SonicMood

SonicMood creates a soothing background of melodic tones when you don't want the distraction of ordinary canned music. Each "Mood" is a blend of polyphonic stereo instrumentals with pleasing harmonies combined with sounds of nature. Moods have a relaxing effect, the gentle sounds lying just below your consciousness. SonicMood creates its original ambient music on the fly. SonicMood's editor lets you customize the sound based on note, scale, and timing parameters that YOU can adjust, and SonicMood comes with 34 pre-configured "Moods" to get you started. SonicMood lets you be creative and make your own Moods. It has a built-in editor that lets you select every element of a Mood, including instruments, scale, octaves, timings, background nature sounds. There is a lot of power in SonicMood's creative repertoire. The combination of instrumental and nature sounds makes for "Ambient Music" at its best. You can record the sound SonicMood makes using its built-in audio recorder. Drop the recording on iTunes and play on your iPod when you're away from your computer. Include with your own compositions if you'd like - we won't mind. Find out more in the FAQ under "Recording SonicMood Sound". SonicMood features a customizable "iTunes-like" look and operation.

What is new in this release:

• Now using the Cocoa frameworks (Intel only) for one version of SonicMood. The "Universal" version using the Carbon frameworks is also available and supported.
• Changed the version update code so SonicMood downloads the update that's the same "type" as the version that's running. So if the carbon version is running, it downloads "SonicMood Carbon.app", and if the cocoa version is running, it downloads "SonicMood Cocoa.app". Afterwards, it launches the new version which deletes the old version and then renames its file to "SonicMood.app" (although the UNIX executable retains the name of either "SonicMood Carbon" or "SonicMood Cocoa"). So the first time either version runs, it renames its file to "SonicMood.app", however the menu name will continue to be either "SonicMood Carbon" or "SonicMood Cocoa".
• Instrument names are now extracted from ".sf2" (Soundfont) files and used to label the instrument selection controls on the Edit panel. Loading of Soundfonts should be more reliable (less chance of failure) now.
• Made a change to the "Volume Settings" window so that it initially appears on top of the SonicMood window. It can be moved and will remember its position during a session, but if closed before SonicMood is quit then the next time SonicMood is launched and the "Volume Settings" window is opened it will again appear over the SonicMood window.
• The Soundfiles page on the Edit Panel now displays which soundfiles are actually audible at any moment. There's also a limiter you can apply via a slider at the top of the page which limits the number of selected soundfiles that can be audible at any one time.
• The min/max pause/play time sliders on the Soundfiles page are now logarithmic and the range is increased to 600 seconds (10 minutes). The fade time slider is now also logarithmic and the range has been doubled to 120 seconds (2 minutes).
• The Soundfile volume now fades in a logarithmic fashion with more steps for a smoother sound.
• Added a command ("remove missing soundfiles from selected moods"), available from the Moods menu or the Moods list contextual menu, that would removed any references to missing Soundfiles in the highlighted Moods.
• Added ability to replace all soundfiles with the files dropped in a folder (hold the Command key to do a replace instead of an add).
• Modified the way the master volume slider works so the soundfile volumes are immediately changed, rather than just changing the endpoint for the volume if a soundfile is fading up or down. This also affects the "sleep / wake" fade volume.
• Made some cosmetic improvements to the Edit panel pages.
• The name of the current synthesizer is now displayed in the SonicMood window's Title.
• Made a few changes so the Dock icon's right-click list includes the "Main Window" now.
• The "Live resize..." checkbox on the Preferences window, Windows tab, will only appear if the Carbon version of SonicMood is running. Also true for the SonicMood contextual menu and the "Window" menuitem. Live resize is always on for the Cocoa version.
• Moved the menuitems "New Mood" and "New Theme" from the "File" menu to the "Moods" menu since they're really not related to creating, loading, or saving files.
• Moved the MenuItem "Sleep/Wake Schedule..." from the Moods menu to the SonicMood menu.
• Fixed a crash that could happen if a Moods file with fewer Moods replaced the current Moods file where the Mood being edited was a higher number than the number of Moods in the new Mood file.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when doing a "Reset to Original Moods Only" from the Moods menu, if a new Mood had been added and was currently playing...
• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash during the check for a new version.
• Fixed a major list sort bug that caused the sorted items to be in the wrong places after the sort (initiated by pressing on a listbox header).
• Fixed a bug that prevented deleting ".sf2" files from the Synths list in Preferences.
• Fixed a bug that caused numbers rather than the Musical Key to be shown in the slider on the Piano Keyboard window.
• Fixed a cosmetic issue that confused the "Tempo Multiplier," "Time Sync," and "Time Mode" control's relationship with the Note Timing settings for the instruments (on the "Inst, Vol, Notes" tab).
• Fixed a potential bug where long soundfiles are still loading while SonicMood indicates in the soundfile list that they're playing...
• Fixed a small cosmetic bug in the labeling of the Mood Sweep Mode and Soundfile Sweep Mode sliders.
• Fixed a font size bug.
• Fixed a bug in the SuperSlider class control that was causing the values during a drag slide to not be registered properly.
• Fixed a small bug that could cause some controls on the "Inst, Vol, Notes" tab of the Edit panel to get scrunched together if the window was resized horizontally so that the vertical and horizontal scrollbars were both visible.
• Fixed a minor bug that caused a momentary soundfile volume transient if the fade time slider was set to 0.
• Fixed a few contextual menu bugs in the Picture Window.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the "Soundflower not found" error message from appearing in the "Record Window".
• Fixed a cosmetic bug that caused the "Abort Conversion" button on the "Record Window" to be cut off at the bottom.
• Fixed a bug that caused a spurious "Undo Hide Ext Button" undo item in the Edit menu after changing to the Soundfiles tab on the Edit panel after starting SonicMood.

Limitations:

14 actual use days. Nag screen at launch.