PC and Music News

Synthogy unveils Ivory Upright Pianos. a new virtual instrument which presents the unique, intimate sound of upright pianos using Synthogy's technology and piano-building expertise.

This all new collection of Vertical Pianos consists of four complete instruments. Each piano was carefully chosen, and the vintage instruments selected after an exhaustive search among hundreds of vintage uprights. Each of these authentic pianos was recorded with Synthogy's usual meticulous attention to detail to capture the unique personalities of these instruments.

Features :

- 4 hand selected Upright Pianos including :

. Yamaha U5 Modern Upright
. 1914 A.M. Hume Vintage Upright
. Honky Tonk, Barroom Upright
. Real Tack Piano

- Comes with Ivory piano engine
- More than 50 GB Core Library
- Over 5000 Samples
- Up to 10 Velocity Layers
- Custom Upright Soundboard Emulation DSP
- Separate, selectable "creaks and clunks" layer, for added funk
- Release samples triggered by velocity and duration
- Full EQ and Effects section
- All of Ivory's Piano Specific features and controls
- Dozens of new programs and effects presets

Note that Ivory's "unified interface" feature enables you to use just a single instance, and one interface, to play and control all of Ivory's pianos, no matter how many pianos you install.

Ivory Upright Pianos will be available soon for Mac OS X and Windows in VST, AU, RTAS and Standalone versions at a retail price of $299.

Sinevibes announces the immediate availability of vastly-anticipated 5th edition of the Fantom Tweakbook, the sound design and music post-production guide for Roland Fantom-S, Fantom-X, Juno-G and SonicCell synthesizers.

This new edition is the biggest update to the Tweakbook ever: there are now 62 illustrated articles explaining the capabilities of these amazing instruments even deeper. The look and layout has been totally reworked from scratch and, in addition to the helpful synthesizer and effects parameter map, there is a little dictionary which makes it even easier to navigate and understand the book.

The Fantom Tweakbook now covers an overwhelming amount of topics, including subtractive, additive and vector synthesis, ring modulation, analog sound replication, creating complex effects on patch level, envelope, LFO and matrix modulation, using effects processors as synthesis blocks, sampling and re-sampling, advanced processing of internal and external sounds, using in conjunction with other gear and much beyond. The 5th edition comes with over 220 example patches and templates, as well as a new collection of raw sample material and rhythm kits — so you can instantly start making your own sounds and music.

The Fantom Tweakbook 5th edition is available online from our partner DontCrac[k] for $19.

Schaack Audio Technologies has just released Transient Shaper v2.0.

New features :

- 3 different Attack shapes (sharp/mid/soft).
- 3 different Release shapes (sharp/mid/soft).
- Analog saturation (for smoothly cutting off the 'head' of too sharp transients or using Transient Shaper for plain saturation).
- Smoothed parameters (to avoid zipper noise when turning the knobs).

Transient Shaper v2.0 is available now for Mac OS X and Windows in VST and AU formats at a price of €49 (+VAT).

G-Sonique has announced a new VST plug-in that will be released on May 2008 : XBass4000.

The XBass4000 is basically a bass enhancer. Its "virtual circuits" combine two different algorithms for emphasizing the bass spectrum of the track :

- a psychoacoustic algorithm BassEnhancer that emphasize the intensity of hearable bass content.
- an analog style saturation unit that enriches bass spectrum of a requested "fat" and "warm" sounds known from tube circuits. It also adds higher harmonic frequencies that expands and enlightens the hearable spectrum as well as sub-bass spectrum.

XBass4000 will be available for Windows as a VST effect plug-in. Price TBA.

Soniccouture has announced the release of Kontakt Scriptorium, a package comprising a collection of KSP Scripts, a sound library and set of Tutorial videos for Native Instruments Kontakt 2 and 3.

KSP scripts are kind of like 'plug-ins' for Kontakt. These ingenious tools open up new worlds of sonic possibility within Kontakt. KSP allows you to manipulate Kontakt parameters at a microscopic level, creating new behaviours, unique timbral characters or even generative sequences. For those who find the idea of KSP Scripts daunting, Scriptorium includes 4 tutorial videos that take the user step by step from complete beginner to more advanced sound design techniques.

The final part of the Scriptorium package is a collection of sounds for Kontakt all using the included scripts, naturally. This broad range of instruments features atmospheres, sequences, generative soundscapes, beats, leads, pads, etc...

Kontakt Scriptorium is available for download now priced at £49 / $99. Note that Kontakt 2 or 3 is required. Video and audio demos available.

BTE Audio has extended its line of Equalization Algorithms with the PEQ3, a high performance digital equalization algorithm that simulates the sound and feel of the extremely rare program equalizers of the mid 1990s.

