Brainspawn has announced the release of version 2.0 of Forte. This new version of Forte brings many new features and improvements including:

Adapt to New Hardware:

• Powerful wizard to change MIDI port mappings or audio driver configuration.
• Easily adapt to hardware changes.
• Save multiple hardware profiles in a rack file and load the rack on multiple computers with no remapping required. Select from several compatible profiles on rack load (PRODUCER EDITION exclusive).

Control Surface Support:

• Control Forte with Frontier TranzPort or Mackie Control.
• Create user-defined control surface definitions.
• Mute/Unmute instruments, bypass/unbypass effects, and mix volume in realtime.

Import Scenes and Songs:

• Reuse Scenes and Songs by importing them from other racks.

Enhanced MIDI Processing:

• Hold notes across a scene change even if the new scene has different note filtering.
• Add an initial value to controller mappings. Initial values are set when on scene change.
• Toggle mode without an initial value for improved stomp-box support.

MIDI Output From Plugins:

• Plugins that can output MIDI now appear as virtual MIDI input ports to other plugins.

Enhanced Audio Configuration:

• Dynamically choose ASIO driver when you create the first bus. No need to select from preferences or restart.

Improved Plugin Management and Compatibility:

• Improved plugin menus.
• Spotlight search for plugins by name, vendor, or file path.
• Route MIDI to insert effects with the same full level of flexibility as instruments, including per-port and per-channel routing and key range mapping with transpose.

Two Editions: Performer and Producer Editions:

• Performer Edition: Similar to previous versions of Forte but with more convenient and powerful hardware change adaptation.
• Producer Edition: Configure and choose from multiple hardware profiles and effortlessly move racks between computers. This includes a site-license to install Forte on up to 10 computers.

And many other improvements. Full release notes are available here.

Pricing & Availability

New customers can purchase a license for:

• Forte 2.0 Producer Edition $499.95
• Forte 2.0 Performer Edition $149.95

Existing users can upgrade from Forte 1 to Forte 2:

• Forte 2.0 Producer Edition Upgrade $349.95
• Forte 2.0 Producer Edition Upgrade for EHCo owners $299.95
• Forte 2.0 Performer Edition Upgrade $39.95

For a limited time, the upgrade from Forte 1.6 to Forte 2.0 Performer is only $29.95.

If you purchased Forte 1.6 after September 1st, 2008, you may obtain a free update to Forte 2.0 Performer Edition.