layers at close zoom levels
  • Use system Vamp host SDK if provided

New in Sonic Visualiser 4.5.1 (Nov 9, 2022)

  • Update to use Rubber Band v3 with its higher quality timestretcher (the older, lower-CPU one is still available in preferences). This means the build requires rubberband-3.0.0 or newer, so you may need to install it separately if building on an older system.
  • Fix inability to select Hz as the unit of a layer following import
  • Provisional fix to bailing out on startup when invoked with "Open With..." on Mac
  • Fix nonsense display when showing frequency scaled points with value of 0Hz

New in Sonic Visualiser 4.5 (Mar 31, 2022)

  • Add option to switch off the interpolation used in the waveform view for zoom levels closer than one pixel per frame: sometimes it can be an unnecessary distraction. With interpolation switched off, the individual samples are shown as unconnected points instead
  • Make it possible to toggle segment colouring in the segmentation view of the time value layer, as well as toggling segment division lines
  • When importing CSV files, if a column heading indicates a likely unit for the column, use it by default; also remember last user settings for the import dialog
  • Ensure the Choose Default Template option on the templates menu can be reached even when no file is loaded
  • Give the spectrum layer the same effective scale range as it had before the dB scale fix in v4.4, fixing the accidental halving of the visible range for that layer in v4.4
  • Fix hang when opening two plugin parameter dialogs at once
  • Fix crash when rendering slice or spectrum layers scrolled to earlier than the start of the audio or later than the end
  • Fix crash when more than one audio file is supplied at the command line with a default session template that requires regenerating one or more feature extraction layers and layer generation produces an error or warning
  • Fix failure to exit fully if the window is closed before plugin scan is complete at startup

New in Sonic Visualiser 4.2 (Aug 16, 2020)

  • Speed up startup, especially on Windows and especially when a lot of plugins are installed. Plugins are now scanned after the main window has been displayed, and the Transform menus are populated dynamically when the results are available.

New in Sonic Visualiser 4.1 (Jun 22, 2020)

  • Support "dark mode" on Windows and Linux as well as macOS
  • Add right-click (or Ctrl-click, on the Mac) context menus to the layer property tabs, pane zoom controls, and all dial controls, providing some basic edit and reset functions
  • Provide format options when exporting layers to CSV, allowing control over column separator, header row, and timestamp format
  • Permit and handle optional header row when importing from CSV
  • Add export of spectrogram data to CSV formats
  • Support doubling escapes for quotes in quoted CSV fields on import
  • Fix truncated image export when exporting from spectrogram view that hasn't finished loading when the export is requested
  • Fix failure to show parameter updates when changing the current program in a Vamp plugin that supports programs (e.g. Melodia)
  • Fix inability of Windows builds to open https:// URLs
  • Add references to Vamp Plugin Pack in "Find a Transform" results for plugins that are not yet installed but are available in pack
  • Improve and tidy various aspects of OSC support, and update documentation for it
  • Improve performance of peak-frequency spectrogram
  • Fix missing undo/redo of layer renames
  • Fix failure to audition effects plugins live, while adjusting their parameters in preparation for applying them - this worked in some cases, but not the most common ones; it should now work everywhere

New in Sonic Visualiser 4.0.1 (Dec 11, 2019)

  • Fix nonsense vertical scale in NoteLayer when displaying a model with non-Hz scale (e.g. from an analysis plugin that outputs MIDI note values)
  • Fix failure to open playback device when using macOS Catalina with certain audio devices
  • Fix failure to make installed executables executable when compiling and installing the source package

New in Sonic Visualiser 4.0 (Oct 25, 2019)

  • Add Box annotation layer type, typically used for time-frequency boxes to be annotated over a spectrogram. Because this introduces a new layer type into the session file format, the major version number has been bumped to v4.0. Sessions saved from v4.0 can still be opened in earlier versions of Sonic Visualiser, but any Box layers will not be loaded
  • Fix behaviour of auto-align layers on top of waveform: they can now be aligned in the vertical scale, if they have a unit of V and the waveform is of a single channel in linear or dB mode
  • Make the UI more readable in macOS "dark mode"
  • Fix sluggishness in starting and stopping playback when using PulseAudio v13.0+

