What changed, version by version.

New#

• Blazar Core Demo: a free version for Windows and the Mac, released alongside the full version from the same code. Everything works except saving and exporting (sessions, templates, track presets, autosaves and audio exports), and it needs no license. A card at launch, and whenever you save or export, offers Buy and a field for your key.
• Unlocking from the demo: Buy opens the store's checkout. After buying, the store's Unlock button (or pasting your key into the demo) downloads the full version, checks it, installs it (Windows: after the permission prompt; Mac: into Applications), opens it activated, and the demo removes itself. Your settings and plugin list carry over; the session open in the demo does not, since the demo never saves.
• Count-in: the key beside the metronome in the transport, or Shift+C, steps through Off, 1 bar and 2 bars, and the choice is kept. Recording from a standstill then starts with that many bars of clicks (each bar's first beat higher), even with the metronome off, while the BAR display counts down in red. Notes you play into the count-in are kept before the take as a pickup. Stop during the count-in records nothing; recording started while playing has no count-in.
• The bar ruler marks each bar's start with a tick and its number (and the beats when zoomed in), shows the playhead as a small marker, and draws a line where a click will put the playhead, with its bar.beat.sixteenth.
• The agents key at the bottom right names the agent that is connected (Agent: Claude Code, Agent: Codex, 2 agents connected) and sets up Claude Code, Codex, the Gemini CLI or Claude Desktop to work in your session.

Improved#

• A click within a few pixels of a bar line puts the playhead exactly on the bar's start, at any zoom. With the magnet on, every way of placing the playhead follows the grid: the time ruler (click or scrub), the piano roll and the audio editor too.
• Event horizon now works on folders (the folder shows with its tracks) and on tracks inside folders. When none of the track's content is in view, the view goes to where it begins; its notes are drawn tall enough to read as notes; and Esc brings all tracks back.
• Mac: Event horizon no longer redraws the whole enlarged lane 30 times a second.
• Kontakt is disturbed less: Blazar Core no longer reads instrument names or key colours from Kontakt's window while a program is loading into it, waits longer after a reading misses, and an interrupted key colour reading lets go of Kontakt's octave arrow.

Fixed#

• Notes that fell exactly on the edge between two audio blocks could be sent twice or not at all, and a lost note-off left a note hanging, most audibly in exports (Berlin Strings in SINE Player, for example). Every note now plays exactly once.
• Exporting between the locators: the ring-out at the end now lets the sound fade instead of playing the song on past the right locator.
• The playhead could not sit exactly on a bar's start: at many tempos it landed a fraction early and read as the end of the bar before (x.4.4). It now goes to the nearest sample.
• Giving an instrument to a track in Cryosleep could crash Blazar Core. The track now wakes first.
• A crash when a new instrument went onto a track while a Kontakt program was still on its way into it.
• A Kontakt program could be loaded twice, making a second Kontakt (reported on the Mac). A triple-click or a held Return in the browser, a drop Kontakt seemed to refuse, and an agent request repeated after a timeout now load it only once.

New#

• Automatic delay compensation: when a sample-library program loads, Blazar Core measures once how long its script takes to answer a note. It takes about five seconds; the track's header says Measuring its delay with a filling bar and asks you not to play for a moment (playing stops it, and it carries on in a quiet moment). The result is kept for that program and set as the track's negative delay, so your notes land on the beat with the whole sound untouched. A delay you type yourself always wins and is kept for its program. Switch it off in Settings, General, Automatic delay compensation.
• Key colours from Kontakt: an instrument's own key colours (key switches, its playable range) now show on the piano roll's keys and on the touch keyboard. Blazar Core reads them once per program, out of sight, and keeps them.
• Split and glue on notes: in the piano roll, the Split tool (2) cuts a note where you click (on the grid; selected notes together) and Glue (3) joins a note with the next one of its pitch, with hover hints showing what will happen. Cutting a MIDI container in the arrangement now cuts the notes sounding across the cut too.
• Export has its own key in the top bar, right after Save.
• The edit menu (hold Q) has slices with choices of their own that fan out in a ring: in the arrangement, Add track holds Folder, Audio, Instrument and Sampler track, and Quantize offers 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32.
• One gold + Add track key in the top bar lists every kind of track and an FX channel.

