discoDSP has released Retromulator 1.7, adding two new hardware cores since version 1.5: the Roland Sound Canvas GS modules and a four-format module Tracker, plus host automation for every core, MIDI file and module playback, and offline rendering to WAV or MP3.
88emu Roland Sound Canvas core
Roland SC-88, SC-88VL, SC-88Pro, SC-8850 and SC-55mkII, the GS modules behind a generation of MIDI files. The boards boot their original firmware on emulated H8/500 and SH-2 CPU cores with the GP, LSP and XP custom chips, using x86 and ARM64 JIT backends. Drum kit and tone names are read from the board ROM, and the selected board is stored in the session, so reloading a project boots the module it was written with.
A MIDI song player drives the Sound Canvas cores: standard MIDI files play through the board selected in the bank combo, with the song name and a 16-channel activity meter on the LCDs, and the transport exposed as a host parameter. GS tone and drum kit names are shown for variation banks instead of raw bank numbers.
Tracker core
A Tracker core playing XM, MOD, S3M and IT modules. XM and MOD play through the Fasttracker 2 replayer, S3M and IT through the Schism Tracker player, with Nuked OPL3 handling Adlib instruments. The program combo lists the song positions, the nav pill becomes play and stop, and the 16-column meter shows the mixed audio of each channel.
The core can be driven from MIDI notes (C0 restarts the song, D0 stops it, C#0 and D#0 step through the playlist, note 24 + n starts at position n) or from the keyboard, and its tempo can follow the host playhead or incoming MIDI clock. Playlists can be built from several files, a dropped folder scanned recursively, or an .m3u / .m3u8 file, with Import Playlist and Export Playlist. The playlist and its current entry are stored in the session, and songs advance with the editor closed.
Host automation and rendering
Every core now exposes a fixed pool of 128 host parameters with permanent IDs, rebound per core on each synth swap. The count and the IDs never change, which is what AU, VST3 and AAX require for saved automation to survive a reload.
Sound Canvas songs and Tracker modules render offline to WAV or MP3 320. Tracker bounce uses high quality SINC256 resampling for alias-free mixes. Render Playlist writes every Tracker entry into a folder in playlist order. The standalone build also renders from the command line with –render, –board, –rom, –out and –format, plus –list-boards and –list-tones for the tone and drum kit tables for the 88emu core.
The standalone app registers file associations: modules, playlists and folders open in the Tracker core, MIDI files in the Sound Canvas core. Several modules dropped at once become a playlist, and drops on the macOS dock icon work.
The macOS deployment target is now 12.0.
Retromulator is available for macOS, Windows and Linux in AAX, AU, VST3 and Standalone formats, and on iOS.
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