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.3 (May 22, 2019)

  • Add support for reading the Opus audio codec on all platforms
  • Add support for WMA and AAC formats on 64-bit Windows. (AAC was already supported on macOS.) Note that AAC support on Windows does not support "gapless" import, i.e. removing the encoder gaps at start and end of the stream
  • Add ability to choose the field separator when importing CSV and CSV-like files, if more than one possible candidate separator is found in the file
  • Fix crash when closing session or starting a new session while calculating alignment of multiple audio files
  • Fix crash when running certain plugins that call for frequency-domain input at non-power-of-two block sizes
  • Fix wandering left edge of measure-tool rectangle while dragging out the area
  • Ensure that plugin stderr debug output is logged to the SV log file

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.2.1 (Jan 29, 2019)

  • Fix failure to record from built-in microphone on macOS 10.14 (caused by lack of microphone permission request text)
  • Fix crash when closing SV or starting a new session during recording
  • Fix crash on exit in some builds that disable OSC support
  • Fix flashing effect when scrolling certain configurations of colour 3d plot layer leftwards

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.2 (Jan 29, 2019)

  • Add ability to zoom closer than one sample per pixel, so as to see the interpolated signal level between samples
  • Add oversampling control to the spectrogram and spectrum layers
  • Highlight and label frequency peaks in the spectrum as the mouse rolls over them, when enabled in the parameter area
  • Add feature to convert and import audio from a CSV data file
  • Add some new colour maps, and restore the old Blue on Black one
  • Speed up spectrum rendering at high resolutions
  • Fix failure to pass Nyquist bins correctly to frequency-domain-input Vamp plugins in some circumstances
  • Fix sometimes incorrect shortcut associations for new-layer menu items
  • Various other rendering improvements and bug fixes

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.1.1 (Sep 13, 2018)

  • Add feature to convert and import audio from a CSV data file

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.1 (Jul 16, 2018)

  • Add Plugins tab to Preferences dialog, from which you can review the plugin load paths and see which plugins were loaded from which locations, and also customise load paths (though the various path environment variables are still supported)
  • Stream the export of audio data and other CSV data so that very large exports don't hang the UI or run us out of memory (thanks to Lucas Thompson)
  • Ensure vertical scale appears for auto-align layers when there is nothing else to auto-align them to
  • Fix another long-standing Windows-platform wide-char/utf8 conversion problem, with environment variable naming and contents
  • Improve handling of incomplete session loads, i.e. situations where the audio files referred to by a session could not be found - previously the session could be re-saved immediately thus losing the audio reference; now at least we disable Save (enabling only Save As) and show a warning
  • Update pane and layer menu shortcuts so that the waveform/spectrogram/etc shortcuts (Shift+G etc) operate on the source model in the currently-selected pane rather than the main model. This is a backward-incompatible change but is a far more intuitive way for the function to work
  • Use dark background for bright colours in time-value/note/etc layers as well as e.g. waveforms - this is how it was always "intended to" work, but it is a backward-incompatible change
  • Make "Select All" select the whole span of everything that exists, not just the main model
  • Add horizontal scale to Spectrum layer
  • Improve spacing and labelling of vertical log scales
  • Update build system for better Cap'n Proto version support and to use Repoint for code management in the repository
  • Various other bug fixes

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.0.3 (Jun 6, 2017)

  • Improve decisions about where and how to label vertical scales
  • Update build support material and documentation to reflect the official release of Cap'n Proto 0.6 (which we can now use rather than depending on git builds)

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.0.2 (Mar 13, 2017)

  • Fix crash when changing parameters for spectrum view
  • Fix incorrect measure tool crosshairs in spectrum view
  • Update Russian and Czech UI translations

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.0.1 (Mar 8, 2017)

  • Update MIDI input driver layer

New in Sonic Visualiser 3.0 (Mar 8, 2017)

