Please Welcome Blue Cat’s PatchWork 2.75!
Despite the small version number increment, this free update is a pretty big release, with quite a bit of background work, many new features and enhancements (some of them that have been requested for a while).
Here is an overview of the main improvements and new features you may want to have a look at. You can also read the full changelog here.
Macro Controls
You can now choose between buttons or knobs for the macro controls, and also define the default/neutral value (the value that gets set upon right-click or alt click). That’s a real workflow improvement for many plug-ins.
Audio Recorder
The application has now a built-in audio recorder (like Axiom or Fader Hub) that can record up to 16 channels of audio. Got a musical idea? You can load up your favorite effects or virtual instruments configuration and record yourself very quickly without having to load a full featured DAW.
And since the recorder can be synced with transport and writes timestamps in the recorded audio files, you can record yourself over a playback and re-import the whole session in perfect sync with the original multitrack in your favorite DAW (BWF timestamps support required).
Chains Presets
You can now copy/paste and save/reload your favorite effects chains between PRE, PARALLEL or POST chains, and even share them with our other plug-in hosts (MB-7 Mixer, Axiom, Fader Hub, Late Replies). PatchWork will automatically adjust its matrix width and height to insert the plug-ins.
Plug-Ins Bypass & Editor Display
It took a bit of time to get there to ensure full compatibility with existing presets and sessions, but you can now automate or control via MIDI individual plug-ins bypass, and open/close each plug-in user interface via MIDI or automation.
More MIDI Control
And talking about MIDI, there have been many improvements there too! It is now possible to control PatchWork’s parameters with many more types of MIDI events in addition to the traditional MIDI CC messages (14-bit CC, NRPN, various MIDI Note events, Aftertouch, Channel Pressure, Pitch Bend…).
The user interface for MIDI assignments has also been improved and optimized to accommodate for all these extra parameters that are now available.
Follow Host Zoom
All built-in plug-ins will now follow the PatchWork zoom by default, making much easier to deal with very large screen. Each individual plug-in user interface can still be zoomed independently and / or cumulate its scale factor with the main PatchWork zoom.
And all our own plug-ins (whatever their plug-in format) should also be able to follow soon… Keep connected!
Plug-In Oversampling / Offline Rendering Options
Still an experimental feature (as some hosts might have some problems with latency changes upon render, although “major” ones seem to behave properly so far), you can now select different plug-in oversampling options for real-time and offline rendering.
Plug-Ins Hosting, Performance and More…
This release also contains many improvements regarding plug-ins hosting, as well as many fixes for VST3 and Audio Unit formats. Overall performance has also been improved in many domains (MIDI/audio processing, user interface loading…), plus a couple of other goodies such as plug-in format display in window title etc. It is definitely worth updating!
Want to know more? Check out the full changelog for more details!
Enjoy!
Very nice update, a lot of improvements. One of my favourites is the MIDI stuff!
Thanks! Glad that you like it!