Tag: midi

Colibri 1.8.6 is now live!

Posted on by Gábor Hargitai

UPDATE: 1.8.6 contains an urgent bugfix, below you can read what is new in 1.8.5

As of a few moments ago Colibri has been updated to version 1.8.5 with the update prompts appearing shortly for everyone through the Mac App Store application if automatic updates are disabled on your system as part of the somewhat steadier (and albeit slower) release cycle that I’ve adopted recently – this concludes the Winter Update.

This patch has been long coming in a sense that a few critical (and nasty) bugs were finally fixed and the frequently requested MOD/MIDI support has been implemented  – you can read the full changelog here.

At the end of the previous post I’ve mentioned a customization option that I haven’t seen in any other player so far on macOS and that turned out to be the per song adjustment of sample mixing in the case of MOD music files, whereas in the case of MIDI files it is the per song SoundFont attachment – all with realtime bank switching and quasi uninterrupted playback as the playhead maintains the current position within the song.

MOD sample mixing and MIDI SoundFont assignment in Colibri – per song!

Another small yet useful addition is the ability to control Colibri from the Dock – right/alt-click on its’ icon and you will be treated to a slightly improved menu that allows basic control of the playback function, along with showing the currently playing song’s title, artist and album:

Right/Alt-click on the Dock to bring up an improved menu (vaporwave/future funk music is not included)

Just after submitting the finalized update to Apple for review I’ve got an email regarding a crash that happened just as Colibri would start up: it turned out to be one of those bugs that I had been chasing around for a while now but never managed to find the correct environment to reproduce it. I’ve instantly pulled back the update to address the issue which in the end translates to less Sandbox Permission asking dialog boxes popping up when you add new songs.

For those of you trusting Colibri by allowing top level access to your music collection, this issue shouldn’t really have come up as it affected the negotiation part of handling different permission bookmarks for folders and songs simultaneously.

Once again, thank you for your continued support, it truly means a lot! The great majority of feature requests via emails/reviews/comments I’ve received so far have been added to the roadmap and will be implemented in the future.

What’s high on the TO-DO list? Currently, the equalizer and a better playlist so please look forward to those in the near future.

That’s it for now, take care and happy listening!

Winter update is just around the corner

Posted on by Gábor Hargitai

Hello and welcome to the first of hopefully many posts about my misadventures in developing (and bug fixing) Colibri – hope you enjoy your stay!

Some time ago I’ve made the decision to switch to a slower release cycle in order to have a bit more time to polish new features and enhancements before they are released in the form of an update and also to not annoy my users with constant updates as I’ve heard that most people find frequent updates inconvenient.

Doing a quick search in the Mac AppStore lead me to believe that the current selection of MIDI players is scarce at best – which brings us to the main element of the upcoming update: as the BASS engine has native support for both MOD and MIDI music (via plugin) it was a no-brainer to teach our bird how to chirp glorious video game music and Nokia ringtones aka MOD/MIDI music.

MIDI SoundFont selection

Having entangled myself in a series of doubts regarding the legality of bundling MIDI SoundFonts with Colibri I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to avoid angering the reviewers at Apple (and copyright holders of said soundfonts in general) is to ship the next update with a free, publicly  available soundfont as I’m sure most of you would like to try your MIDI files right away – user supplied SoundFonts are supported and are strongly encouraged!

There’s also a neat new feature currently entering the finalization phase that introduces a new customization convenience option for playing back MIDI files that I personally haven’t seen before in any other player.

That’s about it for now, happy listening!