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TAP-plugins Tom's Audio Processing plugins for audio engineering on the Linux platform |
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(or send fan mail)
This website holds information concerning some audio software usable on UNIX-like operating systems, particularly GNU/Linux. The project producing this software started out in January 2004 when the author took the plunge of using Linux Audio (particularly Ardour) in his recording studio. Initially four LADSPA plugins were written, but the number of available plugins steadily increased over time. Today, the package comprises an established set of plugins.
It was in early June 2004 that the author realized he needed a reverb solution with such flexibility that a LADSPA plugin could never provide; not because the sound processing was lacking, but user accessibility to the internal structure and variables of the reverb algorithm was needed. As a result, TAP Reverb Editor was written as a separate JACK application.
Today the project provides two software packages for download:
Please go to the SourceForge project page to download any of these packages.
As a supplement, this website (which acts both as a homepage and as a manual for all TAP-plugins software) is available for download as a separate package called tap-plugins-doc (get it from the SourceForge project page). However, because the online version may be updated or corrected between releases, you may want to take a look at it if you feel something is outdated or plain wrong in the latest tarball.
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NOTE: At least one user reported that omitting the GCC option -O3 has solved denormal issues with TAP-plugins. Please try this (edit the Makefile) and report back to me so I can be confident about this solution and release a new (fixed) version! I frequently get reports about denormal problems related to my plugins. This usually means that when running a plugin, silent input will cause the CPU usage to raise, many times to the point where realtime processing of the signal becomes impossible. This is due to the fact that on modern CPU architectures the time needed for a certain kind of operation (e.g. floating point multiplication) is not constant. While I understand that this is probably a problem for many users, unfortunately I do not have the expertise, time and equipment that would allow me to deal with these issues. I have relatively old hardware on which the plugins do not exhibit denormal problems. If you have trouble, please seek help from experienced members of the community. I would be grateful to accept any patch that arises of such activity and helps mitigate the problems. |
Announcements of new versions of any TAP-plugins packages will be sent to the Linux Audio Developers mailing list. Announcements of greater ("milestone") releases will be CC:-ed to Linux Audio Users and Linux Audio Announce as well.
TAP-plugins is being developed by Tom Szilagyi. You can send him mail to <tszilagyi at users dot sourceforge dot net>. (You should generally receive a reply in 48 hours, if your mail deserves it; please note that I have a life, I have to sleep sometimes and I live on the other side of the planet.) If you would like to start public discussion about TAP-plugins, please send your mail to the Linux Audio Developers or Linux Audio Users mailing list, depending on the nature of your mail (I am subscribed to both lists).
Please write if you have problems compiling or running any of this software, or you feel some plugin does something different than it should. The author is not a professional programmer, and he is no DSP guru either; so if you find something isn't right then it probably ain't. So please write -- unreported bugs never get fixed.
In one word: any feedback is most appreciated.
TAP-plugins are released under the GNU General Public License, version 2. See the file COPYING (included in the tarball releases of all software packages) for details.
DISCLAIMER: The plugins described here are available to you free of charge, and you are welcome to examine their internal workings, modify and re-distribute them. But keep in mind that TAP-plugins is provided "AS IS", and it comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY of any kind, either expressed or implied, included, but not limited to, the implied warranties of MERCHANTABILITY and FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Again, see the file COPYING for details.