Sagan Technology has made pre-release version 6.3.3 of Metro available.
New in this version:
- Support for format converter Audio Units. This is a special kind of AudioUnit whereby amount of input audio data is not always equal to the amount of output audio data. In OS 10.4 (Tiger) Apple released a Time/Pitch stretching audio unit that is completely supported. This AudioUnit, when available, is now used as the default for Metro's time stretching and transposition of audio. It can also be used for audio scrubbing as noted below.
- Audio Scrubbing under OS X is now functional. There are 3 types of scrubbing. With the mouse down in the audio area of the graphic editor and scrubbing enabled in the switches menu, the scrub mode can be selected with the following keys: 'A' - Normal Scrub. 'S'- Unity Scrub, this limits the playback speed to a maximum rate of normal allowing playback forward and reverse to follow the cursor. Option - Shuttle Scrub.
- The continuous data dialog now allows exact ranges of floating point values to be entered depending on the selected parameter. For AudioUnit and VST automation this makes it possible to set exact values.
- Locking fast forward, no pitch change fast forward (under Tiger only) and other options. Control-click the fast forward button for options. The setting here affects audio scrubbing as well.
- Minor cosmetic changed to the graphic editor audio display.
- Audio regions can have names and those names are now displayed in the graphic editor. To edit them, double click on the audio region.
- The meaning of bypassing a MIDI soft synth effect has changed so that the audio is bypassed and so are the MIDI notes but program changes and other non-sounding events are passed through. Previously all events were filtered while bypass was enabled.
- This is the first version of Metro that uses Carbon Events. This should result in performance improvements.
- The graphic editor, tracks window and event list editor displays are updated quicker upon opening a Metro document.
- It is now possible to drag files from the jukebox or the plug-ins window without bringing the window to the front.
- Zooming in the graphic editor is improved as discussed in the Metro feature request forum.
- The cursor changes to a hand when in audio region editing mode in the graphic editor and a resize cursor when over the region drag handles.
- The offline plug-in menu is now sorted by the last sorted method in the plug-ins window.
- Dragging sections in the sections window will not save the sections to the undo history if the command key is held down. For huge files this could be very slow while it devours all of available memory.
- Double clicking on a pan knob or a volume slider in the mixer window returns it to its default value.
- Note pad actions are now totally undoable including typing, clearing, cutting and pasting.
- Changing the setting 'Plug in Manages Presets' in the plug-ins window now deletes all current presets until the plug-in is reinstantiated.
For a complete list of fixes please see the version history in the Sagan Technology forum.
