The Big Update Bash of 2014
December 28, 2014
It has become something of a tradition here at Sonic Charge to present something new around Christmas and this year is no exception. What began as a fairly small update to Permut8 soon escalated and became our most massive update endeavor yet. We ended up with new versions for each and every AU/VST plug-in that we sell: Microtonic 3.1.1, Synplant 1.2.1, Bitspeek 1.5 and Permut8 1.1. As usual, these updates are free of charge for existing customers.The biggest news are Bitspeek 1.5 and Permut8 1.1. Bitspeek 1.5 comes with the improved audio engine that is used in the Rack Extensions version. This means a vastly improved volume envelope tracker and true support for stereo input / output. ("Legacy mode" is available for backwards compatibility or if you just want Bitspeek to sound worse.) We have also added the frequently requested dry / wet mix knob (with proper latency compensation) as well as the standard set of "convenience features" that you can find in most of our products (copy / paste, undo / redo etc). If you don't own Bitspeek yet you can now try version 1.5 for three weeks with full functionality.
Permut8 1.1 is the first version of Permut8 that officially supports "alternative firmwares" (although preliminary support was there in version 1.0 already). Alternative firmwares expands the functionality of Permut8 with entirely new DSP algorithms that you load into Permut8 simply by opening a special file type. The firmware code runs in a virtual CPU that is completely isolated from your native processor and cannot crash your host. Furthermore the actual DSP code is stored in your song files, so you will never need to keep track of which version of which firmware you used for a particular project. It will just work. Forever. And it will always sound exactly the same.
A suite of alternative firmwares is available to download for registered customers (again free of charge) from our download page. Included firmwares are: Beatrick, Bender, BitBox, Mozaik, Reciter, Pong and RingMod. This little video shows them all:
Apart from this, Permut8 now supports undo / redo, bouncing to WAV file and much more.
Microtonic 3.1.1 and Synplant 1.2.1 are relatively minor updates. We have added a couple of buttons in the file browsers for easier navigation between factory and user presets. We have fixed a bunch of minor bugs and compatibility issues and they now include support for our new unified Sonic Charge Plug-in multi-installer. The multi-installer makes installing and upgrading our plug-ins a lot easier than before. Just click the fat download button on http://soniccharge.com/download to begin.
All updates replace the old versions but they are 100% backwards compatible and should sound 100% identical when you load your old patches and songs. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong and you want to roll back you can find installers for the outdated versions on our download page.
Last but not least we have introduced a bundle containing all four of our AU / VST plug-ins for the unbeatable price of $222 (excl. VAT in Europe). That's $75 saving.
Happy holidays and sincere wishes for a fabulous 2015 from Magnus & Fredrik Lidström!