Hi there everyone,
Sonic Pi v5 Release Candidate 1 is now freely available to download.
I think it’s the most significant release yet.
Have a play and let me know what you think!
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Hi Sam. I had a play with v5 RC1 last night. I think it’s fantastic. Pipewire allows Mixxx and Audacity running alongside SP with no problems, that’s incredibly useful.
Took me too long to work out how to change the shortcuts - I imagine havimg Emacs keybindings as the default will catch out a lot of other people too.
Copying code chunks from the help pages didn’t seem to work for me, on x64 linux.
Huge progress, congratulations! Si
Hi @fuzzySi,
thanks for you kind words. Emacs keybindings have pretty much been the default since Sonic Pi was created - but the last few releases really improved this situation - and agreed it’s probably not the best default - even on Linux where everyone should be using Emacs for everything 
I’ve also addressed the code copying which should be improved in the next release. BTW, do the copy icons work for you - is it just the keyboard shortcuts that caused issues?
Do let me know if you have any other feedback!
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Hi @samaaron, really enjoying v5 RC1 - particularly some of the UI refinements.
A quick question - are you seeing any issues using live_audio? Sonic Pi recognises the audio device but I’m not getting any audio coming through despite enabling the input. Could be the device itself but I’m not getting the same issue in Ableton, so I’m not convinced that’s the cause. Would value any suggestions. 
Edit: Never mind, I tried again and now it’s working. 
Thank you for making such an awesome tool!
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@boreal-ground - sorry you had initial issues. Please do let me know if things don’t behave perfectly in any way.
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Okay… fantastic first try of v5 candidate 1 release. The interface is attractive and intuitively laid out and additional features really help navigate code while it is running. Huge improvement to pop-out menus … love it. The cards are great for teaching. I have noticed when running the spectrum scope, it works well but when I stop the code, the graphic levels do not completely set back to a flat line… some residual levels appear “stuck” until a fresh run. That said, the current scopes work super well compared to the beta release (MacBook Tahoe M1 is my system). I should say that this release has a look and feel that is very professional now. I think that users will find the improvements will be great when coding live … instantaneous info eg seeing the live loop code iterations as they happen… the node tree is brilliant… wow! Thanks Sam…
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It has been improved to be easier to understand and use.
I found new 8-chord and 6-scale presets in Sonic Pi, from β3 to RC1.
newChords=[“7+9”,“9-5”,“mM7”,“maj13”,“maj7”,“min7”,“minor_major7”,“mmaj7”]
newScales=[:acoustic,:altered,:byzantine,:double_harmonic,:lydian_dominant,:phrygian_dominant]
Thank you! I was planning to give steps to reproduce, but it seems to have cleared up with a reboot.
Will feed back with any bugs I find, but otherwise it’s really solid so far.
By the way - the new audio visualisation in live loops is a really nice addition, as is the code highlighting when lines run.
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Yes the copy icons work thanks Sam, just not the key shortcuts. I really like the new dark colour scheme, & as others have said, the live loops visualisations look great. I’ve not managed to get multi-output audio working yet, that’s my next challenge…
Thanks @fuzzySi - do let me know if you have any issues with multi-channel out.
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Hi Sam,
Thanks for this new release! I tested Sonic Pi 5 RC and shared some notes on the new interface, visualizations, and musical features.
I also included a small tutorial on creating custom Card Decks with code snippets, and shared my Sonic Pi rendition of “What Is Love” by Haddaway, including the code for anyone interested in experimenting with it.
Updated with Sonic Pi 5 RC-9.
Thanks again for all the passion and hard work that went into Sonic Pi 5!
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actually, yes please - can’t get multi-outs working. I’m using the code below (4 output SSL2+). It doesn’t seem to create any extra outputs, looking at PipeWire graph.
Linux x64, v5RC1. ALSA driver, PipeWire sound server as output. Thanks for any suggestions…
live_loop :bdOut do
with_fx :sound_out, output: 3 do
sample :bd_haus
sleep 1
end
end
Can you check out the newly released v5 RC2. I’ve added native pipewire support which should directly address your multichannel issue.
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Thanks Sam. on RC2 now but still not seeing any extra outputs in pipewire.
prefs: audio device ALSA
output: pipewire sound server
input: delault ALSO output (currently pipewire media server)
trying to send a sound to just output 3:
live_loop :bdOut do
with_fx :sound_out, output: 3, amp: 0 do
sample :bd_haus
sleep 1
end
end
what am I missing?
thanks, Si
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Nothing. It’s a bug in the build. I’ll have RC3 ready on Monday 
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Hi Sam, I just found a small issue while testing the docs in RC-3. It is a validation problem in Gabberkick related to slope_intermediate.
Details and fix:
The problem is in synthinfo.rb:
:validations => [v_positive(:slope_start)]
It should be:
:validations => [v_positive(:slope_intermediate)]
I tested this change locally and it seems to fix the issue.
Hope this helps!
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Thanks for this! It just goes to show that informal validations make lousy formal validations! They were originally just written for the docs and now they’re used programatically - so the edge-case errors are now much more visible. Thanks for helping to root them out!
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Hi @samaaron a quick and fairly trivial issue report in RC3. The auto-complete / prompt for live_audio keeps showing documentation for other command types, rather than the available options.
e.g. try typing live_audio :hello, input: 2
I don’t get any prompts after the comma, until I type inp, then it prompts set_link_bmp!, with_transpose, midi_channel_pressure, etc.
I get a similar issue with the stereo parameter too.
2 Likes
@boreal-ground thanks so much for the heads up. This will be resolved in RC4.
2 Likes
Hi Sam,
I found another autocomplete issue in RC-4. This one was a bit trickier than the previous Gabberkick validation issue. Shared options like depth were losing their owner context, causing fm and tremolo to show flanger docs.
I tested a possible fix locally (it compiles and fixes the issue, as shown below) and wrote the details in my blog post in this thread.
Since this touches scintilla_api.h, scintilla_api.cpp, and qt-doc.rb, I wanted to share the approach first and check if it fits the current autocomplete architecture.
P.S. Some shared options, like fm’s depth, have no validation entries (synthsinfo.rb).