  • Add ability to record audio, and ability to change the audio device for playback or recording in the preferences
  • Add complete support for high-resolution (Hi-DPI or retina) displays, including for layer data rendering as well as UI controls and icons. This makes the biggest difference when using a retina Mac, on which previous versions did not render layer data at retina resolution, but it also improves scaling and rendering of UI elements on Hi-DPI displays on Windows and Linux
  • Add ability to export scalable (SVG) image files
  • Run plugins in a separate process, so that if a plugin crashes, it no longer brings down Sonic Visualiser with it. In every other respect the behaviour should be unchanged
  • Scan plugins on startup in a separate process, and report on any that crash or won't load
  • Add ability to open, display, and analyse very long audio files (of more than 2^32 sample frames)
  • Change mp3 file loading so as to compensate for encoder/decoder delay and padding (using "gapless playback" logic). While this is a real improvement, unfortunately it does mean that the initial padding in mp3 file load has changed from previous versions, which may mean some sessions saved in previous versions are no longer correctly aligned. It's not a great idea to use mp3 as a file format of record, because of differences like this between decoders. The previous behaviour is still available as a preference.
  • Add new Hybrid normalisation type for spectrogram and colour 3d plot layers. This normalises each column to its peak value and then scales the normalised values by the log of the peak in order to restore some distinction in scale between columns with different levels. It can provide quite visually clear results.
  • Add function to subdivide time instant layers into regular intervals (and its inverse)
  • Add new preference for default colour scales
  • Add a basic ability to zoom (in the frequency axis) to the spectrum
  • Switch to using combined level/pan controls in layer property boxes and for the main volume control
  • Make CSV file reader better able to handle files with varying numbers of columns
  • Fix a number of problems on Windows with loading and saving some file formats to filenames not representable in system codepage
  • Add "What's New" dialog
  • Finally switch the Windows build to 64-bit by default (with adapters to run either 32- or 64-bit plugins)

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.5 (Nov 28, 2015)

  • Add unit-converter dialog, for converting between various pitch and timing units
  • Fix failure to reload note layers from session file
  • Use a more sensible scale for the play-speed dial
  • Fix crash when importing very wide CSV files
  • Fix generation of wrong layer type from some CSV files
  • Fix failure to export last instant in a time-instant layer

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.4.1 (Oct 2, 2014)

  • Fix a crash when rendering certain colour 3d plot layers.

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.4 (Sep 24, 2014)

  • Add support for left/right scrolling using a two-finger touchpad gesture (where available)
  • Make the octave numbering into a configurable option, and change the default. Previously Sonic Visualiser labelled middle-C as "C3"; now it labels middle-C as "C4", a more common standard in the world outside MIDI sequencer software. The previous system is available as an option in the Preferences. This affects only the visible labels: there is no change to analysis or to the file format
  • Sonify time-value layers. Any time-value curve whose scale unit is set to Hz will now acquire a playback toggle control; this control is off by default, but if it is switched on, the curve will be played back using a variable-frequency sound generator
  • Add support for playback of note layers with non-MIDI frequencies (formerly the note playback was limited to exact MIDI pitch)
  • Change the default playback sample for note layers from piano to an electric piano with sustain. The piano sample is still available, and any sessions saved using it should continue to use it
  • Add a cancel button for Vamp plugin processing: currently, cancelling a transform results in a part-complete layer rather than removing the results
  • Add keyboard shortcuts to cycle the current layer (in addition to the existing ones to cycle the current pane)
  • Fix various bugs related to layer ordering: layer tabs re-ordering themselves randomly when new layer added, layers being ordered randomly when saving and reloading a session
  • Fix incorrect interaction with non-Unicode usernames when creating temporary and template directories on Windows
  • Shade the start and end of the main audio file, to make them easier to see for files that start or end in silence
  • Speed up rendering and scrolling in time-value layers
  • Make it possible to import CSV files directly into Note layers by adding Pitch as a data type in the CSV file import dialog
  • Fix play pointer jump to wrong frame when clicking on row in the layer edit dialog
  • Fix problems with keyboard shortcuts when using Qt5 on OS/X. This is the first release in which the official builds use Qt5 for all platforms.

