Angry Red Planet releases Temper v1.3 (incl. Temper VST Public Beta)

Angry Red Planet has released version 1.3 of Temper. This release sees the introduction of three important technologies:

• A Temper VST version is now in public beta, available from the download page.
• Frakture, a sample playback/analog/wavetable synth is now in beta and included in Temper.
• The new Arpeggiator FX brings an emphasis on performance-oriented abilities.

In addition, there a large number of fixes and improvements detailed below. Also Temperary has been updated with some interesting new tricks.

Changes:

• There is now a public beta of Temper VST, available from the download page.
• Added Frakture, a sample playback/wavetable/analog synth, currently in beta.
• Added Arpeggiator FX.
• Change: Removed Metronome FX. There is now a metronome directly accessible next to the tempo control.
• Change: Buss out FX now have inputs for each buss being targeted. Unfortunately, if you were using one buss to send to multiple tracks simultaneously, you know need to manually connect any additionally channels beyond the first stereo pair, but the benefit is that you can now target buss tracks independently, instead of having the 1st two channels always replicated to all buss targets. This also means that gain and pan can be set independently for each send FX.
• Change: The transport will now continue playing past the end of the song, to support VSTs that need the transport running to work.
• Change: The Envelope shape can no longer be used as a constant when there is a single stage -- use a Constant shape for that. The tradeoff is, the envelope now has the same mouse and realtime editing as the Stepper.
• Change: You no longer select shapes by clicking on the shape view; now, change the shape with the Select... menu. Clicking on the shape is used to directly edit parameters of specific shapes.
• Change: Using the wand tool to resize notes now obeys the current quantize grid; holding down ALT will defeat the grid. To maintain backwards compatibility, there's a new default preference (Setup->Behaviour->Invert end time quantize) which inverts this behaviour (so that no quantize is applied if the grid is on, and the quantize IS applied when the grid is off).
• Change: The Shapify tool has been removed. Now, Shapify controls are available from the title bar of the selected events editors (i.e., select the events you want to shapify, then click the Shapify button in the Selection 2 title bar).
• Change: The Start time shaper now defaults to not affecting end time.
• Added VST automation recording. There is now an 'A' Automate button in each track (next to the Solo/Mute/etc. buttons). When enabled and the song is recording, knob movements from open VSTs will be captured.
• Added Automation page to VST FX, for setting up realtime MIDI controllers. Click on 'A' in the title bar of the inspector to do the setup.
• You can now assign icons to a device by dragging an image onto an FX. The FX must have a device assigned, and the device must be writeable (i.e. a user device, not one of the included factory devices).
• You can now display key names in the piano roll (i.e., for drum synths). Key names are defined in the device, and can be assigned per patch, per bank, or per device. See the included device "Key Names Example.xml".
• Added new MIDI Key Names section to the track properties, for directly setting which key names will be used in the piano roll. This will override any key names provided by the device.
• Added new menu item Tracks->Add Program Track, which provides a list of all programs and lets you easily load them into the current song. This also provides track template behaviour: Users can create songs containing any number of tracks, save them to the user programs directory (Windows Start button, My Documents, Angry Red Planet/Temper/programs/Temper/), and they become available in the menu for immediate use in the current song.
• Added a management bar to the shape view, for easily accessible controls to edit shapes directly in the browser, select alternate shapes, or load/save the current shape.
• Added Computer Keys FX, an input FX for translating computer keyboard strokes into MIDI notes. You have two octaves available: black keys: 23 567 white keys: qwertyu black keys: sd ghj white keys: zxcvbnm and then you can use up and down arrow to step between octaves.
• Added polyphonic groove quantize, swing, and polyphonic swing. These modes are available from the Macro section in the Shapify inspector. Once a shape is created, apply it with the Start time shaper of a note or controller inspector.
• The Parameter section in the track inspector of the mixer now allows you to add and remove parameters at any position in the list.
• Users can now replace the default shape used when creating a new decor: Temper will first look for a shape with the key "Decor" and use that if it exists. To change the key of a shape, create the desired shape in the editor or via Shapify, then in the Windows Start menu select My Documents and navigate to Angry Red Planet->Temper->shapes. Find the desired shape and change the value of k= field on the second like to "Decor".
• Added looping support for VSTs that use it (tested with EnergyXT 2.0 and ReViSiT).