With its proprietary topology, the PEQ3 algorithm simultaneously achieves both absolute sonic accuracy and extremely high processing efficiency. Targeted at desktop and embedded professional audio applications, the PEQ3 algorithm will enable quality-conscious third-parties to incorporate the highly revered modern program equalizer sound into their products.

Yamaha is about to unveil its yet famous Tenori-on in the United States with launch events for the public and press.

Tenori-on literally means "sound in the palm of your hand" and is a twenty-first century digital musical instrument that is part art-piece, part must-have music gadget for the iPhone generation. The brainchild of Japanese Media Artist Toshio Iwai, Tenori-on emanates from his experiments with light shows and musical boxes, resulting in a hand-held, burnished magnesium-encased matrix of 256 LED buttons that glow as you access different sounds and textures ('Layers') over an infinitely repeating sequence of notes. Sound images are literally drawn with Tenori-on using a host of internal sounds as well as samples loaded from external sources. With an interface where sight and touch are every bit as integral as sound, the Tenori-on music making possibilities are as endless as they are addictive.

Launch events for the media and the public will take place in New York (Southpaw in Brooklyn on April 16th) and San Francisco (1015 Folsom on April 18th). The events will not only feature Toshio Iwai himself, explaining this new musical paradigm, but also a host of edgy new electronic artists such as Sutekh, Safety Scissors, Pole, and I Am Robot And Proud, who have already incorporated Tenori-on into their stage shows. The events are free to enter and will feature Demo Stations for an interactive experience.

Public registration for a launch event is free at :

Nucleus SoundLab has just released Viral Outbreak, a new product based on the sounds of Access Music's Virus TI hardware synthesizer.

Using the power of extensive 96khz multi-sampling, manual looping and professional preset design, Viral Outbreak contains all manner of TI-based sounds. Classic wavetables, raw saw and pulse waveforms (sampled at multiple pulse-widths), unison dance leads, breathtaking pads, bizarre formant effects, massive supersaws and even punchy synth drumkits.

Viral Outbreak is available now as a Windows VSTi plugin and a Reason 4.0 Refill with prices starting at $99.95. Note that a free demo Plugin and Refill are also available as well as a huge variety of audio examples.

Focal Professional introduces the new CMS 65 and CMS50, two new active nearfield studio monitors.

These bi-amplified active nearfield monitors, 165 watts for the CMS65 and 130 watts for the CMS50, benefits from the smoother sound of two high end class AB amplifiers. Thanks to separate HF and LF shelving adjustments, a Desktop Notch correction filter that controls first reflection when the speakers are located over the mixing board, rubber decoupling stand, spikes to tilt the speakers and adjust soundstage height, the Focal Professional CMS 65 and CMS 50 are versatile and will feel at home in any Broadcast, Post-Production or Recording Studio.

The aluminium die-cast cabinets are bringing unconditional rigidity while internal damping and bracing sets the monitor free from unwanted colorations. Focal's unique Al/Mg (Aluminium/Magnesium) inverted dome tweeter combines both, ideal lightweight mass and superb damping, resulting in a tweeter that easily extends up to 28khz at -3db, with a close to perfection pulse response. The Polyglass® bass driver combines hollow micro-balls of glass to a pulp cellulose cone thus permitting an amazing rigidity versus mass ratio. The rigidity versus mass ratio of Polyglass is 10 times better than polypropylene and easily exceeds Kevlar.

Prices :

- CMS 50: $695 each MSRP
- CMS 65: $995 each MSRP

The Italian Grand from Synthogy has been shipping for some time as an expansion for the Ivory piano software. Now the Italian Grand is available as a standalone product (for Mac and Pc) and is no longer just an expansion pack for existing Ivory users.

Highlights of Ivory Italian Grand Piano :

- Premium 10 Foot Concert Grand
- 19GB Core Library
- Over 2000 Samples
- 12 Discrete Velocity Layers
- Comes with Ivory piano engine
- Release samples triggered by velocity and duration
- Una Corda (soft pedal) samples at multiple velocities
- Full EQ and Effects section
- All of Ivory's Piano Specific features and controls
- Dozens of new Ivory programs and effects

Ivory Italian Grand is available now for Windows and Mac OS X in VST, AU, RTAS and stand-alone formats at a retail price of $169.

Yellow Tools has just released Independence Pro v2.1, the first update for the Independence Pro sampler workstation. All three products of Independence Pro (Independence, Independence Live & Independence FX) get updated to version 2.1.

Beside many improvements of the workflow, performance and stability, Independence 2.1 and Independence Live 2.1 now also support the import option of 3rd party VST Instrument und VST Effect plug-ins. Additionally the new Independence FX 2.1 update includes the import option of 3rd party VST Effect plug-ins.

The update to Independence Pro 2.1 is free for all registered users and is available for download in the Yellow Tools User Area.