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.4 Beta 1 (Sep 4, 2014)

  • Add support for left/right scrolling using a two-finger touchpad gesture (where available)
  • Make the octave numbering into a configurable option, and change the default. Previously Sonic Visualiser labelled middle-C as "C3"; now it labels middle-C as "C4", a more common standard in the world outside MIDI sequencer software. The previous system is available as an option in the Preferences. This affects only the visible labels: there is no change to analysis or to the file format
  • Sonify time-value layers. Any time-value curve whose scale unit is set to Hz will now acquire a playback toggle control; this control is off by default, but if it is switched on, the curve will be played back using a variable-frequency sound generator
  • Add support for playback of note layers with non-MIDI frequencies (formerly the note playback was limited to exact MIDI pitch)
  • Change the default playback sample for note layers from piano to an electric piano with sustain. The piano sample is still available, and any sessions saved using it should continue to use it
  • Add keyboard shortcuts to cycle the current layer (in addition to the existing ones to cycle the current pane)
  • Fix various bugs related to layer ordering: layer tabs re-ordering themselves randomly when new layer added, layers being ordered randomly when saving and reloading a session
  • Shade the start and end of the main audio file, to make them easier to see for files that start or end in silence
  • Speed up rendering and scrolling in time-value layers
  • Make it possible to import CSV files directly into Note layers by adding Pitch as a data type in the CSV file import dialog

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.3 (Dec 14, 2013)

  • Add a startup welcome dialog that also explains what SV makes network connections for and allows user to forbid them
  • Add "Export Audio Data" feature
  • Show piano keyboard scale in note and time-value layers as well as spectrogram, where vertical scale is log Hz; also show numerical scale in note and region layers when not auto-aligned
  • Speed up CSV file import and avoid showing crazily wide window for CSV file format dialog when file has lots of columns
  • Fix incorrectly saved window geometry when exiting from maximised state
  • Reduce number of timer wakeups when idle
  • Add American English translation and make choice of translation into a preference (defaulting to system locale)
  • Permit installation to non-default location with Windows installer build

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.2 (Aug 2, 2013)

  • Build with support for hidpi ("retina") text on OS/X
  • Fix very slow analysis when using Ogg or FLAC files decoded via libsndfile
  • Fix inaccurate scale auto-align between time-value layers and others
  • Reset cyclical counters and switch back to navigate mode when a new session is started

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.1 (May 17, 2013)

  • Fix incorrect handling of FixedSampleRate outputs (Vamp SDK fix)
  • Make it easier to see results from transforms that return a single point
  • Make labelling clearer on time-value layers
  • Add discrete-curve mode for time-value layers (for curves with gaps)
  • Update code to build against Qt5

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.0.1 (Mar 12, 2013)

  • Fix incorrect samplerate in reading m4a files on OS/X

New in Sonic Visualiser 2.0 (Jul 24, 2012)

  • Support 64-bit builds on OS/X (using CoreAudio instead of obsolete QuickTime audio file reader)
  • Simplify RDF reading and fix some bugs. Now requires Dataquay (http://breakfastquay.com/dataquay/) rather than using Redland directly. Release builds use Sord/Serd rather than Redland
  • Add a fullscreen mode on the F11 key

New in Sonic Visualiser 1.8 (Apr 8, 2011)

  • Sonic Visualiser now registers as a file type handler on OS/X,
  • providing better integration with the desktop generally (Dan Stowell)
  • There is a new function to toggle all Time Rulers at once (key #)
  • The CSV import dialog has been overhauled, allowing more flexible
  • selection of purpose for each column
  • Text overlays are now easier to read on dark backgrounds
  • Hidden layers are now ignored when exporting an image (Dan Stowell)
  • A crash when starting a new session or exiting the application
  • after loading a session with saved alignment data has been fixed
  • The duplication of right-button menu functions when multiple files
  • were loaded has been fixed
  • The layer-add menu functions now have shortcuts (Dan Stowell)
  • The codebase has been reorganised into libraries and a configure
  • step added. It should be easier to build and maintain on OS/X and
  • Linux than previously, although it won't make much difference on
  • Windows.
  • A Czech translation is now included (thanks to Pavel Fric).

