0.1.0-alpha.4

Released 2026-10-31. Compare on GitHub

Added

Marbble Sampler: make instruments from your own sounds. Drop or choose audio files and play them across the keyboard at once, record straight into it from the audio input, or turn an audio region into one with Convert to Sampler Track, whole or sliced at its transients. Map samples across keys and velocities with loops and crossfades, one-shot, reverse, velocity layers and round robin, an amp envelope, filter with envelope, LFO, glide and polyphony. Several files map themselves by the note in their names, or chromatically. Save an instrument with its samples to use in any project; it appears in the preset menu, from ~/Music/Marbble Instruments. A useful subset of SFZ loads, and what it doesn’t do is listed. Samples are copied into the project, so it survives being moved or the originals deleted, and a missing sample shows plainly while the rest play. Samples are held in memory, up to 4 GB. It hasn’t been heard or seen yet.
Built-in instruments and Marbble Tre: a framework for instruments with settings, on the same footing as the built-in effects: a panel with sections and a small keyboard, docked or floating, factory and user presets, automation, MIDI learn, undo, saving, Freeze, Bounce and copy and paste. The first is Marbble Tre, a three-oscillator monophonic synth with a mixer that overdrives, a 24 dB transistor-ladder filter that self-oscillates in tune, two contours with a Decay switch, glide, oscillator drift, and osc 3 and noise as modulators, plus Unison and Poly. Modelled on the Minimoog Model D’s documented behaviour (no affiliation), with 19 factory presets; it hasn’t been compared with the hardware. Marbble Synth stays the default for new instrument tracks, and its projects render exactly as before.
Five more synth models: under Vintage Synths, Marbble Sei (six voices of one DCO with saw, pulse and sub, a 24 dB filter, one envelope with VCA gate, a four-position high-pass and a stereo bucket-brigade chorus with modes I, II and I+II; modelled on the Juno-106 family), Marbble Cinque (five voices of two oscillators with Poly Mod from the filter envelope and Osc B to Osc A’s pitch and width and the filter; modelled on the Prophet-5), Marbble Uno (one oscillator, a diode ladder, accent with its sweep, and slide; from a MIDI region overlapping notes slide and high velocity accents; modelled on the TB-303) and Marbble Sedici (six-operator FM with the 32 algorithms, four-rate envelopes, keyboard scaling, 16 voices, at the original’s 49.096 kHz with an optional converter character; modelled on the DX7). Under Modern Synths, Marbble Onda: two wavetable oscillators with position scan, band-limited tables generated in code, unison, seven filters, three envelopes, two LFOs and eight modulation slots. 14 to 16 factory presets each. Marbble isn’t affiliated with any of those makers, and none has been compared with the hardware or heard yet.
Multi-core track processing: independent tracks play at the same time on a small pool of real-time threads, with the audio thread working too, so a heavy project finishes each buffer sooner. Settings › Audio › Processing Threads chooses Automatic (the default) or a number; 1 keeps everything on the audio thread, and the change applies without restarting audio. The output is the same sample for sample however many threads play it. A light project stays on the audio thread alone, and bounces are unchanged. The CPU meter still shows how much of each buffer’s time it takes to finish the buffer, and its tooltip now says how many threads are playing.
Undo for changes made in a VST3’s own editor: a knob moved in a plug-in’s window is an undo step, labelled with the plug-in and the parameter (“TONE3000: Gain”), and Undo and Redo put the plug-in and its open window back. A plug-in that doesn’t announce its drags gets a step per burst of edits; a preset loaded inside a plug-in that reports it is one step. Moves captured by automation being written stay in that pass’s step, and neither automation playing, a controller assignment nor a plug-in moving its own parameters adds any. An edit on a bypassed plug-in now reaches it at once rather than when it’s next switched on.
Dragging regions below the last track creates a new track, as in Logic: the region is drawn on a new lane there while you drag, and the drop makes a track with the source track’s settings (audio or software instrument, as the region). A selection spanning tracks gets one new track per source lane past the end. Alt-drag copies do the same, and one undo removes it all.
Track On/Off (Logic’s power button): in the track header, the Mixer, the track menu and Track › Toggle Track On/Off. An Off track makes no sound and runs nothing: no regions, no instrument, no EQ, no plug-ins, no sends, no delay compensation, so it frees the CPU that a muted track keeps using. Its plug-ins stay loaded and carry on when it’s back on, without a tail or a click. A stack’s Off reaches its subtracks. An Off track can’t record, and doesn’t appear in bounces or exports. It is saved with the project.
Side-chain inputs for VST3 plug-ins: a plug-in with an aux input (LSP’s Sidechain Compressor and Gate, say) gets a Side Chain item in its slot’s menus, with the same choice of source and Pre / Post as a built-in effect’s pop-up. With a source its aux input turns on and hears that track; with none it stays off and the plug-in uses its internal key. It works through Off tracks, Freeze, bounces, undo, duplicating and channel strip settings, and is saved with the project.
Multi-output instruments, Logic’s way: the strip of a VST3 instrument with extra outputs (a drum sampler’s direct outputs, say) has a + that adds an aux for the next output, named after the track and the output, with its own fader, pan, plug-ins and sends. The aux stays in step with the main output through delay compensation, and bounces and exports include it. An output only runs while an aux uses it. Freeze and Bounce in Place refuse an instrument with such auxes for now.

Changed

The CPU meter says what it measures and shows what the average hides. Its tooltip explains that it’s the audio thread’s load, not the system monitor’s figure, with the average and recent peak. A thin tick marks the worst single block for two seconds, and the label stays red once a block has gone over 100%, with a count in the tooltip, until you click the meter.
A System Overload message says what happened: how long the buffer took and which track took longest, or which track a stuck processing thread is in.
Built-in instrument panels open in the bottom section, with their sections in one row that the mouse wheel moves along. Row and Grid beside the panel’s keyboard choose the layout; a floating panel starts in Grid, and each place remembers its own choice.

Fixed

Undoing or redoing the bypass of an instrument now reaches the running one, and a built-in instrument that gets bypassed lets go of the notes it was holding, rather than keeping them when it comes back.
Holding a key no longer repeats toggles and one-shot commands: holding Space started and stopped the transport over and over. Moving, zooming and nudging still repeat.
Dragging a region onto a frozen track lost it, and dragging one off a frozen track doubled it. Both now leave the region where it was, with the existing “is frozen” message.
On Linux, one audio block taking longer than the buffer’s length ended the app with SIGXCPU. Opening a heavy plug-in’s editor could do it. It’s now a dropout at worst.
Editing during playback no longer restarts held notes. Adding, deleting or reordering a track, adding an aux, changing a send, moving a fader, selecting a track, switching the metronome or moving the cycle each released every instrument’s notes and chased them again, which a sampler that ignores note-offs played doubled. Now a track’s notes only restart when its own instrument or regions change, or when a key held on it loses its way: moving the MIDI target or turning MIDI Thru off with a key down releases that key, which with a VST3 instrument used to stick.
Changing or removing an instrument during playback now releases the held notes and starts them on the new one, and so does editing a region, where the note used to stop until the next one.