Improved#

• Piano roll grid: sixteenths are now visible, quarters brighter and bar lines strongest.
• A key's colour, and the glow of a sounding key, fills the white key's whole face in the piano roll.
• The Cryosleep key sits next to the colour key in the top bar, so the view keys and Settings line up with the browser below them.

Fixed#

• Clicking a track in Cryosleep could crash Blazar Core. The track now wakes a moment after the click.
• Kontakt could crash when a program was dropped onto one track while another track's key colours were being read.
• A long instrument name scrolling in Kontakt's header could change the track's program, taking its articulations, key colours and delay with it.
• Windows: the mouse works while your fingers are on the touch keyboard. A held chord no longer blocks clicks (on an EQ, say), and lifting a finger no longer ends a mouse drag.

New#

• Mac: Blazar Core now runs on the Mac, from the same code and with the same version number as Windows. It needs macOS 12 or later and comes as one universal app for Apple Silicon and Intel.
• Mac: VST3 instruments and effects load from the standard plug-in folders. Audio Units are not hosted yet.
• Mac: mouse shortcuts use Cmd where Windows uses Ctrl; Ctrl+Space still opens Jet.
• Mac: the app is not signed with an Apple developer certificate yet, so macOS asks once per version: open it, click Done, then System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway. The disk image carries these steps in First launch.txt.
• Touch surface: the Keyboard key in the top bar opens a surface for a touch screen (on Windows it fills the touch screen by itself) that never takes the keyboard away from the window you work in. It has a multi-touch keyboard (loud near a key's foot, soft near its tip, slides between keys), a pitch wheel that springs back and a mod wheel that stays (both recorded like a MIDI keyboard's), the played track's articulations as pads, the transport, and every keyboard command as a pad in colour-coded groups. Pick 2 to 5 octaves; Show Remote | Keyboard folds it down to the keyboard alone. It replaces the small performance keyboard window.
• Jet on Anthropic, OpenAI or Google: run Jet through the command-line agent on your computer (Claude Code, Codex or the Gemini CLI) or through each provider's API with your own key. Each key and its model are kept apart, the models are listed as each provider offers them, and keys are stored encrypted for your user (on the Mac, in the Keychain).
• The agent access menu in the status line copies the setup command for Codex and for the Gemini CLI.

Improved#

• Several selected tracks drag into a folder together, and out of their folders together, in one undo step.
• Clicking a key on a track header no longer leaves the keyboard focus there: no focus ring stays behind, and Space and Enter keep going to the transport.
• New tracks and a new session's master start at 0 dB (they started at -1.9 dB). Saved sessions and track presets keep their levels.

Fixed#

• u-he instruments (Zebra, Diva) went silent after a loop's first pass. Held notes are now ended with note-offs and the sustain pedal let up, at a loop's end, a jump, Stop, an edit or a MIDI channel change, instead of an All Notes Off.
• Mixer faders now stay under the mouse: dragging along a fader's whole length moves it through its whole range. Tall faders ran ahead of the mouse and short ones lagged behind.
• Windows: function keys no longer act as letter shortcuts. F4 soloed the selected track, F10 switched on Listen, F11 enlarged the track, and numpad 8 humanized notes in the piano roll.

New#

• Sampler track with Kilonova, Blazar Core's sampler: add one from the top bar, the + menu or the edit menu, and drop a sound on the track or on Kilonova's window. Kilonova hears the sound's tempo (from its name like "Drum Loop 93 BPM", an ACID loop's tempo, or its drums), its hits and its pitch, and opens it in the face that fits; Pad / Chop flips between them.
• Pad: every key plays the sound in tune. Stretch blends in an endless Paulstretch wash, Grain blends in scattered grains, and Hold sends it into a hall that rings for as long as you hold the key and dies away over Release.
• Chop: the sound is cut at its hits or on a grid of the song's notes, one slice per key from C3, played in the song's tempo. Gap God's gate shapes each slice, sixteen stutter steps retrigger a held slice in time, and Write as notes puts the slices on the track in their order, ready to rearrange.
• Kilonova's tempo key offers half, double or a typed tempo, and can set the song's tempo to the sound's. Saving copies the sound into the session's media folder.
• Jet and connected agents can add a sampler track and load a sound into it.

