MIDISketch 0.9.9.7 Beta
0.9.9.7 is now the public release, and these are the same files the download page hands out. Same license, same two activations, same signing. The tester notes below still stand: work on copies of anything you care about, and tell us what you find.
BEFORE YOU INSTALLA sketch saved in 0.9.9.7 may not open in 0.9.9.6. FL Studio on Windows has had the most testing, macOS and Linux the least, so reports from there count double. When something breaks, the support page puts it at the top of the list.
Downloads by platform
Windows
Windows 10 or newer, 64-bit.
VST3 · CLAP · Standalone
v0.9.9.7 · INSTALLER (.EXE)
Puts the plugins, the standalone app and MIDISketch Audio Send where your DAW looks.
Standalone appStandalone .zip
macOS
macOS 10.15 or newer, Intel & Apple Silicon.
AU · VST3 · CLAP · Standalone
v0.9.9.7 · INSTALLER (.PKG)
Puts the plugins, the standalone app and MIDISketch Audio Send where your DAW looks.
Standalone appStandalone .zip
PluginsVST3 + AU + CLAP .zip
Linux
x86_64.
VST3 · CLAP · Standalone
v0.9.9.7 · STANDALONE (.TAR.GZ)
No installer on Linux. Each archive unpacks where you want it.
PluginsVST3 .tar.gz · CLAP .tar.gz
Test these first
Seven things, in order. Each one runs through code that changed in this build.
- Open an existing project that uses MIDISketch. Does it load, sound the same, and show the view you left?
- Resize the plugin window, slowly too, and at different UI scales in Preferences. Two monitors with different scaling if you have them.
- Host a synth inside MIDISketch (Serum 2, Vital, Surge XT): open, detach, re-dock, close.
- Play, stop and loop from your DAW’s transport. Any stuck notes?
- Save, close the DAW fully, reopen. The DAW should close cleanly, without hanging.
- Export audio of something with automation and compare it to playback.
- SF Loader: load a few SoundFonts, turn the knobs while it plays, export.
REPORT WHAT YOU FINDYour OS and DAW with versions, the format (VST3, CLAP or Standalone), your UI scale, what you did, what you expected, what happened. A screenshot or a short recording beats a paragraph. A crash on Windows: say roughly when, so we can find the record.
What is new in 0.9.9.7
Sound
- SF Loader. A third built-in instrument next to Synth and Sampler: load any .sf2 SoundFont and play it with per-note pitch bend. A piano, strings, a choir.
- Audio export matches what you hear. Automation lanes, the mod wheel and the pitch wheel were missing from exported audio. They are in now.
- Header waveform. A small live scope in the top bar that locks onto the note you are playing, so a held note draws a steady wave. Right-click it to choose which note it follows, how many cycles it shows, its range and style, or to hide it.
Drawing and editing
- Hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) while placing or moving a note to leave the pitch grid and land between the keys as a bent note.
- Bends stop at the top and bottom of the roll. They used to leave notes you could not reach again.
- Expression lanes. Alt+click a curve handle to remove it, Alt+click a segment to straighten it. Handles stop at the lane’s edges. With several notes selected, a click in the Pressure, Slide or Pan lane paints the same point onto all of them.
- Undo no longer closes the expression editor.
- Loop flags sit below the ruler now, off the bar numbers.
- Free Transform (Ctrl+T), Quick Detune, Smart Join and a reworked Simplify.
- Save points (States). Keep A, B and C versions of a pattern and switch between them, also while looping.
Tuning
- Tuning fork button beside the magnet opens Tuning Snap. The tuning name at the bottom right is clickable too.
- The Tuning Snap and Playback Settings windows were rebuilt and scale with the UI size.
Video, Windows only
- Import Video shows a clip in its own window, locked to the playhead, with markers. Clear messages when Windows cannot decode a file: iPhone HEVC clips need Microsoft’s free HEVC Video Extensions. Untested on macOS, not available on Linux.
Look and feel
- Synth Browser restyled, with green scrollbars and the title moved into the bar above it.
- New users start with the view before bar 1 turned on and the roll centred on the lead register.
- The eyedropper in the Design window samples any colour on screen, outside MIDISketch too.
Experimental, off by default
- Multi-channel output, from the MPE pill in the header. For synths that are not MPE but have one part per MIDI channel. Right-click a note and choose Channel to send it to a specific channel; it gets a coloured outline. Known limits: changing the channel range while notes are held cuts them, MIDI file export ignores channels, and FL Studio cannot filter a plugin’s MIDI by channel, so this is mainly for other hosts and hardware.
Under the hood
- A newer version of the audio framework, which fixes a freeze some people saw while resizing the window. It touches everything to do with windows, scaling and fonts, so anything that looks or resizes wrong is worth a report.
Known issues
- Video: marker edits are not undoable yet, and the FIT button jumps the clip back to its anchor while playing.
- Multi-channel output is experimental, see above.
- Playlist trigger clips were reworked for this build. If a triggered cue holds too long or cuts early, say exactly how the clip was trimmed.
MIDISketch Audio Send
The optional second plugin: an audio effect for any track that sends that track into MIDISketch, which is how a vocal or a guitar reaches the pitch tracker. The Windows and macOS installers put it in place. On Linux, or by hand, take it from here. Older builds called it MIDISketch FX; same plugin, old name.
Release record
Every published version, pulled live from the same record the plugin and the admin panel use, so this page is never a second copy that drifts. 0.9.9.7 joins it when the notes above become the patch notes.
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