News
Bad news: new version of TaalPulse halted (2008-11-29)
I had to stop trying to develop TaalPulse 2.0. Although most of the programming was done (and the new version was starting to look and sound great), it proved very difficult and time consuming to make the program run on the different platforms it was intended for. Unless someone knowledgeable about running Qt on embedded platforms helps out, I’m not going to try any longer.
I guess I’ll probably have another try at doing a new version on Google’s Android platform onces it gains a bit a of traction.
New version of TaalPulse in the works (2008-04-30)
Work has started on TaalPulse 2.0, a completely rewritten version of TaalPulse! Here is a list of the planned features:
- Saving settings: TaalPulse will start in the state you left it in, so you won’t have to adjust the tuning, the volume, and select the lehras each time you use it.
- Metronome.
- Flexible layas: you will be able to alter the laya of lehra and theka, so you can have the lehra play at a given speed and the theka at double this speed, for example.
- Easier selection of tracks (lehras and thekas): it will be possible to display a list of all available tracks, so that it will no longer be necessary to browse through the whole library to get to a particular track. There will also be a rating system that permits to indicate the tracks you like and those you don’t.
- Better sound quality: TaalPulse 2.0 will use standard sf2 sound fonts, and the Gleam software synthesizer.
- Easy to add instruments: a side benefit of using sf2 sound fonts is that they are very easy to modify.
- Easy to add tracks: each track (theka, lehra, drone) is a midi file. Simply drop a new file into the appropriate directory, and TaalPulse will be able to use it.
- Better compatibility: hopefully TaalPulse will run on more devices.
A preview of TaalPulse 2.0 should be available during May. It should run at least on Linux and Windows. Mac, Windows CE and Linux embedded versions will take more time.
For the technically inclined, the new version of TaalPulse is being written in C++ using the Qt 4.4 user-interface toolkit. You can have a look at the source code through svn (https://taalpulse.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/taalpulse/trunk/app), but be aware that it is not at all functional right now.