Mz950 v0.6.1

Built from cf88cadccea882953bd60590bdf5e4d085a05b73 by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  5cf442e4310d6801bdb3fe1bec99fe3e7996478b23a518742fd3653df7562186

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Mz950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• Mz950 - a VST3 that plays those disks back in a DAW
• Standalone - the same emulator without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

v0.6.1

Every synth note is one voice now, and the LFO reaches the audio range and
locks to your DAW's tempo.

NEW

LFO tempo sync (MIDI CC 115): a Sync switch under the LFO's Shape box. The
Rate knob becomes a division (CC 116), from 4 bars to 1/64 with dotted and
triplet values. With the song playing, the LFO locks to the song position,
so Square and S&H step exactly on the beat. S&H also repeats the same steps
at the same bar every pass. Without a host it runs at 120 BPM.

CHANGED

Synth tab: the oscillators are mixed into one looped sample, so a note is
one voice. Each oscillator used to be its own keygroup: a three-oscillator
note took three of the eight voices, and in mono with glide you could hear
oscillators drop out. Detuned oscillators get a loop long enough (up to
about 2.5 s) to land within a cent of their settings, closer than the old
6.25-cent steps. Old synth projects are rebuilt when they load and keep
their Program-tab settings.

LFO Rate is exponential: octaves from the programme's own rate, from x1/64
(a cycle of over half a minute) to x256, into the audio range, where Square
or S&H on Pitch or Filter buzzes and screams. The knob reads as a
multiplier.

A saved session with an LFO Rate offset will play at a different speed.
Multi-oscillator synth patches may be a few dB quieter than before.

Full notes in CHANGELOG.md.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

Mz950 v0.6.1-beta1

Built from d690e34dd58f3408cb7141b101ade00b6a106468 by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  deb4427f4f64bb5590300d1794761bb3c0590235684bfb3cbdcc8194b8145a3e

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Mz950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• Mz950 - a VST3 that plays those disks back in a DAW
• Standalone - the same emulator without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

macOS

Mz950-*-macOS.zip has the VST3, an Audio Unit for Logic and GarageBand, the
standalone app and the sound library, for Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 11 or
later. It isn't notarized by Apple, so macOS won't open it with a double-click:
install it with one Terminal command, as READ ME FIRST.txt inside explains.
Mz950 Studio, the disk editor, is Windows-only.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

Mz950 v0.6.0

Built from 240a0337b16d5959dffe8a44cf86095743cac0be by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  5ee76420766b29e9f01c621a28bb442d62cf22c87736f49550960950f5e3ae28

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Mz950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• Mz950 - a VST3 that plays those disks back in a DAW
• Standalone - the same emulator without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

v0.6.0

Filter resonance up to self-oscillation, LFO shapes, and a Perform-tab LFO that
reaches the filter and goes further than the S950's. All of it is on the Perform
tab and none of it is written to the disk. At zero, it's the machine.

NEW

Res (MIDI CC 71): filter resonance, which the S950 never had. It's a peak at
the cutoff, rising to about +15 dB. Past about 92% the filter self-oscillates,
a clean sine at the cutoff that follows Filter, the filter envelope and
velocity. At 0% it's the S950's filter exactly.

LFO Shape (MIDI CC 113): Sine (the S950's), Saw, Square or S&H.

LFO Filter depth (MIDI CC 114): the LFO moves the cutoff too, by up to three
octaves either way. Square or S&H with some Res gives the classic stepped
filter.

CHANGED

The LFO knobs follow the S950's scale over its range, then carry on past it:

• Pitch depth grows to a whole octave at +99.
• Rate goes both ways, down to 0.1 Hz.
• Delay goes both ways, and at -99 removes a programme's fade-in.

Pitch depth was labelled Depth, and it now sits beside Filter depth.

A saved session with LFO Pitch depth above +50 will now sound deeper.

FIXED

The LFO Rate knob did nothing to keygroups that share the programme's LFO
(desync off).

Full notes in CHANGELOG.md.

Mz950 v0.5.3

Built from 2e9889a156d6acbc0682c6b414c0c05f5b139da8 by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  dd1d21e1d5cc2d999c324f412c1e878dc7cfb5153ed546221ebb847954ddff98

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Mz950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• Mz950 - a VST3 that plays those disks back in a DAW
• Standalone - the same emulator without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

Full notes in CHANGELOG.md.