Improved#

• Colouring a folder colours every track inside it, in one undo step.
• Mixer faders glow: the rail is lit in the channel's colour from the foot up to the cap, brightest just below it.

Fixed#

• Reopening the window of one of Blazar Core's own effects (Gap God, for example) showed a plain list of controls instead of its own window.

New#

• Slipstream: tracks that are only playing back are made a few milliseconds ahead of the audio device on their own threads, so a plugin's processor spike no longer causes a dropout. What you play, record or monitor, and tracks with a plugin window open, stay live and always come first. On by default; switch it in Settings, Audio and MIDI. Edits to a track during playback are heard about 20 ms later while it is made ahead.
• Settings: one window for everything, with pages for General, Audio and MIDI, Keyboard shortcuts (searchable; F1 opens it there), Features (what Blazar Core does beyond the usual and how to reach it, searchable), Support and License.
• Support page: Report a bug and Request a feature open a new email with the version filled in, and the log to attach is one click away.
• Gain trim: a small knob beside M and S on every channel sets its level at the input, before the inserts, from -24 to +24 dB. Lift a library recorded too quietly, or change a channel quickly while its fader is automated. Double-click for 0 dB; selected channels trim together.
• Auto align: switch on Auto beside Align in the piano roll (or in Settings, General) and every MIDI take goes back on the click when recording stops. Ctrl+Z right after gives you the playing as it was.
• Ctrl+A selects every MIDI container and audio clip in the arrangement.
• Jet and connected agents can now find and load your Kontakt programs, audio files and track presets from the browser, and set a channel's gain trim.
• The audio load shows as a meter in the status line (amber from 70%, red near the limit), next to a count of the session's tracks, folders and FX channels.

Improved#

• Faders have a console's scale: the most travel around 0 dB, where a mix is set (0 dB sits at 84% of the travel, -12 dB halfway).
• Linked faders: move one of several selected channels and the others follow in proportion along their travel. Pulled down they reach the bottom together, pushed up the top together, and back where you started every channel is where you mixed it. Ctrl+click or Shift+click anywhere on a strip (except its keys) selects it.
• Faders and pan no longer jump on a click: they move from where they are as you drag.
• Track presets: saving under an existing name replaces it after asking, instead of making a second copy. Delete presets from the Presets tab (right-click, or Delete); they go to the Recycle Bin.
• Closing a plugin window now closes its editor for good, and Kontakt programs load out of sight instead of opening Kontakt's window. Sessions with dozens of Kontakt instances no longer stutter or slow the cursor down.
• A recorded MIDI take's container now starts and ends on bar lines.
• Shift+Q with a note selected in the piano roll quantizes just that note, not its whole container.

Fixed#

• A loop whose end fell exactly on the edge of an audio buffer did not jump back.
• A note that overlapped the next note of the same pitch ended that next note early, which could make a note seem to go missing after aligning.

