JamDeck

No longer having to click on the piano keys once to activate your PC/Mac keyboard. (much requested)
New keyboard mappings for AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards, for our European friends. (Changeable in the preferences dialog.)
Improved PC/Mac keyboard responsiveness – things are going to feel a little bit snappier when you’re rocking out with your keyboard.
Revamped Intro Tutorial - now much harder to break ;-)
Added an instruments menu shortcut key (Ctrl-I on Windows, Apple-I on Mac OS X)
Fixed a rare crash while loading SodaSynth presets.
Fixed some loop recorder rendering bugs.
Introduced a new “jambundle” file format for Mac OS X, plus file associations.
A couple other minor packaging fixes for Mac OS X.

This update brings general improvements to two key areas, and is a recommended update for all users:

1. A realtime mastering bus now automatically applies some dynamic range compression and excitation to enhance the overall sound quality of your jams. In other words, everything just sounds better.

2. There should be improved compatibility with soundcards using the default Windows Vista/7/8 WASAPI audio API. We’ve made adjustments to provide a better out-of-the-box experience on Windows so you hopefully won’t have to mess around in the preferences before your soundcard works. We tested this on a range of hardware, but if you run into any audio issues on Windows with SongStarter, we’d appreciate it if you got in touch so we can fix them for good.

Also included in this update are a handful of other bugfixes, including:

Fixed pops when switching drum beats
Updated help screen now points to our SongStarter help page.
External audio input latency has been slightly reduced.
Improved compatibility with certain Windows recording devices.
Turned it to 11 – the overall volume is louder, should be closer to other applications.
Fixed a bug in which loops of certain lengths would get rounded incorrectly in the Freestyle Recorder’s tap tempo screen.
Switching drum beats now sets the project tempo to the original tempo of the drum beats. No more chipmunk DNB drums when you’re trying them out.

Here’s some of the changes in SongStarter 1.0 that were made after the last beta:

Added System Default soundcard on Mac OS X (especially useful on Mac OS X Mountain Lion)
Fixed the Freestyle Recorder going bonkers sometimes with the built-in instruments
New jam graphics
Added a slightly better loading indicator for instruments
Added a close button to the instrument picker (if you couldn’t figure out how to close it the first time, you weren’t alone!)
Reworked the loop recorder widget again so it paints short notes now
Added scanning for DAWs on Windows

This update brings more bugfixes and new instruments:
Classic Piano
A revamped Studio Piano
Cello
Claves
Mute Guitar
Electric Piano
Organ
Tremolo Strings
Tubular Bells
Glockenspiel

Adds audio input (!), new looper gfx, better latency on Windows + lots of bugfixes

The biggest problem reported so far was that the beta version appeared expired for many Windows users. I’ve done a bit of tinkering and I think I’ve managed to fix this one, so if you couldn’t get SongStarter to run before, try hitting the SongStarter page again and download the new version for Windows (songstarter-1.0-beta-082312-win32.exe). The Mac version has been updated with these fixes too.

Other changes in this version (1.0-beta-082312) include:

Drag and drop MIDI export for REAPER added
I quietly fixed the OS X package having some broken artwork and instruments earlier in the week.