LinuxSampler is music sampler software under active development , aiming to provide a pure software audio sampler with professional grade features comparable to both hardware and commercial software samplers, as well as to introduce new features not yet available by other samplers. Much of LinuxSampler is

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, but

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reuse of some, such as the back-end, is restricted.

Concept

LinuxSampler was designed as a sampler back-end, decoupled from any user interface. It provides a native C++

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

as well as a network interface using an

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based protocol called LSCP for controlling the sampler and managing sampler sessions. Also, there are already two convenient frontends for LinuxSampler, QSampler and JSampler. Due to the decoupled design the sampler can be controlled with the GUI frontend(s) even from another computer, probably even running another OS like Windows or OS X. SMP and cluster support is planned for future releases. There is a graphical instrument editor called gigedit, based on the GUI library GTK+, which can be used to edit and create Gigasampler format instruments and can either be used as a stand-alone application or in conjunction with LinuxSampler. The latter case allows to play and edit instruments at the same time, making all modifications with gigedit immediately audible, without having to reload the instruments into the sampler.

Platforms

LinuxSampler, as the name indicates, was originally conceived to run on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, but thanks to the abstraction of audio and MIDI drivers and platform dependent functions, the sampler was successfully ported to

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

, OS X and FreeBSD. The Windows version of LinuxSampler can work in standalone mode providing

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audio output and MME MIDI input, and as a VSTi plugin providing full integration with VST sequencers. The OS X version supports jackd audio output and CoreMIDI input. The Audio Unit interface (AU plugin) is in beta.

Goals

It is planned to support all common sampler formats in LinuxSampler, but at the moment the work is concentrated on the Gigasampler format. Beside that, the goal is to design a new, sophisticated sampler format, more powerful and more flexible compared to any sampler format currently available in the world. There is a feature list with more information about the current development plans available.

Licensing

Most components are distributed as

, under either the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

or the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

. However, the

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...

of the sampler backend prohibits commercial use. For commercial use, permission and terms must be sought from the developers. The backend is thus not free software. The ban on commercial use does not prohibit the use of LinuxSampler for commercial music production, which is explicitly allowed.

References

External links