• Added a shaper for the perform time group operations. This is the natural place to apply Swing shapes, one of which is now included in the shapes folder. The perform time can be thought of as a scratchpad for playing with subtle timing changes without breaking the timing integrity.
• Polished the knob behaviour and made it more consistent, allowing precise control of a wider range of values.
• Added a new mode to the Sync shape, Quantize. This can be used to create sample and hold-style effects. See the tutorial.
• Added selection filtering to the controller strip: Click and drag in the area left of the data view to alter the selection. If there's already a selection, then it will limit it to the controllers with values within the new range, if there's no selection, then it will select all visible controllers with values within the new range.
• Added keyboard support for stepping through the grid sizes in the track editor. Commands are available in the Edit menu, Make Grid Larger and Make Grid Smaller, mapped to the U and J keys (pending proper key assignment setup).
• Added a button for editing audio files in an external editor. The button is available by clicking an audio phrase to open the inspector.
• Added options to the VST patch randomizer for changing the locked params: Lock All, Unlock All, Invert Locked.
• Added format options (.mid, .squ) to the drag-tracks-to-desktop button available beneath the currently selected tracks.
• Added End Time controls to group note inspector.
• Added a control for setting the VST window size, when running Temper VST. Go to Setup->Appearance. Hosts will require you shut down and reopen the edit window.
• In the controller strip, each controller now has an option to select whether new controllers are ramps or flat.
• Added a new shape, Stepper, for step-sequence-style stuff. There is now a smoothing control in the Shapify controls; creating shapes with no smoothing will generate a Stepper, while applying smoothing will create an Envelope.
• Added Stair shape.
• Fix: Misc. bugs in the Automation page of the shape editor.
• Fix: song scrollbar wasn't updating when recording audio would grow past the length of the song.
• Fix: Bug with the metering, which would sometimes display near-silence as clipping.
• Fix: Bug where using the Pencil to create a new note could instead select the note immediately right.
• Fix: The Open Previous Songs preference had inconsistent behaviour when starting Temper by double-clicking a song.
• Fix: The New Song Template preference was broken.
• Fix: The Filter in the MIDI Monitor FX was broken.
• Fix: Tightened up track master Volume, Pan and Expression controllers. They were a little weird, treating any of these events created at time 0 as a master event which you then could not move or delete. Now, they can only be created via the MIDI Settings section in the track inspector. Additionally, they can also be removed via this same control, which now includes an 'Off' setting.
• Fix: Clicking in the ruler of the track editor now performs generated controller ramps.
• Fix: When dragging phrases, the inspector now updates after the drag so phrases properties can still be edited without re-selecting the phrase.
• Fix: Bug where clicking on a note in the velocity strip with the pencil tool, when editing the off velocity, would set it to 0.
• Fix: When I moved to VST 2.4 I used a strict interpretation that broke compatibility with some older plugins (known issue with Energy-XT Machine II).
• Fix: Dragging and dropping a VST FX would lose the settings.
• Fix: Couldn't select patches in the track inspector when the track had a MIDI output with no selected device.
• Fix: Polish on the Save dialog.
• Fix: Some VST effects weren't allowing MIDI input.
• Fix: Some items that should have been in the Hidden menu of the controller lane were not being displayed.
• Fix: Menu layouts were B@@R!cked for the VST lists, causing users with lots and lots of VSTs to not have access to all of them from the popup menus.
• Fix: The output column wasn't being restored to the correct size after a window was made too small to display it.
• Fix: Looping wasn't turning off notes that extended beyond the loop point, making looping over the middle of an audio phrase not so useful.
• Fix: Dragging a phrase to a new track now assigns the destination's track take to the phrase.
• Two possible fixes: Sometimes the startup window doesn't go away, and sometimes the app doesn't shut down completely. Fixed a couple problems that might have been the cause, but not sure yet. If anyone sees either issue again please let me know.
• Fix: Hang that could happen using Merge Phrases.
• Fix: Was opening to a blank file when the app was launched by double-clicking a valid file.
• Fix: Bug where if you double-clicked a MIDI track, then clicked on the BPM browser tab, then clicked the Track browser tab, it ended up in a weird state where it was editing the tempo track but it looked like a normal MIDI track.
• Fix: The Link window was opening mostly offscreen when Temper was maximized.
• Fix: A license was required for using the start time shaping group operations, which wasn't intended.
• Fix: Dragging a key change into the scaled area was not tracking the mouse correctly.
• Fix: Installing/uninstalling MIDI ports on the system could prevent MIDI device selection.
• Special thanks to Nina and Frank Gaultier for the device contributions.