Blue Cat's PatchWork 1.7 Available, with Ext. Sidechain, Aux Outputs and Plug-In I/O Routing

[Blue Cat Audio]

Dear KVR Members,

We are very excited to announce the release of Blue Cat's PatchWork 1.7, bringing super flexible audio routing for your plug-ins chains.

With up to 16 I/O channels for the standalone application, external sidechain input for the effect and auxiliary outputs for the instrument,Blue Cat's PatchWork external connection capabilities have been brought to a new level.

"With great power comes great responsibility", so this new release also adds new internal audio routing features: you can now select the I/O channels used for each plug-in - it is very easy to create aux sends, process individual channels separately or apply effects the sidechain signal, without having to manage cable connections.



Please check the PatchWork page for more details, or our blog post about these new features.

This update is of course free for existing customers and can be downloaded from the same page as the original full version.

New features:
- The effect version now supports external side chain input.
- The synth version now includes multiple output busses (up to 16 output channels).
- The standalone application now offers up to 16 audio I/O.
- Sub plug-ins audio i/o routing: connect the inputs and outputs of each plug-in to any channel.
- Latency is now compensated for individual channels when a plug-in is processing only a subset of all available channels.
Fixes:
- Fixed side chain input always fed with silence for some Audio Unit plug-ins.
- Fixed issue with standalone application: displayed i/o were not reset properly when changing i/o configuration.
- Fixed a crash with some VST plug-ins that use long preset names.
- Fixed demo version popup window freezing Pro Tools in some situations.

Enjoy!

[vic_france]

just gets better and better

[Blue Cat Audio]

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Guillaume, this one is definitely on my to buy list. Seems like it'll allow me to create the multi effects unit of my dreams.

Since you have figured out the hosting plugins inside a plugin thing, have you considered building a simple VST plugin analyzer, similar to Christian Budde's? Would be great to see something like that but with the ability to change the input signal type, frequency and level. I'd also like to have an easy way to see attack and release curves in dynamics processors, on top of the usual THD and frequency response plots. Would be cool if we could do that and chain plugins at the same time.

Anyway, just an idea. I'll probably buy a Patchwork license over the weekend.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Quick question: I know about the copy/paste options, but is there a "swap" option or another way I can quickly experiment with changing the plugin order? Ultimately, drag and drop of plugin locations would be ideal.

[klinik]

nice, does it allow to do feedback paths?? Thanks!

[Blue Cat Audio]

There is currently no other way than copy/paste to move things around, but drag & drop or swap/insert are indeed options we'd like to add in the future.

@klinik: feedback paths are not possible with PatchWork as chains are "hard wired". True delay-less feedback loops with plug-ins is actually not possible, so you would have to cope with delays and buffering anyway, so I am not sure what you could do with it...

[Blue Cat Audio]

@Funkybot: plug-in analysis is a pretty wide topic, and there are indeed internal tools that may be released one of these days (just like Blue Cat's Plug'n Script last year), but there is no plan right now.

And you can already do quite a lot of things using the PatchWork plug-in or app together with our multiple instances analysis tools (with one instance before and another one after the plug-in).

[Blue Cat Audio]

[double post]

[klinik]

@klinik: feedback paths are not possible with PatchWork as chains are "hard wired". True delay-less feedback loops with plug-ins is actually not possible, so you would have to cope with delays and buffering anyway, so I am not sure what you could do with it...

I made my own effects, mostly delays using bidule and inserting other VST plugins in the feedback path. Is working great but the patchworks seem a clean solution, thats why I´m asking...

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

There is currently no other way than copy/paste to move things around, but drag & drop or swap/insert are indeed options we'd like to add in the future.

I'm glad you're going to be looking at that in the future. If you can add drag and drop, it would be a HUGE boost to workflow and encourage experimentation. A simple swap feature would be an improvement over current state, but drag and drop would be the preferred approach.

Great plugin as is though!

[Blue Cat Audio]

Thanks. There are indeed many different ways to do it, that's why it is still being discussed quite a bit

[Blue Cat Audio]

I made my own effects, mostly delays using bidule and inserting other VST plugins in the feedback path. Is working great but the patchworks seem a clean solution, thats why I´m asking...

When you indeed manage the delay in the feedback path that's possible, but Ithink \ this would be a bit difficult to explain as part of the PatchWork plug-in. But there are a couple of other projects in work too .

[klinik]

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

As I use Patchwork more and more, another feature request occurred to me. It would be nice seeing a mix knob added in next to each plugin slot, or maybe at least one mix knob for the parallel chains. For instance, I have a parallel chain or two running, and want to reduce the mix of one chain while keeping the overall mix level the same. If the plugins in that parallel chain have mix knobs, it's no problem, but if they don't, it would be nice if Patchwork could supplement that.