New in Sonic Visualiser 1.7.2 (May 6, 2010)

  • The time-value layer now has an origin line and an option to
  • show derivatives (change from one point to the next) rather than
  • raw values
  • A static initialiser race has been fixed, possibly fixing an
  • occasional crash on startup in Windows
  • A crash when pressing Play straight after New Session has been
  • fixed
  • Changes in Sonic Visualiser 1.7.1 since the previous release 1.7:
  • The RDF importer does a better job of assigning labels to layers,
  • layers to panes, and values to labelled regions
  • Interactive editing in the Text layer benefits from the same
  • improvements as made in 1.7 to Note and Region layers
  • The layer data editor window has a text search feature
  • The main window status bar now shows the last label to have passed
  • the playback position in the current layer, at the right end of the
  • status bar
  • The Russian translation has been updated (thanks Alexandre)

New in Sonic Visualiser 1.7.1 (Oct 28, 2009)

  • The RDF importer does a better job of assigning labels to layers, layers to panes, and values to labelled regions
  • Interactive editing in the Text layer benefits from the same improvements as made in 1.7 to Note and Region layers
  • The layer data editor window has a text search feature
  • The main window status bar now shows the last label to have passed the playback position in the current layer, at the right end of the status bar
  • The Russian translation has been updated (thanks Alexandre)

New in Sonic Visualiser 1.7 (Oct 7, 2009)

  • A new "Insert Item At Selection" function on the Edit menu can be used to create Note and Region layer items whose time extents correspond to the current selection(s)
  • Interactively editing points in the Note and Region layers now works much more smoothly.
  • SV can now import MIDI files that use SMPTE timecode for event timing (importing MIDI files using with the more common timebase-based timing was already supported)
  • Time values throughout the display may optionally be shown in seconds and frames at various frame rates
  • A crash on exit in Windows has been fixed
  • A very unobtrusive user survey is now included
  • Various other bug fixes.

New in Sonic Visualiser 1.6 (Jul 6, 2009)

  • The Color 3D Plot layer now supports logarithmic vertical
  • scale and linear interpolation options.
  • A new color scheme (High Gain) has been added for spectrogram
  • and Color 3D Plot, which improves readability for some data.
  • Further performance improvements have been made to Colour 3D
  • Plot.
  • Various other bug fixes.

New in Sonic Visualiser 1.5 (Mar 17, 2009)

  • You can now insert time instants, time values, and notes using a MIDI device during playback. If a time value or note layer is current it will be used for insertion (giving a value equal to the pitch class, or the played note, respectively); otherwise an existing or new time instants layer will be used just as it is when inserting instants using the PC keyboard. Using a MIDI device should give better timing than using the PC keyboard.
  • There is a new Activity Log window with a (purely informative) list of events and user interactions that happen while SV is running.
  • The spectrogram has somewhat improved graphical scaling, and this is now the default (being much faster than the 4x oversampled method). The previous default is still available as a preference.
  • Visualisation of very dense colour plots (such as spectrograms calculated by plugins) is substantially faster in this release.
  • Spectrogram display is now faster in many circumstances.
  • Alignment using the MATCH plugin is faster on OS/X than before.
  • SV will take into account RDF plugin descriptions, if available, in order to make somewhat better decisions about display of plugin outputs (for example, placing segmentation data into a layer with segmentation plot type).
  • You can now switch layers by clicking on the spare area at the left end of the pane that is also used for the current pane indicator.
  • The vertical black lines dividing segments in the time value layer's segmentation plot style are now optional.
  • Several widget layout bugs on OS/X have been fixed.
  • Several serious crashing, deadlock, and data corruption bugs have been fixed.

New in Sonic Visualiser 1.4 (Feb 2, 2009)

  • SV now has a Region layer type, used for display of features with durations. It also supports Vamp v2.0 plugins that provide durations for features.
  • Layer data can now be imported from RDF described using the Audio Features Ontology, as well as from the existing text file types. SV can also export annotation layer data to RDF/Turtle, although in a somewhat simplistic manner at present.
  • You can search for transforms by text in the new "Find a Transform" dialog. This searches both installed plugins, and plugins that have not been installed but that have descriptions available on the semantic web.
  • You can now zoom and scroll vertically in the time-value, note, and colour 3d plot layers.
  • Sonic Visualiser can now load sessions from uncompressed XML files as well as its own compressed-XML .sv format. Files with extension .xml that contain suitable session data will be loaded as sessions. Note that .xml extension files still do not show up in the default file load filter. This is intentional, as there may be any kind of data in them -- if you want to load uncompressed session files from XML, you need to know you're doing it.
  • Several crashes and other bugs have been fixed.