PC and Music News

Solid State Logic will showcase a new plug-in for the Duende DSP powered DAW plug-in platform at the NAMM show.

X-EQ is at first glance a 10 band parametric EQ, but each of the 10 EQ bands can be selected to provide a different type of EQ, making X-EQ a vast range of different EQ processors in one package. Bands 1 and 10 are High and Low Filters, each of which can be set to employ one of five different Filter topologies with five very different tonal characters. Bands two and nine are shelving EQ's with a Q range that extend right up to 10.3 and a degree of undershoot and overshoot at higher Q settings that give a unique tonal character. The remaining six bands are all Bell EQ's with a choice of nine different EQ types providing a comprehensive range of response curves. All Shelving & B ...

After their release of Stylus RMX Expanded, Spectrasonics has announced a new product, and they will show it at Winter NAMM.
Hope it's a final product, ready to ship, and not only a pre-release...

The long awaited update of the most user friendly score editor is finally here.
Just think that the v4.6 hasn't even pass the stage of beta testing, and you'll understand why copyists, composers and arrangers are happy !
A this time, only the Mac version is available. PC version will be shipping in February 2008.
If you want to download the full version, it will cost you $399,99, if you only need the update, it is $129,99 (add $10.00 s&h for CD version).

Prima is a virtual female vocalist modelled on the voice of a professional soprano singer, using Vocaloid 2.

Whether it's soaring leads, harmonies or backing vocals, Prima can sing any word from the English language (and other languages too with a little work).
Prima is also very well suited if you want to be adventurous and experimental, since her voice can be easily modified and shaped in many ways.

In addition to singing any words or combination of syllables or phonemes you can imagine, Prima will spread any sustained vowel (or voiced consonant) across as many notes as you like, with perfect legato. You can select from several different natural vibrato types and drag'n'drop your chosen type to any note or notes, and control the time-position and amount of the vibrato.

You have ...

Sony Creative Software has updated Sound Forge Audio Studio to v9.0c.

Version 9.0c adds support for LPEC files imported from Digital Voice Editor software. And also support for WAV files up to 4 GB. Select the Allow Wave renders up to 4 GB check box on the General page of the Preferences dialog to enable support.
Some Key shortcuts have been added : you can now hold Ctrl while dragging in a data window to switch to the Magnify tool temporarily. Select the Allow Ctrl+drag style zoom in data windows check box on the General tab of the Preferences dialog to enable this behavior.

Each of the following iZotope Mac and PC plugs have been updated : Trash and Spectron to v.1.13, and Ozone to v.1.14.
Performance and stability have been improved (especially in Pro Tools) and Mac OS X Leopard is supported.

Antares releases maintenance updates for Auto-Tune 5 AU and TDM (Mac) and VST PC are now available.
The AU version provides improved compatibility with Apple Logic 8. In addition, all three releases squash a few minor bugs. These are free updates for current Auto-Tune 5 owners.

While the release of Independence Pro delays for a few weeks to January 2008, Independence Basic, Freedom v2.0 and Origami v2.0 are shipping.

Independence Basic comes with the same audio engine as Independence 2 and is fully compatible with Independence Free and Independence 2. Apart from the ability to load 3rd party VST effects and VST instruments - which is not enabled in Independence Basic - the user has access to the same software features as Independence 2.

Freedom 2.0

All insert filters and effects of Freedom 2.0 are fully surround compatible up to 8.1. The format of surround files is recognized automatically and Freedom 2 assigns the respective channels accordingly. Freedom 2 offers a new FX Bank Browser, and automation features include minimum and maximum values (use the ...

Best Service releases Chris Hein-Bass, a bass guitar sample library powered by Kontakt 2 Player (12.7 GB, up to 4,089 samples per patch). Chris Hein has produced this collection including a Musicman Stingray picked & slapped, a LeFay fretless bass and an upright bass with three sets of strings: steel-strings (classic jazz sound), nylon-strings (high-fidelity sound) and gut-strings (40s swing sound).

All nuances of bass playing techniques are implemented, thanks to Kontakt scripting abilities. It offers 112 MIDI controllable features including things like repetition-hotkeys, keys-vibrato, fall-control, bridge/center playing, pickup micro-blending, expression-samples, pinch-harmonics, automatic-mode, slide-mode, chord-mode and much more.

The included IK Multimedia Ampeg SVX Uno (virtual bass-amp) adds more sound variations to the natural, basic, bass instruments.

Tone2 has announced that Gladiator for Mac OS X is available now and that the Windows version has been updated to v1.1.


The Mac UB (AU and VST 2.4) version of Gladiator is available. Tone2 has enhanced some functionalities and fixed some behaviors :
- Drastically improved time for saving/loading songs in Cubase and other hosts.
- Opening the plugin is 250% faster. When the plugin is started for the first time it creates cache files (.1 .2 .3 .4) within the Gladiator_data directory. These cache files help to improve the performance.
- Drastically reduced the hard disc space for saving songs in Cubase and other hosts (previously 1.5 Mb per instance, now 850 byte).
- Removed a glitch after switching through presets.
- Slightly reduced memory usage.
- LFO1/2 "retrigger off" was rena ...

Olympus adds another member to the portable recorders family (see our news on the Marantz PMD620 or the Edirol R-09), for example).

The Olympus LS-10 allows you to record in 24bit/96 kHz linear PCM, and supports Wave, WMA and MP3. It has a built-in 2 GB memory, SD slot, mic amplifier,2 cardioid mics, line and mic inputs, headphones output, USB connection, etc.

It is powered by 2 AA batteries (up to 12 hours of recording capability).
It is bundled with Cubase LE4 and has an estimated street price of $399.99 and should be available these coming days.