Soundplant Changelog

What's new in Soundplant 50.5.0

Jul 21, 2022

Apple Silicon native support
recording from mic (or any other source) directly onto keys, with optional monitoring through realtime effects
effects randomization
variable channel meter sizes allowing up to 24 visible & auto sizing
drag & drop keys between Soundplant windows
adjust knobs via mousewheel/trackpad scroll (with shift+scroll for high precision)
extensive optimizations lowering cpu & gpu use
shift+click recent keymaps list items to open keymap in a new window
ring mod effect improved performance & expanded frequency range to -4000Hz-4000Hz
highpass, lowpass, and ring mod knob adjustment curves improved with more intuitive logarithmic scale for fatter sweet spots
eq/filter processing moved to end of effects chain for more intuitive sounding results
chosen custom key colors are saved as presets in the color picker palette
midi assign dialog lists all detected MIDI input devices
'auto save recordings' preference to skip prompt for recording filename
bug fixes

New in Soundplant 50.3.0 (Dec 16, 2021)

New in Soundplant 50 (Jul 15, 2021)

New in Soundplant 47.1 (Oct 16, 2018)

New in Soundplant 47.01 (Sep 27, 2018)

New in Soundplant 45 (Jun 30, 2017)

New in Soundplant 43 (Jan 22, 2016)

New in Soundplant 42 (Nov 6, 2014)

32-bit floating point internal sound mixing adjustable to up to 96 kHz for highest possible sound output quality, making this the best sounding Soundplant ever
256 sounds can be played simultaneously, with up to 12 channels of playback progress displayed in detailed view mode
sound output device selection
reverb, lowpass, resonance, and lfo realtime effects
direct internal recording of Soundplant's output
completely overhauled sound mixing engine now uses the great and lightweight FluidSynth, a solid and battle-tested open source sound engine enabling many of the above improvements
'hold down' mode allows precise control over key releases
redesigned interface with more room for sound names, an enlarged waveform display, and vector graphics for better window stretching
key labels text size setting
customizable key label text
'buffer size', 'interface refresh rate', and 'key glow animation' settings for performance tuning
'background key input startup state' setting
'foreground window on sound trigger' setting
added an 'only on sound trigger' option to the 'select key on key press' setting
added a 'locate file…' option to the alert that appears when loading a keymap and the sound file can't be found in its original location, and improved automatic searching for sound files when loading keymaps
'reload sound from disk' button
improved master volume control offering up to 200% processed amplification
finer individual key pan and volume control and better, smoother fades
smoother realtime pitch shift
onscreen keyboard layout changed to match the now more common layout with smaller return key and backslash on the row above it
RAM or disk loading option for each key no longer available, this is now handled automatically to take advantage of modern system capabilities with more RAM
fade in and out times can be set to 0 to more easily have a key that only fades in or only fades out
64-bit optimizations have been included for systems which support it, speeding up sound loading especially for compressed sounds
improved support for surround sound files containing greater than 2 channels (Soundplant can now play them, but only as mixed down to 2 channels)
increased the 'recent keymaps' dropdown list size to 25 keymaps

New in Soundplant 41i Beta (Nov 28, 2013)

improved memory management for loading large sound files. Eliminated crashes and out of memory messages (but please let me know if you’re still seeing any of these issues). For very large sounds (usually > 30 minutes in length), if system RAM is low then sounds are loaded in a special mode with some functionality disabled (realtime pitch shift and offsets), kind of like the “play from disk” mode in older versions of Soundplant, although in this case sounds are still being loaded to RAM but just in a non-contiguous manner.
added a “locate file…” button to the warning that appears when loading a keymap and the sound file can’t be found in its original location. Soundplant will also automatically look for other files it can’t find in the newly selected location. This is really convenient and I should have added it a while ago!
custom key labels: click on the currently selected key’s large filename in the key configuration part of the screen and a prompt will open allowing renaming the label for the key. Soundplant will ignore sound triggers while typing into this prompt and all other interface elements are disabled until the prompt is closed.
onscreen keyboard keys are bigger with more room for text labels to occupy, and even bigger in simple view mode where a whole extra line of text is now visible.
added a large channels meter display mode with fatter meters and bigger text but less channels visible. This has the added bonus of lower cpu usage with fewer sounds being tracked onscreen and is now the default setting on the Mac version for optimal performance on that platform. Another bonus is that it frees up some screen real estate to allow for longer, more precise sliders for the master volume and reverb controls. Also, while in this mode, if more than the visible 6 channels are in use an indicator appears specifying the total number of channels playing. This large channel meters mode is configurable in the preferences under the “sound channel meters display” setting with 2 options, 6 large meters or 12 small meters.
added an option to set the default recordings save folder.
added an option to set the startup state of the background key input setting. It’s off by default.
added a “reload sound from disk” button on the key config toolbar – previously this function was only accessible by shift+clicking the “reset key” button. This preserves the key’s configuration while reloading and is handy if you’re frequently editing a sound file in an audio editor and needing to reload the changes into Soundplant.
copy key, pitch assign, and offset assign have been reenabled.
enlarged hotspots around slider bars to make it easier to instantly jump a slider to another point on the bar.
Mac: reduced cpu usage while preserving performance and eliminating a bug in the old “low power mode” that caused keys to double trigger in certain situations. CPU usage mode preference settings on Mac are now “normal” (default) and “overdrive” (higher cpu usage for slightly better latency on fast machines) and it requires a restart of the app to take effect. The “overdrive” mode should not really be necessary unless extreme lowest possible latency is needed, for example for microsecond-accurate drum pad use (and I think even then only latency freaks will notice the difference). If there is demand for it I can also add a setting to bring cpu usage even lower at further expense of latency, but for now I think “normal” mode gives a pretty good balance.
bug fix: holddown mode wasn’t working properly in combination with the kill keymode. Also, in some situations if holddown was on, clicking/double-clicking the key to play the sound did not work as expected.
bug fix: modifying the lowpass filter resonance setting while the lowpass filter itself was off resulted only in lowering of the volume of the sound; now the resonance setting has no audible effect unless the lowpass filter is on.
bug fix: in a certain situation a key’s color would turn black after loading a file
bug fix: in some situations trimmed sounds played slightly past their configured end offset
bug fix: when saving a recording the wav file suffix wasn’t always automatically added
bug fix: while playing a very short looping sound, the playback head was moving past the endpoint of the waveform in some situations
bug fix: when running at the lower screen refresh rate, in some situations sound channel playback progress bar would flash when it first appeared
Windows bug fix: on Win 8 when the program first started up, cursor rollovers didn’t work properly
Mac bug fix: eliminated crashes caused by loading sounds in certain situations
Mac bug fix: files with slashes in their name were not loading properly in some situations
Mac bug fix: keymap loading was unnecessarily slow and causing cpu spikes in certain situations
Mac bug fix: drag and drop of sound files stopped working in OS 10.9 Mavericks (thanks for changing something for no reason Apple!)
Mac bug fix: file open and save dialogs were not opening in the expected folder in OS 10.9 (thanks again Apple!)
Mac bug fix: disabled command+q quit application key combo – no keyboard action should ever quit Soundplant
many other minor bug fixes