New#

• Video: Import audio or video in the top bar, or drop a video on the arrangement. The picture sits in a video lane under the tempo track and plays in its own window, frame-accurate with the song, and its sound comes out onto a new audio track at the top. Drag the video in time and its sound moves with it; the session's frame rate follows the video.
• The picture window can stay On top of Blazar Core, and Out of the way makes it glide off to a free corner when the pointer heads onto it.
• All processor cores: the audio engine now makes the tracks' sound on every core at once, heaviest tracks first, and mixes them exactly as one core would. A session can hold up to 1024 tracks (up from 16).
• Audio load in the status line: how much of each audio block's time the engine takes, on average and at its peak, with the heaviest channels named in its tooltip.
• Cryosleep: instrument tracks you have left alone for ten minutes are offered (by the snowflake key in the top bar) to be put to sleep. A sleeping track plays its rendered sound exactly as before while its instrument is unloaded, freeing memory and processor. Select it and it wakes up. Nothing ever sleeps on its own.
• Event horizon: the black-hole key on a track's header shows that track alone, enlarged in the arrangement and zoomed in the mixer. Click it again for everything.
• Align: puts a part you played live back on the click the way a musician would, following how your timing drifts over the take. Notes played off the grid on purpose, like grace notes, keep their feel. In the piano roll, the edit menu (hold Q) and for Jet.
• Singularity: a one-knob finisher. Turn it up for glue, weight, silk, width and density together, with the lows kept mono.
• Quasar: a delay whose echoes follow a rhythm you draw on its grid (dotted eighths, sixteenths, two quarters, anything over one or two bars), with Uncertainty for echoes that drift and skip, ready-made patterns and Random.
• Magnetar: rings your sound design (booms, hits, risers, noise) in the chords your instrument tracks play, including the next chord before it arrives.
• Choose several in the browser: Shift+click or Ctrl+click rows in any tab, then Import, Return or drag them in. Instruments get a track each, effects fill one channel's free inserts in order, and several audio files go on one track or a track each (you are asked, also when dragging them in from Windows).
• Move several at once: select clips, MIDI containers and the video across tracks and drag any one of them; they all move together, in one undo step.
• Your first name: the first start asks for it, and the start screen, Jet and Aevum greet you by it.

Improved#

• A muted track dims a little in the arrangement and the mixer, and a solo dims every track it silences.
• The piano roll keeps the part you opened in the middle instead of scrolling away, and shows only the containers you picked. Ctrl+click or Shift+click another container to add it to the open roll; Tab switches the track you write into.
• The mod wheel and expression (CC11) glide smoothly between their points during playback.
• Recorded MIDI lands where you heard it against the click, and a note played at a loop's end stays there.
• A hit point's name flashes up as the playhead reaches it.
• Effects on a channel that has gone silent rest until sound comes again, saving processor time.
• The screen redraws only what changed, so Blazar Core uses much less processor time while idle or playing.
• Playback deep into a long part no longer costs more processor time than at its start.

New#

• License activation: paste the key from your receipt (or drop your license file on the screen) and press Activate. The key is checked on your computer and never goes online.
• Windows installer with a Start menu entry, an optional desktop shortcut and double-click opening of .blazar sessions. Your settings, license and plugin list stay when you update or uninstall.
• Projects: a start screen with new projects, recent sessions and all your projects. Save new version, Continuous saving, templates and an autosave every three minutes.
• Recording of audio and MIDI with ASIO support, loop recording with a Takes lane per pass for comping, and automatic latency compensation across the whole mix.
• Piano roll with several instrument tracks open at once, quantize, Humanize, and an edit menu at the pointer (hold Q) for quantize, bounce to audio, reverse, normalize, pitch shift, fit to bars and glue.
• Kontakt programs in the browser's Programs tab (F8): drag one into the arrangement and you get a Kontakt track with the program loaded and named after it. Learn key switches teaches Blazar Core an instrument's articulations.
• Hit points on their own lane above the rulers, a timecode ruler, and a countdown to the next hit.
• Mixer with folders as buses, FX channels fed by pre- or post-fader sends, a built-in channel strip on every channel (filters, four-band EQ, gate, compressor, tape), plugin and volume automation (Touch, Latch, Write), and a loudness meter on the master.
• Morph: blend up to four effects on a channel with one orb, and record the orb's path through the song.
• Blazar Core's own effects: Blazar Compressor, Gap God (a sixteen-step chopper in time with the song), Eclipse (carves a lead's notes out of the bed under it) and Pulsar (ducking that knows the hits before they land).
• ARA 2 support: Melodyne plays and edits your audio clips directly on the track.
• Audio editing: fades and crossfades, trims, clip gain, free warp with warp markers, and clips that follow tempo changes.
• Export the mixdown and stems as WAV or FLAC, over the whole song or between the locators.
• Jet, the agent (Ctrl+Space): tell it in your own words what to do in the session. It runs on Claude Code, Codex or an Anthropic API key.
• Aevum: session time tracking built in, counting what you spend your time on (composing, arranging, mixing and more) without a timer to start.
• Dark and Daylight themes.