Both VCV Rack Free and VCV Rack Pro 2.6 are out, including the ability to Zoom to fit / Zoom to fit modules and drag multiple cables stacked on a port. It’s a nice upgrade for this free and open source modular tool (and its partly-proprietary Pro package, too) – while we wait on upcoming v3.
Multilingual support now includes translations into German, Spanish, French, Italian, simplified Chinese, and Japanese. (Actually, I don’t know if it’d support RTL languages; that’d be interesting to see.)
Fit in the viewport! View > Zoom to fit modules (F4) and you get your whole patch in view. Or right-click an individual module and choose Zoom to fit (ctrl+F4), and you zoom in on just that module. That’ll be nice with some deeper, advanced modules like Befaco Oneiroi.
Just note that it will fit all the modules into the viewport. So if you have a module floating off to the side, it’ll zoom to fit that; you’ll probably then want to delete it and zoom again to get the framing you want.
Multiple cables. Stacks of plugs can now move from one port to another. Right-click a port, then drag the All cables menu item. Note that this is just moving stacked cables – multiple cables connected to a single port.
Stacking is one of the useful features in Rack as a modular environment – stacked signals are summed. And right-clicking is the way to make them easier to manage. There’s a trick here, though: right-click the port, then click and hold “all cables” and with the mouse held, drag the ports where you want. (I missed that the first time I read the release notes.) Here it is in a very brief video:
Unlike modules, Rack can’t update itself. You’ll see this indicator on the Help menu pointing you to an installer (or you can just go to vcvrack.com and grab it yourself). Then install and go! You’ll notice 2.6 is actually 2.6.3 as I write this:
And here’s the “one more thing” from VCV: “We have begun VCV Rack 3 development. Stay tuned for future news!” Okay, tuned!
By the way, what else is new in VCV Rack modules? Well, I got bitten by the bug with Moffenzeef’s stuff, which includes a bunch of lo-fi drums (above), clanging noises, bleepy-blippy sounds, some powerful-looking clock and div stuff, max and min and slew, utilities, and – most importantly, a drum module that makes dial-up modem noises (below) and DTMF tone-generator. I don’t know what I’ll be doing with them but I can tell you I will be doing something.
I feel like we should do a random compilation album with this, called “YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED.”
https://library.vcvrack.com/?brand=Moffenzeef
Updated: okay, I couldn’t wait so randomly trying this out –