Okay, so we have good weeks and bad weeks. This week … wasn’t so hot.
First, there’s the new Intel-native version of Cycling ’74’s lovely Mac utility, Soundflower. As many reported, something seems not-quite-right about the installer. On my PowerPC-based machine, the driver for Soundflower itself doesn’t appear anywhere (Audio MIDI Setup, etc.) and Soundflowerbed, the menu bar tool for interfacing with Soundflower, displays an error message saying it wasn’t installed. We’re working on getting an answer on this; stay tuned. Just to check, anyone NOT having any problems?
Soundflower has worked perfectly in the past, so I’m sure we’ll get this fixed.
Strike two: KeyToSound’s free soft synth plug-in looks a bit too buggy for prime time. I haven’t done an extensive test of all the VST and AU varieties, but there’s enough cause for concern here. Here’s hoping for an updated version. While you wait, explore the strange past of KeyToSound’s aborted NetSynth hardware synths (pictured below), which are a bit like Zune for synthesizer fans. (Connect via the Web and … exchange patches? I’m missing something here.)
The Strange Story of the KeyToSound Synth
KeyToSound did make NAMM to show off their current soft synth line. Since I wasn’t there, I couldn’t ask about when they were going to fix their plug-in implementation issues. The synth itself sounds great, and they earn instant respect for me because they used to be Koblo. Now if they could just get the plug-in working.
Ah, Koblo. Let’s take a moment for this great Mac synth. (Don’t get excited by the Vintagesound link to the free version, in case you wanted to put that old OS 9 beast to work. Everything from the official Koblo site is gone.)
I’m going to go relax for the weekend, before I post links to any more non-working software. 🙂 Watch for updates.