4Pockets has announced a big update to Aurora Sound Studio HD, an app that turns an iPad into a Tenori On inspired music production system.

At $39.99, it’s one of the more expensive iPad music apps, but it’s also one of the deepest, supporting synthesis, step sequencing, song sequencing, layer automation, performance effects, sampling and a 14-track mixer.

The new version includes the following features and updates.

• Core MIDI Out Support – Aurora now allows you to use an external keyboard as a sound source, replacing the internal synthesizer engines. This new feature can be used by the sequencer and for live play.
• Octave Control – An Octave control has been added to the Layer Properties dialog allowing you to transpose both MIDI output and internal instruments.
• PasteBoard Support – PasteBoard support has been added to allow copying all or part of a songs audio to other applications. Aurora also allows you to copy multi-track audio directly into our multi-track recorder Meteor.
• Export to Wav – A new ‘Export To WAV’ option allows a fully automated export of the current song to a WAV file and an alternative to ‘Record To File’ which allows you to record live performances.
• Hold Notes – allows consecutive notes to be to be treated as a single held note, rather than repeat triggering of the note. This can be turned on or off on a layer by layer basis.
• Paste Sample – Added the ability to paste sample data from the global PasteBoard into the Sampler so long as the sample length is less than 10 seconds,
• MIDI Clock – An experimental MIDI clock feature has been added to synchronise with external MIDI devices.

The update has been submitted to Apple, but is not in the App store yet.

Other Improvements:

• Improved Stability.
• Improved Tempo timing.
• Relaxed the profanity filter on file names.

Note: 4Pockets hasn’t released an new demo video for this version of Aurora Sound Studio HD, so the video doesn’t cover the new MIDI features.