Mz950 v0.5.2

Built from 1a07d89ec32c37a7c50908d517fd575466eb7bac by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  0c3751337add6046691cc63c5f0bd0b73037fb417a0cc58c4938e08130009396

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Mz950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• Mz950 - a VST3 that plays those disks back in a DAW
• Standalone - the same emulator without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

v0.5.2

The Windows file dialog, a smaller window with a balanced layout, and old
Synth-tab disks put back in tune.

NEW

Load disk and Save disk open the Windows file dialog, owned by the plugin
window: it appears on top of the plugin - even one your DAW keeps always on
top - and on the same monitor, not the primary display.

A smaller window (640 x 640, was 720 x 720) with smaller knobs, and pages
that line up: Perform's rows share one centre line, each Program page is
centred in its panel, and the Synth page fills its height.

FIXED

A Synth-tab disk saved in a project before v0.5.0 played out of tune (a
5-cent detune came back nearly a semitone flat). It is now rendered again
from its saved Synth settings when the project opens. Tuning you set by hand
on the Program tab is left alone.

Full notes in CHANGELOG.md.

Mz950 v0.5.1

Built from c6b44a2c26d4f5ac61fb4c72aa915441eb39c022 by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  a1c969b6afef7f96631ddd190d4cd1e899487a13eb0b725ce8c886895f972234

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Mz950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• Mz950 - a VST3 that plays those disks back in a DAW
• Standalone - the same emulator without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

Mz950 v0.5.0

v0.5.0

The release where VirtualS950 became Mz950, grew a Synth tab and a Program tab,
and was held against a real S950 on ten test programmes - which found four
places the engine read a disk differently from the machine.

Mz950 is an emulator that plays back Akai S900/S950 disk images, as a VST3, a
standalone app and the Mz950 Studio editor. It is not affiliated with Akai.

NEW

Mz950. VirtualS950 is renamed. The plugin's IDs are unchanged, so projects
that used it still load it.

A Synth tab: oscillators (PWM, phase, FM, ring), a General MIDI drum kit
outside the voice limit, and presets - rendered as a real S950 disk.

Program and Perform tabs: every keygroup setting, edited into the disk in
memory, with a keygroup strip that lights as notes hit it.

Glide, a polyphony limit with mono legato, and Wide - all marked as not
features of the S950.

A new look, with colours chosen to read without red/green.

MEASURED ON THE MACHINE, AND CORRECTED

A zone's transpose and fine are one number, in sixteenths of a semitone -
not transpose + fine/256. 544 library zones use them; some keygroups played
five semitones out.

The filter's top is a fixed 16.3 kHz, not a fraction of the playback rate.
Notes played far below their root now keep the machine's treble - its grit.

Past about 156 kHz playback a note drops by octaves, as the machine does.

One-shots stop at their end marker; notes start at their start marker.

The release begins 15 ms after the note-off.

UPGRADING

The five sound-library disks are regenerated: they had written octaves in a
way the S950 itself reads as +192 semitones. Synth-tab disks saved with an
earlier version should be rendered again.

Full notes in CHANGELOG.md.

VirtualS950 v0.4.0

Built from 7b40c88ccf4a80c6f841092d28f48f39e52fe9b6 by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  749616ced9982f940fc5a9251b581f90be2d7a10b86cb55652d3669579d5e28a

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Akai S950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• VirtualS950 - a VST3 that plays those disks in a DAW
• Standalone - the same instrument without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

VirtualS950 v0.3.0

Built from 4e546837d2a7314e2cd660bc7f1e66448ea4fec0 by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  cbdfa4ab257afeeaecb3fe9839151de1aa0b7c25d938c0ad5cc248ab086dd423

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Akai S950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• VirtualS950 - a VST3 that plays those disks in a DAW
• Standalone - the same instrument without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.

VirtualS950 v0.2.0

Built from d9708b74ec604745e79cdc5431b8d6908fa0ac20 by GitHub Actions.

SHA-256  9b9808469063eb4981577385605897cbe77adf84281d49614c8824ab4aec6453

The installer is not signed

Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" and hide the Run button behind
More info. That is SmartScreen reacting to an executable it has not seen
before, not a judgement about this one. Check the SHA-256 above if you would
rather verify than trust.

What it installs

• Akai S950 Studio - open, edit and save S900/S950 disk images (.hfe and .img)
• VirtualS950 - a VST3 that plays those disks in a DAW
• Standalone - the same instrument without a host
• A sound library - five disks of synthesised sounds, so it makes a noise
  without your owning a single floppy
• A tutorial, in the program group and under Help in the editor

Each is optional, and the installer asks whether it is for everyone or just you.

Licence

AGPLv3. The source for this build is the tag it was made from.