Sonic Charge has released µTonic 3.0, an updated version of its virtual drum machine instrument for Windows and Mac.

It’s the first major update to µTonic in five years.

Long-waiting µTonic users will find more than 20 new features, though, and an updated user interface. It’s free for registered users, too!

Details below.

If you’ve used µTonic, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!

Here’s what’s new in µTonic:

• A morph slider allows you to interpolate all eight drum patches simultaneously between two end-points. You can edit the drum patches with the morph slider at any position and it will adjust the interpolation end-points accordingly. Morph is an automatable and MIDI controllable parameter, so it can be used both as a performance parameter as well as an editing feature.
• Matrix editor window for viewing and editing the pattern steps of all eight drum channels simultaneously. (Bonus feature: you can drag channel labels to reorder the drum channels of the preset.)
• MIDI Program Change message support for instantaneously switching between up to 16 different presets (loaded into memory). (It is also possible to switch programs with MIDI notes.)
• Drag and drop patterns as MIDI files directly into your sequencer (supported by all major hosts).
• “Edit All Channels” button enables adjusting parameters for all drum channels simultaneously. E.g. turn up the distortion on all channels. µTonic will write parameter automation for all affected channels, so the effect can be automated.
• A new “choke group” feature lets you assign two or more channels that should play mutually exclusively and cut each other off. Useful for closed and open hi-hats for example.
• A preset name display sits in the top of the window, with previous and next preset buttons and a popup list when you click the display.
• Support for MIDI Pitch Wheel for real-time pitch transposition with a range of up to 2 octaves.
• A new “Stop Voices with MIDI Note Off” option makes it possible to sustain the sound while you hold down MIDI keys (if you use µTonic as a synth). It is also useful for changing the length of drum sounds with note lengths in your sequencer.
• Alternative “pattern launch modes”: “Switch Next” (the behavior in earlier versions of µTonic), “Switch Directly”, “Retrigger” and “Retrigger Gated”.
• Undo / redo.
• Shift-click menu buttons to quickly repeat last selected menu item.
• New 3D-rendered skin. Sharper, brighter, sexier with 32-bit graphics. (Yes, µTonic version 2.0 was using 20th century 16-bit RGB graphics still).
• Lots more, details here.

µTonic for PC and Mac (VST/AU) is available for US $99. Registered customers can update for free.