Toontrack releases EZkeys Cinematic Pads and updates EZkeys to v1.3.1 - native Apple silicon support

Toontrack has announced the release of EZkeys Cinematic Pads, an all-new EZkeys instrument ideal for ambient soundscapes, scores and sound design. The EZkeys software has been updated to v1.3.1, featuring native Apple silicon support to the VST, AU and standalone.

Here's what they say:

EZkeys Cinematic Pads is based around several analogue and modular synths as well as a vintage grand piano and an electric bowed guitar. Together, these components form a never-before-heard hybrid instrument of reverberant, peculiar, fluttering, ominous, visceral, fluid and literally out-of-this-world audio landscapes. With this at hand, you're an intrepid explorer at the helm of an audio vessel headed straight into the unknown – weightlessly drifting through an interstellar cosmos en route to uncharted sonic frontiers. If you let yourself go, you'll enter a realm where the divide between reality and dream is nothing but a lucid gradient ready for you to pierce though.

YouTube.com/watch?v=LO-O7W9Lrj8

Feature Spotlight:

• A hybrid instrument of never-before-heard textures of sound.
• Based on several analogue and modular synths as well as a grand piano and an electric bowed guitar.
• In excess of 70 mix-ready presets offering a widely creative panorama of ambient sounds.
• Ideal for anything from soundscapes, scores and sound design to modern pop and electronic.

Audio demos, video and more info at: toontrack.com/product/ezkeys-cinematic-pads

Intro Price: €60 as a Sound Expansion (Reg. €75) / €155.

Changes in EZkeys 1.3.1

General:

• Added native Apple silicon support to the VST, AU and standalone. The About dialog says "64-bit ARM" (instead of "64-bit Intel") when running in native Apple silicon mode.
• New standalone and document icons on Mac, in Big Sur style.
• Bitmap interpolation has been turned off for Mac Retina displays, to make the graphics less blurry and to remove certain artifacts, for example horizontal lines in the Favorites browser.
• "Check for Updates" can now open the Product Manager (if installed) instead of the download web page.

Standalone:

• On Windows, two new device types are available: "WASAPI (Exclusive Mode) " and "WASAPI (Low Latency Mode) ".

Bug Fixes in EZkeys 1.3.1

General:

• Studio One should no longer crash if you drag MIDI from EZkeys to another plug-in.
• On Windows, it should no longer crash if some unknown object type (not a file) is dragged to EZkeys.
• On Mac, the gray overlay graphics for MIDI-learning a control was sometimes not shown or could have artifacts. It could even cause a crash.

Song Track:

• The MIDI file created when you drag from the song track out from EZkeys no longer contains any meta texts, so that it works better to drag to Logic Pro X 10.6+ and GarageBand 10.4+ (an extra track would be created just for the meta texts and the notes were placed on another track).
• Pedal states are now set/reset whenever song track playback starts and when the playhead is moved during playback.
• The play button would sometimes look pressed when playback had been stopped. It was especially likely to happen after recording a new song block.
• The red recording block would sometimes extend to the beginning of the track even if the recording was not started at bar 1.

Browser:

• User folders are no longer formatted like Toontrack MIDI folders. That fixes for example this issue: Adding a folder starting with an underscore would make it look like a header and it would not be possible to remove from the browser.
• Shift-clicking on a file in the browser when nothing was selected would cause a crash.

Standalone:

• Quitting immediately after startup would show the quit confirmation dialog even though nothing had been changed.