PC and Music News

Ueberschall has released the Urbanic Producer Pack, a massive library dedicated to Hip Hop & RnB Sounds.

With more than 1120 individual single drum sounds consisting of punch filled: kick drums, claps, snare, hi hats, percussion, cymbals and shaker samples. This superabundant collection also consists of loops from: hi hat, percussion and FX as well as bassline, synth, guitar, rhodes, piano, string sequences. BPM information and root key (key signatures) are embedded in most loop file names, simplifying selection and direct use.

Ueberschall fortified this library with bass and lead instrument sounds, sampled with lengths of up to 8 sec. With tone captured form top trusted and tested brands like: Moog, Studio Electronics, Oberheim, and Roland, to name a few.

As usual the Elastik Player is included, which means that no sampler is required.

The Urbanic Producer Pack is available now for Mac OS X and Windows in VST, AU and RTAS formats at a retail price of €99.

VirSyn has just updated its plug-in suite VTAPE to version 1.2 which is now VST3 compatible.

New multi-channel capabilities have laid the basis for a new kind of Surround effect delay - imagine what you can do with up to 16 tempo sync'd delay taps for each audio channel with independent level control. The new multichannel capabilities in VST3 makes the handling of VTape much easier, apparently.

New Features :

- Surround effect delay.
- VST3 compatibility.
- Multichannel capabilities up to 10.2 (VST3 / AU / RTAS).
- Independent level control for each tap.
- Delay: Multichannel Mixer.
- Delay: Input link function for multichannel delay.
- Saturator: automatic gain compensation.

FXpansion has just released BFD B.O.M.B (Big Orchestral Marching Band), a new expansion pack for BFD 1.5 and BFD2 delivering a heavy payload of orchestral and marching drum instruments to your percussive arsenal.

Highlights :

- Expansion pack for BFD1.5 & BFD2 with 38GB of new sounds.
- Set of four timpani covering 1.5 octaves, each pitch recorded with felt and wood mallets.
- Full set of orchestral chimes covering 1.5 octaves.
- 4 tonal bass drums with multiple beaters.
- Concert bass drums including a 40" played with three different beaters.
- Marching quad toms played with sticks, mallets, and hotrods.
- 7 marching and orchestral snares played with sticks, brushes, mallets, and hotrods.
- Groove suite featuring drum-corps and marching performances, hip-hop street beats and more.

BFD B.O.M.B is available now and is priced at $199 / €149 / £99.

AudioWarrior has just released Studio Organ Donor, a sample library for Steinberg's HALion 3. It includes samples from a B3, a church organ and the "Wurly piano organ" which mixes a piano sound with gritty organ tones with optional Flange, Rotary, and Pan-Tremolo.

Studio Organ Donor is available now for Mac OS X and Windows XP | Vista, it costs $49. Note that HALion 3 is required.

Time+Space launch a competition : to celebrate the forthcoming release of Rob Papen's new virtual synth RG, they have 3 complete sets of Rob Papen products to give away. All you have to do is answer a "very simple question".

Each winner will receive a boxed copy of Albino 3, Blue and Predator as well as a copy of RG when it is released. You'll also get a limited edition Rob Papen t-shirt.

To enter the competition visit :

Time+Space Competition

Puremagnetik has released 3 new library bundles for Ableton Live, Kontakt, Logic and GarageBand. All bundles are available directly from the Puremagnetik website for immediate download at a price of $60 each.

Vintage Collection
Vintage Collection contains 7 Puremagnetik's old-school synthesizer Micropaks sourced directly from the classics of the 1970s and 80s :

- TeeBee - Roland® TB-303 instrument and loops
- Circuit:30 - "Circuits" based on Moog® synthesizers and effects
- Analog Bass Volume 1 - Assortment of deep analog bass instruments
- P-50 Linear - Sounds from Roland's® classic 1980's D-50 synthesizer
- String Machines - A collection of the great string synths from the 1970s
- Eight Bit - Classic Commodore 64 SID chip sounds
- Vintage 80's Classics - assortment of ...

After the beautiful Olga, Schwa has just released Oligarc, a collection of four virtual analog FX, tied together by a modulation nerve center that converts the input audio into control signals that can be routed to most of the effect knobs. Oligarc can be an LFO-driven filter, an envelope-controlled phaser, a gate-triggered saturation effect, or anything else you can think up, including mad combinations of linked modulation of multiple effects at once.

In addition, the Oligarc package contains standalone versions of the Drive, Phaser, and Chorus effects, for more traditional usage - although there's nothing traditional about these effects.

Oligarc is available in for Windows (VST) and Mac OS X (AU) and costs $60 (All hosts, commercial use license) / $40 (Reaper-only, non-commercial use license).

PSP Audioware has just announced the release of the successor to the PSP MixPack bundle. PSP MixPack2 not only updates both the usability and the processing algorithms of the original PSP MixPack plug-ins, but adds a new processor: PSP MixGate2.

PSP MixPack2 is a collection of five high-resolution, high quality audio processors designed to improve the quality of your digital audio tracks and mixes. It consists of: PSP MixBass2, PSP MixTreble2, PSP MixSaturator2, PSP MixPressor2 and PSP MixGate2.

The new PSP MixGate2 is described as an high precision noise gate. The gate is fully configurable and can operate fast enough for special effects (such as "stuttering audio") and smoothly enough to gate unwanted noise without sounding artificial. It includes both high and low pass filters so as to tailor the control signal. By filtering out unwanted frequencies, you can ensure that only the desired frequency can trigger the gate.

PSP MixPack2 is available for both Mac OSX and Windows at $199 in VST, AU and RTAS formats. Owners of the PSP MixPack can get the new plug-in at discounted price of $49.00 until May 1st, 2008. After this date the upgrade price will be increased up to $79.00. All users who bought PSP MixPack bundle on August 1st 2007 or later get the new PSP MixPack2 for free. Note that a full-featured 2 week demo version is also available.

Today at NAB in Las Vegas, iZotope unveils the ANR-B Adaptive Realtime Noise Reduction Unit, bringing the company's renowned audio algorithm for adaptive noise reduction to a dedicated hardware unit for use in real-time broadcast applications.

ANR-B uses iZotope's advanced noise reduction technology to intelligently identify and suppress environmental broadband noise, hum, phone line artifacts and more. Unlike other noise reduction solutions, this unit actually detects noise in real-time and adapts to changing noise over time, allowing for automatic operation with little to no input required from the user.

Key Features:

- Automatically removes noise from audio in real-time
- Two channels can work independently or as a stereo pair
- Includes presets for specific scenarios
- Residual Noise switch lets user quickly preview the noise being removed
- Single knob controls noise suppression on each channel for fast operation
- Learn button allows for manual operation by capturing a noise profile
- PC/Mac interface for managing presets and designing advanced programs
- Remote control capability

ANR-B will be available in Summer of 2008 at a retail price of $4995.

Mixosaurus has just announced the release of Kit A v1.1 which brings a huge usability improvements and significantly expands its range of possible applications:

"ECO" Instrument Patches:
These have lower RAM requirements and faster loading times (down to 1/7 of the full patches). They will work even on "average" computers, and all programming you do with them will be 100% compatible with the full patches.

MIDI Translations:
Built-in ability to understand and play MIDI tracks of all major MIDI drum formats: Addictive Drums, BFD, DFH, EZ Drummer, General MIDI. Also included are dedicated Translations for Roland's TD-3, TD-10 and TD-20, and ...