I’ve been busy making a new composition during August (based on water sounds…) and haven’t done any work on the HourGlass code. I will be busy with the composition during September too, so a release of HourGlass 1.5 even as a beta isn’t likely soon.
The Microsoft runtime library issue still seems unclear. There isn’t an official update on the issue but some comments in the Microsoft C++ compiler blog indicate it might now be possible to deploy applications with the needed libraries with the application itself without the need to install the libraries first. This isn’t a HUGE issue but it sure is annoying me a lot on principle. Especially considering there have been reports the separate library install may also require a reboot of the computer. I would completely hate having to install something like that myself when trying/updating a software. There is still the possibility to go back to VS2013 too, but I’d rather not, since VS2015 has the newer C++ compiler and standard library. (For the technically inclined : static linking of the C++ runtime is problematic because HourGlass uses the Qt library which has had mentions in the past that static linking isn’t really supported. There may also be licensing implications mixing LGPL licensed code with Microsoft’s code.)
I’ve also started thinking there should probably be more comprehensive support for multichannel operation in HourGlass. The code still has some limitations on the number of channels supported and the fragment spatialization still can only pan to 4 channels. I’ve done some experimenting with a 5th loudspeaker in my set up and have started to like that so much that I’d like HourGlass to be able to do something with it (and more channels in the future) too.
Also I’ve realized there are hardly any 3rd party plugins that support multichannel operation, so having some solution in HourGlass to use those plugins at least in “pseudo multichannel” mode seems essential now…Technically that should be pretty simple to implement but I just haven’t got to that yet. (I feel a bit ashamed about this, since even damn Pro Tools implemented that in the first version that supported multichannel operation back in 2001 or so! On the other hand, Reaper still doesn’t have a convenient solution for it…)