Helm 1.0.0

The revival release. Helm, Matt Tytel's free polyphonic synthesizer, archived in 2022, built again on a current JUCE and in current plugin formats: CLAP, VST3, Audio Unit (macOS) and LV2, plus Helm's own standalone application, on Linux, macOS and Windows. Same synth, same sound, same 274 factory patches.

What is new

• CLAP, through clap-juce-extensions. VST2 and AAX are gone; their SDKs can no longer be distributed.
• The factory bank is found in the patches folder next to the binary, so a download works without an installer. Keep that folder beside the standalone or the plugin, or copy it to the system location Helm has always used.
• A parameter set by the host is applied to the engine at once, so hosts that set and read back without processing see the value they set.
• Two community fixes that had waited in the original repository: the filter style not refreshing when the window first opens (mtytel#275), and an unsigned negation in the oscillator.
• Tests that render audio without a window or a device, run on three platforms; the CLAP passes clap-validator, the Audio Unit passes auval, the LV2 passes lilv.

Packages for each platform are attached below by the release workflow: Linux x86_64 and arm64, macOS universal, Windows x64 and arm64. Unzip; run the standalone from anywhere, or copy a plugin into your plugin folder (paths in the README). The macOS build is unsigned; if macOS refuses it, run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine on it once.

Full details in CHANGELOG.md. Helm is by Matt Tytel; his successor to it is Vital.