ChipWave Studio 0.2.13.0: live recording, quick modulation and a backlit LCD

Live recording, quick modulation and a backlit LCD

0.2.13.0 shows your recording live, in a block that grows as you play. Every knob gets a quick modulation dot, with Speed and Length controls in plain words. The instrument header is tidier, the top display is now a backlit mint LCD, and a keyboard icon turns on playing notes from the computer keyboard. Every song saves, plays and renders exactly as before. Help > Check for updates offers this version.

Download

• Windows: ChipWave-0.2.13.0-setup-x64.exe (installer) or the portable ChipWave-0.2.13.0-windows-x64.zip. The installer isn't code-signed, so SmartScreen may warn: click "More info", then "Run anyway".
• macOS (universal, unsigned: Control-click > Open): ChipWave-0.2.13.0-macos-universal.dmg (or the .zip) runs on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 11 or later. It isn't notarised, so the first time, Control-click the app and choose Open, or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/ChipWave.app. See MACOS.md.
• SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums of all eight files.

New: a live recording block

• Press Record and a REC block opens on the recording track straight away. It grows with the playhead with no length limit, staying about two bars ahead, even past the song's end.
• Each note appears as you play it, with a short fade-in. The block has a red tint and outline, a pulsing edge and a "● REC" label.
• On Stop it becomes a normal clip, with its length rounded up to the bar. The whole take is one undo step, and a take with no notes is dropped.
• Loop recording overdubs into the same block in place, and Follow keeps the playhead in view. With Motion set to reduced there's no pulse or fade.

New: quick modulation on every knob

• Click the small dot on a knob, or right-click > Modulate with…, to open "Modulate with…". Choose LFO, Envelope, Random, Velocity or Mod wheel.
• Speed is a labelled slider in plain words: "1/16 note", "1 beat (1/4 note)" or "2 bars", up to 8 bars, with Sync to tempo. Untick it for 0.02 to 20 Hz. Ctrl+drag gives fine steps and a double-click resets.
• Length and Attack for envelopes are in ms / s, or in beats and bars when synced. Smooth glides between Random steps, and Amount ("+25 %") sets how far the knob moves.
• A live preview draws the shape, with a dot moving at the real speed while the song plays.
• One Movement list per instrument shows everything that moves, with rows such as "LFO 1 sine · 1 beat → Cutoff · +25 %". Click a row to edit it. The list replaces the old Routings card, the modulator chips and WaveForge's Src / Dst pickers.
• Where an instrument has its own modulators (WaveForge, StringWave, the ChipWave synth), quick modulation uses them. Otherwise it adds a song-level modulator, so the song format is unchanged.

Changed: a tidier instrument header

• No tab counts and a Modulation dot on the tab. The tab is now called "Synth". Hints are in a ? tooltip, full view is an F11 icon, Save rack is in a ⋯ menu, and the duplicate breadcrumb is gone.

Changed: a backlit mint LCD and a keyboard icon

• The top display is now light, backlit glass with Atkinson Mono digits, toggle pills for Loop / Click / Rec / Follow, and DSP and BUF meters. Mint is the new default. Cyan, Amber, Green, Red and Ice are now backlight tints, and saved choices keep working.
• Keys → Notes is now a keyboard icon, lit while it's on, with the octave and velocity in its tooltip. It's on by default when no MIDI keyboard is connected and off when one is. Once you switch it yourself, your choice is saved.

The song format is unchanged, so songs still open in 0.2.12.0.

Before release, these checks were run on the release code (the merge into main has the same files): the automated test suite (1112 tests passed, 18 slow ones skipped, plus 3 more in a second suite), including new tests for the live block, quick modulation, the Movement list, the LCD and the keys default; the 11 racks acceptance tests, 6 Rack tests and 10 piano-roll copy tests; rustfmt; clippy for the Linux and Windows targets; an icon check; and a render check. The render check confirmed that the demo songs, the older-version fixture songs and the generator presets render bit-identically to the same reference renders 0.2.12.0 matched, and StringWave's Velvet Ensemble preset renders the same as before. The macOS build passed its CI build, launch smoke test and dmg check.

Full details are in the CHANGELOG.

Known limits

• A synced envelope Length is stored in seconds at the tempo it was set at, so it doesn't follow later tempo changes. StringWave's LFOs only run in Hz, so their synced speed is converted at the current tempo.
• The ChipWave synth's own LFO syncs up to 2 bars. Slower speeds use a song-level LFO.
• On WaveForge, the Envelope uses its own filter envelope, so there's no Length slider there. Its Attack and Decay knobs set the length.
• The LFO shape can be changed in the popover only for song-level LFOs. Engine LFOs keep the shape set on their own card.
• The preview dot runs at the real speed but isn't locked to the song position.
• The popover's source buttons can wrap "Mod wheel" onto a second row.
• Testing: the Mac build was tested on CI only, not on a real Mac. This Windows installer was built and checked on Linux, not run on Windows before release. Please report anything odd in an issue.

Credits

• Live recording, quick modulation, header, LCD and keyboard icon work by Del (postmanpat).
• Still building on egui (Emil Ernerfeldt), cpal, CLAP via clap-sys, the vst3 crate, Symphonia, sfxr by DrPetter, Pink Trombone by Neil Thapen, the Atkinson Hyperlegible fonts by the Braille Institute of America, and all the other Rust crate authors.

The full list is in Help > About, the README and THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.txt.