New in Soundplant 39 (May 17, 2010)

New in Soundplant 38c (Mar 1, 2010)

many new sound file formats supported - virtually every major file type that contains audio - including 24-bit and 32-bit wavs and aifs, compressed sounds like mp4, m4a, flac, wma, alac, wv, and ogg, audio from video files like wmv, mov, avi, divx, mpg, flv, and 3gp, and many many more
cue points supported in 8-, 16-, and 24-bit wav, aif, and swa files; easily set offsets to cue points
'save w/ sounds' button saves a copy of the current keymap and all sound files it uses into a single folder, making it even easier to transfer keymaps between computers, zip them up and post online, etc.
recent keymaps pulldown list with one-click access to the 20 most recently opened keymaps [this is really convenient!]
fade settings enhanced with separate fade in and out time settings
interface further refined, with onscreen keys given an animated progressive glow effect that serves as an alternate indicator of playback progress (especially useful in simple view when the full channels meter progress bars are hidden); also, the program window dimensions have been compacted into a more HD monitor-friendly aspect ratio
play sounds with the mouse by clicking on any key to simulate that key's press (double-click in detailed view, single-click in simple view) - switch to simple view and maximize, and you've got mouse-powered "virtual cart machine" - option added to turn this on or off in the preferences
master volume control enhanced, with an option to allow the Soundplant master volume slider to control the program master or the overall system master - default is whatever Soundplant determines to allow the finest degree of control, which differs depending on system configuration (on most Windows 7 and Vista systems, it's usually the program master volume; on XP and Mac, it's usually the system master)
option to display time progress indicators as a countup (default) or countdown; this can be toggled by clicking on the time display in the channels meter, or in the preferences
asynchronous dialogs and file loading: dialog boxes and message windows open in a separate process, as well as sound loading, allowing for Soundplant's interface to continue to animate in the background, react to key hits, and play audio as seamlessly as possible even while browsing files or while Soundplant is busy loading in new sounds; an option to turn this on or off has been added to the preferences (default is on), both for debugging purposes in case you experience any problems related to this functionality, and also for running on old computers since asynchronous dialogs adds slightly to Soundplant's cpu and RAM usage
all compressed sound files are now automatically fully decompressed upon loading, allowing for lower-latency triggering of mp3s and all other compressed sounds as compared to the previous method of realtime decompression during playback (which came with a slight performance hit)
[Mac] improved support for running multiple simultaneous instances of Soundplant, and added a 'launch another Soundplant' button (found in the preferences panel) that allows easy opening of multiple instances, which is otherwise a bit tricky to do manually in Mac OS [note: on Windows this can be done easily by simply double clicking the program icon to launch as many desired instances]
keymap files are automatically associated with/registered to open in Soundplant - note that on Mac, you have to move the Soundplant app into the Applications folder for this to be registered (but you can then move the app anywhere outside of the Applications folder if you want and keymaps will still be registered to it)
[Win] installer program created, does all the things a Windows installer typically does to make it easier to install Soundplant [or more complicated, depending on your opinion ;)]
code-based program registration system via a 'register' button in the Preferences panel - this makes registration a much easier process since you no longer will have to download a separate version of the program if you purchase a registration, and also allows for the purchase of a single license to allow registration on both the Windows and Mac versions; an automated system for purchasing a registration code will be available on the Soundplant web site in the coming days, stay tuned for an announcement, in the mean time this beta allows 30 launches before reverting to unregistered mode (which now means: no loading of mp3s or any of the other newly supported file formats permitted in unregistered mode)

Soundplant Changelog

What's new in Soundplant 50.5.0

New in Soundplant 50.3.0 (Dec 16, 2021)

New in Soundplant 50 (Jul 15, 2021)

New in Soundplant 47.1 (Oct 16, 2018)

New in Soundplant 47.01 (Sep 27, 2018)

New in Soundplant 45 (Jun 30, 2017)

New in Soundplant 43 (Jan 22, 2016)

New in Soundplant 42 (Nov 6, 2014)

New in Soundplant 41i Beta (Nov 28, 2013)

New in Soundplant 39 (May 17, 2010)

New in Soundplant 38c (Mar 1, 2010)

New in Soundplant 37u (Dec 5, 2009)