It's so clean. I have Microtonic installed in GarageBand but AU plugins are buried in a pretty obscure place and to be honest doesn't look that great on my Macbook Pro 15" with retina display (It's a bit small in appearance and I'd like to have it more solo'd by itself and a bit larger and crisper)

Microtonic at NAMM

_youtube reference_

GarageBand

It appears that GarageBand blurs the graphics a bit in Microtonic. Is that right or is it due to the use of the retina display and enlargement of graphics within Microtonic?

Free VST/AU Host

I tried to get VST Lord, and the link provided on the Microtonic page is broken... any recommendations on a decent free VST/AU host? I'm primarily going to be using this with my new PO-32, but I do have some MIDI keyboards as well.

Thanks!

Standalone

It does kind of look that way, doesn't it... is a standalone version coming?

Yes, Microtonic 3.2 will have a standalone app, at least for Mac.

I recommend Hosting AU (http://ju-x.com/hostingau.html) as a lightweight alternative to running a full-blown DAW. It only works for AudioUnit plugins though.

Thanks Juan. Do you know where the Microtonic plugin gets installed to on the Mac or how to load it in Hosting AU? I tried loading the plugin with Hosting AU and it doesn't seem to be able to find it, however in GarageBand it does.

All my AU plug-ins are installed in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/, which seems to be the default. Hosting AU runs in 64-bit by default, maybe you have an older, 32-bit version of Microtonic? The home page explains how to run it in 32-bit mode.

standalone version will there be exported to a wave file?

You can export a pattern to WAV file yes, this feature can already be found under the pattern menu "Export Pattern Chain to Audio File..."

Thanks Juan. The microtonic.component was there, but as it turns out I was just trying to load it the wrong way. You just pick Track A, Click No Instrument and select Microtonic.

Fredrick, any chance the PO-32 Sync audio generator will have a Export to WAV option as well? If this was compressed and played back, any chance it would still sync?

Ah no, you will not be able to export the transfer signal, you would have to record it. The algorithm Magnus came up with is pretty tolerant, but lossy audio compression could most likely mess with the frequencies. Just make sure you save the recording in uncompressed format. If you run Microtonic in a host, the audio will go out the standard outputs, so you should be able to bounce that down. Make sure you do not have any effects on the track. Using the standalone you can use Soundflower for example to route the sound internally and record it with a different software on the same machine.

Depends on the compression. Something like 192 kbps mp3 is no problem at all, but the harder you compress the more damage of course. Lossy audio compression is not really meant for signals like this. On the other hand I often record my dumps from PO-32 in 8-bit 11kHz. That is enough bandwidth for the signal and is only 88 kbps.

About the blurry graphics in GarageBand mentioned earlier: Fredrik made the new graphics for v3.2 a lot "crispier" and I have changed the way that the window is drawn (in all hosts) so that our plug-ins will look less blurry on Retina Macs.

Yeah, I take that back. I did some more testing and with a clean signal (recorded with line out) mp3 compressions works surprisingly well, all the way down to 48 Kbps. I even did some transfers at 32 Kbps. =)

Thanks for the very detailed responses Fredrik and Magnus!