U&I Software has released MetaSynth 5, a composition and sound design program using a strictly visual interface, with customizable tunings and image synthesis.

MetaSynth is a revolutionary electronic music and sound design environment. It is not a soft synth but a full-fledged sound design and electronic music studio.

Changes in MetaSynth 5

  • General Features
    • MetaSynth 5 is universal binary, multi-threaded and fully Leopard-compatible.
    • Recording available in both Sample Editor and Montage Room.
    • 32-bit floating point sound buffers and 64-bit floating point math for all audio operations.
    • Full support for .caf and .wav files.
    • Add output device selection to Preferences.
    • Files can be saved at up to 32-bit resolution.
    • Much longer sounds can be loaded and created than previously.
  • Sample Editor
    • New Slide Selection Samples tool.
    • New Swap Left/Right command.
    • Record to the sample editor.
    • Longer sounds can be loaded than previously.
    • Direct loading of mp3 format files.
  • Effects Room
    • Render to disk.
    • Convolution.
    • Improved Graphic EQ crossfades.
  • Image Synth/Image Filter
    • 11 instrument modes and many new instrument capabilities added.
    • New Drawing Tools.
    • New Remap Colors mode.
    • Support for importing most image types.
    • Remove the 16 kHz limit for notes.
    • Render to disk command/2X oversampling.
    • Batch Render command.
    • Fit Tempo command.
    • New Play Selection button.
    • New scales added to Fit To Scale.
    • Automatic retriggering.
  • Instruments
    • 11 new multiwaves instrument modes.
    • New Grain Synth (Granular Synth) modes.
    • Sampler/MultiSampler attack mode filters.
    • Sampler/MultiSampler new sample start time options.
    • Envelope control of many MultiWave Synth parameters.
    • Fine-tuning parameter implemented for the wavetable synth.
    • WaveTable editor updated.
    • Several new instrument effects.
    • Allow instruments to have an attack of 0 ms.
    • Many new attack mode filters.
    • Live switching between presets with different instrument types.
    • MultiWaveSynth Anti-aliasing.
    • Velocity mapping.
    • Many more improvements.
  • Image Filter
    • Improve behavior when opening different preset libraries in the Image Synth and Image Filter Rooms.
    • Improve behavior when using different libraries for the Select Preset and Apply Filter libraries.
    • Improve cross-fade with surrounding audio when applying image filter to a selection.
  • Spectrum Synth
    • Pitch-range selection.
    • Time Blur command.
    • Pitch Blur command.
    • Amplitude Color Table.
  • Montage Room
    • 24 Tracks.
    • New Apply Current Effect command.
    • New track effects.
    • VTrack/Montage Room communication.
    • New mechanism added for resetting path of missing sounds.
    • Display muted tracks with faded colors for clarity.
    • Shift-key-volume change for global volume change.
    • Default montage.
    • New multipoint envelopes.
    • Stereo recording enabled.
    • Allow selection of audio device input channel for recording.
    • Montage no longer pre-mixes tracks to disk when recording.
    • Send sounds, spectrum sequences and sequences to the current montage.
  • VTrack/Montage Communication
    • MetaSynth can now communicate with VTrack 2.6 or later.
    • When VTrack is open, setting the insertion point in a montage will cause VTrack to display the corresponding image in its preview.
    • When VTrack is open, clicking Play in the MetaSynth Montage Room will cause VTrack to playback its montage in a floating mini-preview.
  • Miscellaneous Improvements and Changes
    • Numerous optimizations and performance tweaks.
    • Improved color/black-and-white conversions.
    • Render popup. Option-clicking on the render icon, pops up the Render Options menu.
    • Improved Reso Sweep effect quality (Montage and Instruments Effect).
    • Improved multisampler and sampler auto pitch mapping.
    • Many new shortcut keys.
    • Montage Room no longer requires that you render items when (or before) they are inserted in the montage.
    • Montage Room now requires that sequences and spectrum sequences be located in the montage’s folder.
    • Saving a sequence saves its instrument to its folder. This ensures that a sequence’s instrument can be found.
    • Append flt when processed preference.
    • Montage Effect and Instrument Effects can now be saved to disk so that favorite settings can be easily saved and reloaded.
    • Scale files created with UNIX line endings now work correctly.
    • Image Filter gain is slightly lower than in version 4.
    • LR no longer added when saving AIF files.
  • Removed Features
    • Open IS Presets removed from Montage file popup.
    • Support for MetaSynth 2.x files dropped.
    • Support for dual mono (split stereo) files dropped.
    • Mix 50% command removed.

MetaSynth 5 is available for Mac (Leopard-compatible) for $599 USD.

More information: U&I Software