Update: Blue Cat Audio Patchwork v2.6 – Lots of New Features

Blue Cat Audio has released an update for Patchwork, their virtual patchbay for audio plug-ins.  V 2.6 has a surprising large amount of new features such as MIDI Output, Macro Parameters, Control Surface Integration and more.

What’s new in Blue Cat Audio Patchwork 2.6?

Macro Parameters

The big news is that params map have now become actual macro parameters: you can control several parameters from several plug-ins with a single macro knob. And there is a new editor to assign parameters, set their range and learn directly from plug-ins by clicking on the mouse!

And you can also choose knob styles for your macro controls. All in all, it’s like creating your own plug-in from multiple plug-ins (just hide them and forget that there are plug-ins behind)

You can now rename the parameters. Custom names should also appear in most DAWs for automation (session reload might be required in some cases).

Audio I/O Selection

In most plug-in formats, you can now select the internal audio I/O configuration for PatchWork: this lets you either increase or decrease the number of available channels to process internally, regardless of the configuration chosen by the host application.

This lets you for example decrease the number of channels to reduce the CPU usage and only process some of the inputs. Or add some channels to create an internal side chain or auxiliary busses for more audio routing options.

MIDI Output & Device Selection

The PatchWork standalone application now supports MIDI output (like the plug-in), and it is possible to select the input and output MIDI devices in the preferences.

So you can now control external MIDI devices using the PatchWork application, and limit the number of MIDI devices interacting with it.

Control Surface Integration

The integration with control surfaces has also been improved, thanks to a new option to send MIDI control change messages to the output of the plug-in (or application) upon changes made in the user interface. This lets you create a bi-directional connection between PatchWork and MIDI control surfaces to keep them in sync.

Hardened Runtime / Notarization (MacOS)

The PatchWork application now uses Apple’s Hardened Runtime (that prevents applications from accessing unauthorized resources), and the installer has been notarized, so you should not get Apple security warnings upon install anymore.

More…

As usual with updates, this one comes with a couple of additional fixes and improvements.