Saturday 25 May 2013

Symphonix Evolution 2.0.1 is Incoming

We're releasing a minor update to Symphonix Evolution soon that's a response to some of the feedback we've had after the massive 2.0 release.  These changes add some refinements to the app and address some small issues that have been raised.  As usual we can't thank our users enough for the wonderful feedback we get.  Thanks to you, we're working on some amazing new functionality over the next couple of months!

Here's the new features:
  • It's now easier to add Repeat Bars. The app no longer requires the user to select the exact start and end of the measures where repeats will be applied and will automatically detect the start and end of the measure. Also added a Repeat option to the "Measure" button on the main toolbar so that the user can mark a selection and then press Repeat to quickly add Repeat Bars.

    This addresses one of the common support requests we get and makes it easier than ever to mark a section of music and mark it for repeating.
  • New selection menu options for "Expand" and "Compress": Use the Expand option to increase the space between the notes in a selection. Use the Compress option to bring the notes closer together.  This is great when you're working on a track and would like to add some expression or detail - just mark a section and choose "Expand" to add some more room between the notes.
     
  • We've also made some refinements to the app's external MIDI Command function.  Firstly we've added a new "Switch" setting to the MIDI Commands screen to assist with mapping pads with velocity to on/off commands. Use it by setting the controller value to "129" (the display will read "fader" for 128 and "switch" for 129). Once the "Switch" setting is active, non-zero inputs will be mapped to "127" and then only the first non-zero value will trigger the command so that the pad input is effectively converted to a momentary and then latched.  This is great for MIDI controllers that have lots of velocity-sensitive pads because you can now turn the pads into a bank of on/off switches for common functions.  A lot of "DJ Controllers" fit into this category, as does the forthcoming QuNexus controller from Keith McMillen Instruments.
  • In addition to the "switch" function above, we've also added a new MIDI command "ARP+Hold Toggle". This works exactly like "ARP Toggle" except that the ARP Hold is automatically enabled when ARP is switched on.  So it's now possible to press a button on an external controller to both activate ARP and put it into "keyboard hold" mode automatically.
  • We had a query about whether it was possible to unlink the app from Dropbox once you'd set it up, for example if your Dropbox account changed.  This update allows the user to unlink the app from Dropbox from the File Load/Save screen.  When viewing Dropbox files a red Unlink button will appear in the top right corner of the file browser. Press this button to remove the link to Dropbox.
  • We've tidied up some of the screens, using rounded buttons and generally just doing some housekeeping to make them more consistent overall.  The Home screen icon has also changed to "Symphonix EV" so that the whole label is visible without the "..." in the middle.
This version also fixes a number of bugs that have been reported, including:
  • The Controllers function now allows a System Exclusive from the Device Manager to be added to the score. This was a bug preventing the Select button from being visible, which made it impossible to use the SysEx Library in the Device Manager (doh!).
  • Fixed a bug where the Device Manager and Controller screens did not handle long SysEx messages.  Previously these scrolled very strangely and sometimes were truncated as well, causing all sorts of other issues due to an incomplete SysEx message being sent by the app.  SysEx in general should be much more stable with this release.
  • Fixed a bug when copying and pasting notes with ties, beams or slurs.  After pasting the links between the notes were broken.  If you were lucky, this manifested as a garbled display.  But this bug could also cause instability and crashes after using the copy/paste function.  It was particularly nasty because the crash could occur after you'd saved the song and tried to reload it later.
  • Fixed a bug where slurs were not printed correctly.
  • Improved stability of the Lyric Pad.  We had a number of reports of problems with the new Lyric Pad we introduced in Version 2.0.  This new version should be a lot more stable.
Version 2.0.1 will be available very soon, after we finish doing some final testing.  Over the next few weeks we'll let you know what else we're working on!