Help test the Sonic Visualiser v3.0 beta

A first beta release of Sonic Visualiser v3.0 is now available for download, and we’d love to get your feedback.

Sonic Visualiser is a free, open-source desktop application for close study and annotation of music audio recordings, developed in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London. It’s been available for about a decade now, and v3.0 will be one of the most substantial updates it’s ever had. This should be a really good release, but we need to hear about the problems other people have with the beta versions before we can be sure of that.

Get it here

Update – 17th Jan: These are not the latest links any more: there is now a second beta! See here for details.

The first beta can be downloaded from the Sound Software code site:

• For 64-bit versions of Windows:
  https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/attachments/download/2149/sonic-visualiser-3.0beta1-win64.msi
• For 32-bit versions of Windows:
  https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/attachments/download/2148/sonic-visualiser-3.0beta1-win32.msi
• For macOS:
  https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/attachments/download/2147/Sonic%20Visualiser-3.0-beta1.dmg
• For Ubuntu 16.04:
  https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/attachments/download/2152/sonic-visualiser_3.0beta1-1_amd64.deb
• Source code:
  https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/attachments/download/2146/sonic-visualiser-3.0beta1.tar.gz

There will be Linux binaries as well, but I’m still working on packaging for those. Watch this space. (Update: there is now an Ubuntu package linked above. I’d like to be making more options available, not least because I don’t actually use Ubuntu myself, but this is a start.)

Note that the beta pops up a dialog each time you run it to remind you that it’s a beta. Sorry about that, I know it might be annoying.

What’s changed

Here’s the list of changes since the last release.

Besides some new features and a lot of bug fixes, there are a few interesting internal changes:

• Everything to do with sample indexing now uses 64-bit offsets, and it’s possible to load very long audio files that wouldn’t have worked in the previous release
• Audio analysis plugins are now run with process separation so a misbehaving plugin should no longer be able to crash the host
• It’s now possible to record audio as well as play it, and to select the record and playback devices in the preferences
• The user interface now adapts fully to hi-dpi (“retina”) displays on all three platforms
• For the first time the Windows version is natively 64-bit (if your Windows installation is, and almost all Windows installations are nowadays) — while still being able to use any 32-bit Vamp plugins you have installed

I’m quite excited about this release, so now I need to hear all your deflating reports about the things that aren’t working!

What we particularly need feedback on

• Problems installing or running the application at all!
• Problems running plugins that worked with a previous version
• Problems playing or recording audio, glitches, error dialogs with complaints about audio drivers
• Any crashes or other error dialogs
• Any unexpectedly slow performance while showing analyses or running plugins

Note for Linux users

I mentioned above that I’m still working on packaging for Linux. That process also includes overhauling the INSTALL-file instructions, which are not quite up-to-date. If you look at the series of commands carried out in the Docker script at deploy/linux/docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu64 in the source tree, you’ll get an idea of what needs to be done to compile as things stand.

How to report problems

Use the venerable SourceForge bug tracker, or for quick reports you could just post a comment below, send me an email, tweet at me, etc.

For any problems that arise when using a specific file (audio or annotation), it’s massively helpful if you can attach an example file that exhibits the problem. In general, listing any steps to take to reproduce a bug (even if it seems to you that the bug must be so obvious that nobody could ever have missed it) is very useful indeed.

If you run into something and you’re not sure whether it’s a bug or you’re just being stupid, please do report it anyway. A program that makes you feel stupid is already wrong on some level, though I’m all too aware that Sonic Visualiser can do that sometimes because it is a bit overcomplicated in places.

Things we haven’t done yet

We had hoped to devise an easier way to obtain and install plugins in time for this release, and recent survey feedback suggested this would be a very welcome thing for many prospective users. Sadly we haven’t been able to do anything in that area yet, but I hope we may be able to soon.