Franke Music has announced that Version 2 of its Groove Synthesizer Stroke Machine for iPad is now available in the Apple App Store.
From August 22 to August 31, 2014, it is available for a 50% reduced price of 8.99 € / $9.99, afterwards the price goes back to 17.99 € / $19.99.
All known bugs are fixed and new functions have been added.
Three new views have been added:
- The Pad view offers big, velocity-sensitive pads for playing the twelve percussion sounds.
- The Mix view shows the most important mix parameters for the 24 sounds like Mute, Solo, Volume, Pan, FX Bus and FX Send. All continuous parameters can be automated.
- In the CC view, MIDI Control Change messages can be assigned to any sound, effect or mix parameter. Just tap a button of a parameter and move the desired control on your MIDI controller.
Other important improvements:
The resolution of the built-in sequencer has been increased drastically. Up to now it sported a maximum of eight bars with four beats with four steps each, now it offers up to 16 bars with 16 beats with 16 steps each. That means that a bar can have up to 256 64th notes resulting in up to 4096 64th notes for 16 bars. This allows to set unusual measures like 11/9 or 5/13.
A frequently wanted feature was to be able to set the MIDI channels of the individual parts. Now, each of the twelve melody sounds and all drum sounds at once can be set to a certain MIDI channel, to all (omni) or no (Off) channel. Setting several melody sounds to the same MIDI channel offers layering of sounds.
Stroke Machine 2 supports AudioBus 2 including saving and loading of the current kit.
Here is an overview of all improvements and fixes in Stroke Machine 2:
- Maximum settings of Bar, Beat and Step highly increased. Now a pattern can have up to 16 bars with 16 beats with 16 steps each. This amounts to up to 256 64th notes per bar and 4096 64th notes in total. Please don't blame us if you mess up your patterns, but send us audio links to interesting tracks you've created with it.
- AudioBus 2 support including saving and loading of the current Stroke Machine kit.
- Added Mix view with important mix parameters for the percussion and melody sounds like Mute, Solo, Volume, Pan, FX Bus and FX Send. To automate them, activate the respective Modulation Sequence.
- Added Pad view with big, velocity-sensitive pads for the 12 percussion sounds.
- Added MIDI channel selection for each melody sound and all percussion sounds to 1 to 16, Omni (all channels) and Off (no channel).
- Layer sounds by setting several parts to the same MIDI channel.
- Added Route button. When activated, incoming MIDI notes are routed to the currently selected sound independent of the received MIDI channel. Other sounds on the same MIDI channel are layered. When deactivated, the MIDI channel of the incoming notes is evaluated and the respective sounds are played (previous versions of Stroke Machine decided automatically if incoming MIDI notes should be routed to the selected part or not depending on the MIDI input port).
- Added Internal/External Sequencer button. When using Stroke Machine with Inter-App Audio or AudioBus, you can now select if you want to continue using the internal sequencer or the sequencer of the host app.
- Added MIDI Learn. Tap the CC button to show the MIDI Learn view. Tap on any of the lime green edit buttons to arm MIDI Learn and move a dial or slider that emits MIDI Control Change messages on your hardware controller. The MIDI Control Change message is immediately assigned to this particular parameter. The MIDI channel is learned as well, so you can assign a MIDI Control Change message on MIDI channel 5 to a sound receiving notes on MIDI channel 4. Assigning a particular MIDI Control Change message to a different parameter removes the previous assignment. To remove an assignment manually, double-tap the respective MIDI Learn button. The learned MIDI Control Change messages are saved with the Kit. Please note that some MIDI Control Change messages are excluded, those are Bank Select MSB (#0), Modulation Wheel (#1), Channel Volume (#7), Pan (#10), Expression (#11), Bank Select LSB (#32), Sustain Pedal (#64) and the Mode Switches (#120 to #127). They are reserved for future use.
- Added MIDI Program Change reception. Upon receiving a MIDI Program Change message, Stroke Machine loads the Quick Access Pattern with the respective number.
- Changed Master Volume to only control the volume of Stroke Machine rather than the overall iPad volume. This way it doesn't affect other IAA or AudioBus app.
- Added Clear Pattern button in Kit view. Tapping it clears the pattern notes while keeping the sounds and other settings.
- Added LFO phase beat sync. Activate Clock and Mono and set the Startphase to any value except random (leftmost slider position) to get an LFO cycling which is hard-synced to the beat rather than to the moment when a note is played. The former behaviour is still available when Mono is switched off.
- Fixed crash when tapping Next or Previous Kit while in topmost library folder.
- Fixed crash with Share Kit/Sound on iOS 6.
- Fixed crash when editing notes while recording.
- Fixed freeze when an interruption occurred such as an incoming Skype call.
- Fixed an issue with soloed parts when loading a kit.
- Fixed possible double playback of notes on first step when syncing to MIDI Clock.
