It's AES time in New York City and it's going to be huge !!

Lexicon, iZotope, SoundToys, Tascam, BIAS, Sonnox, Rupert Neve Designs, etc... They all have brought something to the table and they all claim that we can't live without.

It's happening now and the entire 440Network Team is on the starting blocks to provide you the freshest news in this Special Report and in our Daily News Section, so stay tuned !

The X1 by sE Electronics is a new large diaphragm condenser microphone which is hand built in sE's own facility in Shanghai like all their products. It features a 10dB pad and a bass cut.

The X1 will be available in December at a price of €120.

Abletoncourses.com is a new website which features two online Ableton live video courses for beginners, intermediate and advanced level students, which has been designed and delivered by Ableton certified trainer Rob Jones.

The concept of this new internet business is to allow students of all abilities and locations to login and study online whenever they choose, getting professional instruction and support as modules are delivered.

Each course is presented in a modular format with each lesson lasting around 20 minutes and in total 26 modules are available which cover everything from initial setup through to advanced racks and performance techniques. Each module comes with comprehensive notes and students also follow a series of live sessions with Rob which are included in the course ...

Lexicon has launched the Omega Studio Bundle.

The Omega Studio Bundle is a completely integrated computer recording package that combines Lexicon's Omega Studio USB recording interface with Steinberg Cubase LE 4 multitrack audio and MIDI recording software, the Lexicon Pantheon VST reverb plug-in, and an AKG D 88 S lead vocal microphone and mic cable. It contains all the necessary hardware and software components to transform a PC or Mac into a 24-bit recording studio and allows the user to start recording immediately.

The Omega Studio Bundle is available now at a list price of $279.95 (estimated street price : $199.95).

Ueberschall announces the availability of Planet Trance.

According to Ueberschall, Planet Trance grants you access to the full range of Trance music, from the mid 90s up to now. The 30 Construction Kits deliver everything which is needed to achieve modern club sounds. Planet Trance is packed with harmonies, catchy melodies and highly atmospheric sounds. Delving a little deeper the 3.3 GB of hefty content brings a sizable amount of specialized samples and sounds, like drums, percussion, deep basses, synth sounds, atmospheric pads, strings, pianos and sound effects—to name but a few.

Highlights :
• Genre: Trance
• Elastik Soundbank for Mac/PC/AU/VST/RTAS/StandAlone
• Elastik Player included - no sampler required

Available now for €99.

Synchro Arts has announced that after years of development VocALign PRO v4.0 is now available for both Pro tools and Logic. Compared to VocALign Project, VocAlign Pro has:

• More accurate alignment with user controls for Sync Points and Protected Dub areas.
• Higher quality signal editing for single pitched audio tracks.

VocALign Pro AU v4.0 is available now for Mac OS X. The RRP (before discount and VAT) is $699 (North America) and £399 (elsewhere).

The Plugin Discounts website has published a teaser about a new reverb plug-in... We don't actually have any details, just a picture which looks like a Lexicon 480 reverb.

Wait and see...

Propellerhead has announced the immediate availability of Reason Soul School ReFill for Reason. This ReFill explores the classic sounds coming out of three of soul's biggest capitals: Detroit, Memphis and Cincinnati.

The Soul School ReFill sample library features twelve unique soul and funk instrumentals with all their musical elements – bass, drums, guitars and horns - in Propellerhead's tempo-independent REX format, as well as a collection of the 60's and 70's-sounding instruments multisampled for use with Reason's NN-XT sampler and Combinator device. Reason users will find the library organic sounding and extremely flexible; they can use the ReFill as a starting point for song creation, play their own tracks from the instruments or add "classic spice" to any style of music.

Composed exclusively for this ReFill and recorded using the finest in vintage technology, all material was played live by funk-savvy session musicians simultaneously, without overdubs, for that genuine feel.

The Reason Soul School ReFill is available exclusively for download through Propellerhead's web shop at a price €79/$99.

Sugar Bytes has updated Artillery to version 2.1. This update includes several bug fixes/improvements and four new effects :

• Timestretch: Stretches your audio tracks and shrinks your editing time.
• PitchLooper: Pitchshifting combined with a looper.
• Scratch Looper: Scratching on highest level.
• Reverb HQ: High quality reverb algorithm at the usual low CPU charge.

On top of that, Sugar Bytes has also announced some "Christmas Special Deals" :

• Buy 3 - Pay 2 : When you purchase three Sugar Bytes products, the cheapest one is free.
• Unique cheaper : Sugar Bytes' Unique Synthesizer is now available for €99 / $129.
• Sugar Bundle cheaper : The Sugar Bundle is now available for €399 / $599.

Sennheiser is closing down Klein + Hummel.

According to a dutch website (cf. link below) most employes will be kept and their famous Studio Monitors will be released under the Neumann brand which is also own by Sennheiser.

MeldaProduction is preparing the Mac OS X version of their plug-ins and the first beta version has been released.

The beta version installer features not less than 37 plug-ins, some are even not yet released for Windows. It is designed for testing purposes and :

• it is not stable (probably, seems fine on Leopard in Cubase 4 and Reaper).
• it is not optimized.
• it is VST only (AU support is being worked on).
• it is Intel only (PowerPC support probably will not be added at all)
• it has no licence manager, so most of the plugins (except the free ones) will remain in demo mode and cannot be activated yet!
• The installer occasionally fails installing presets, in that case please try again (ideally after system restart). The plugins should be installed even in this case, there will be no presets though.

MeldaProduction would appreciate testing of these plugins, which will considerably speed up the development.

Cartec is a new British company that has stepped up to fight in the 'clone wars' with their version of the classic Pultec EQ. After a conversation at Olympic studios in London regarding their Pultecs and the noise/maintenance issues Liam Carter set out to build a no compromise alternative.

The Cartec EQP-1A features :

• All valve gain stage and valve power rectification
• Transformer balanced input and output (authentic hand-wound British Sowter models)
• Point-to-point wiring (no circuit boards inside) and hand assembled in England
• Sealed switches and control pots (military grade Grayhill and PEC models respectively)
• JJ ECC83s, ECC82 and United Electronic CV4005 rectifier valves
• 150mm deep aluminium chassis/engraved aluminium faceplate
• Custom made knobs by Davies molding (Manufacturer of the original Pultec knobs)

The Cartec EQP-1A is priced at £1955.

U-he presents ACE (Any Cable Everywhere), a new modular virtual synth.

According to u-he, ACE delivers top quality sound at a highly competitive price. The selection of modules and clear layout make ACE the ideal instrument for newcomers delving into the fascinating world of modular synthesis. The number of ways to connect modules together is practically infinite, and you will soon discover how much more fun it is to make your own sounds in ACE than in a non-modular synthesizer.

Details :

• ETA: early December 2009
• pricing: 69EUR (includes 19% VAT, ca. 85 USD net when bought from overseas)
• formats: VST on Windows, VST/AU/RTAS on MacOS X
• system requirments Mac: Apple Macintosh Computer running MacOS X 10.4+ on a G4 processor or newer, Intel Core 2 Duo or better recommended
• system requirments Win: VST2 compatible host software on a PC with SSE2 supporting processor, Intel Core 2 Duo or better recommended
• number of presets and such: tba
• fun factor: high !