Chromatose: Visual Synthesizer

The biggest Chromatose release yet. Performance Mode turns the app into a live instrument: eight hot-swappable patches, a master FX chain, and a fully modular transition system. Plus five new effects, custom color palettes, much deeper MIDI, ProRes recording, six new presets, and more. 〉Performance Mode (New) • Performance Mode complements Design Mode: build your visuals from scratch, then play them live, ideally from a hardware MIDI controller. • Group up to eight patches into a Performance Set and hot-swap between them by tap, by MIDI, or with an auto-cycle. Saving Sets is a Pro feature. • Fully modular, customizable transitions, unique to Chromatose: an Attack / Sustain / Release envelope drives an FX macro or the master level, so any effect chain can become a transition. • A patch-independent Master FX chain with two FX macro knobs, saved with the Set. • Global Level and BPM knobs live in the Performance View, so loading a patch never moves them. 〉New Effects • Feedback Insert: chain up to four effects directly inside the feedback loop. • Recolor: remap the image through a custom color palette. • Slice: cuts the image into parallel bands and shears alternating bands in opposite directions. • Blur and Sharpen, with Disk and Directional blur types. Try both inside Feedback Insert. • Crop gets a Circle shape and soft edges. Feedback gets color drift. Camera gets exposure. 〉Color (New) • Custom Color Palette Picker: build your own palettes with harmony-based generation and save favorites. Five factory palettes included. • Colorspace overhaul: patches look the same in 8-bit, 16-bit, and HDR, imported photos included. Existing patches may look slightly different. • New "hdr gain" parameter controls how much of the display's HDR headroom the output uses. 〉MIDI (Updated) • Map MIDI notes to macro knobs, pads, and global knobs. • NRPN mapping for 14-bit parameters (Settings > MIDI > NRPN). MIDI Learn detects them. • Native MIDI 2.0 input with full-resolution values. • Pass-Thru Detection: a controller takes over only once it passes the knob's current value, so loading a patch never makes anything jump. • Chromatose can act as a Bluetooth MIDI peripheral, so other devices can connect to it. • Much faster MIDI processing, so macro knobs follow even the quickest controller moves. • Filter by MIDI channel and enable or disable individual devices. Network MIDI is now off by default. 〉Modulation (Updated) • LFO clock sync: every LFO can run free or locked to the clock, with a phase offset. • New Triangle waveshape, and a pulse width control on every square wave. • Parameter editors show a live modulation depth meter, and panel tabs badge whatever is modulating. 〉Audio Input and Recording (Updated) • Choose the internal microphone or a connected audio interface, and pick a specific input on it. • Auto-Gain adjusts per-band gain to the loudness of the room. • Recording quality picker: Social (HEVC) or Studio (ProRes 422). Studio is a Pro feature and needs a hardware ProRes encoder. 〉Workflow (Updated) • Unsaved-changes tracking for patches and Sets, with a warning before anything that would discard work. • Auto-save restores the whole session on next launch, including the active Set, pad, and mode. • Choose your own init patch: tap the star on a patch's Detail view. • Full iOS 27 compatibility. 〉Presets (New) • Six new factory presets: Chroma Cam, Elegant Strobe, FB Wave, Jungle Matrix, Magnetic Resonance, and Swirly Pop. • Many existing presets updated to work best with v1.4. 〉Fixes • Camera patches launch instantly and no longer hang when backgrounded. • Hiding the HUD sticks, even while recording. • Recorded videos no longer speed up when frames are dropped. • Plus many more fixes and performance improvements throughout.