Camel Audio have released version 1.6 of Cameleon 5000, their additive synthesizer which specialises in pads and evolving textures. The update adds an improved noise generator with key tracking for brighter, crisper sounds, an improved reverb, key tracking on the filter, improved editing abilities as well as other feature enhancements and bug fixes.

Cameleon’s main interface element is very unusual — it’s the morph square which Camel say “allows you to morph between four different instruments at once. You can also use the morph timeline to create rhythmic loops, evolving soundscapes and pads. Uniquely, Cameleon comes with a range of preset morph timelines, to make creating new sounds even easier.” Like other software instruments Atmogen and MetaSynth, Cameleon can turn images into sounds — you can import a picture into Cameleon and it will use the image data to create a sound.

Cameleon has many interesting features: “It breaks sounds down into both a harmonic and noise component resulting in much higher quality, and greater flexibility. No other additive synth is able to perform multi-sampling resynthesis, which results in much more realistic and expressive sounds.”

As for the Cameleon 1.6 update, the website says that it comes with an extra 200 presets, for a total of 800, as well as new harmonic and noise profiles. There are also a couple of new Cameleon sound banks. The update and new sound banks are all free to registered users; here’s a full list of new features.

• improved noise generator for brighter, crisper sounds (select LQ for old noise compatibility)
• key tracking for noise generator (KT above noise on easy page)
• key tracking for filter (KT above cutoff)
• improved reverb
• 200 extra presets included (now over 800, with over 1000 more available from the website)
• new and improved harmonic and noise profiles, extra images
• easier harmonic editing (log scale)
• copy/paste harmonic and noise profiles between voices and presets
• easy partial detune reset (click on central bar for zero detune)
• easier to select points
• bug fixes — soft cut fixed, copy button correctly labeled (Mac), Digital Performer issues solved
• new demo presets, demo restrictions reduced — 15 minute timeout removed, longer between silences