Mac and Music News

Getting ready for tonight's upgrade to OS X 10.3 Panther -- or trying to decide whether to upgrade? Here are some tips for would-be upgraders:

Pros and Cons: IDC's Roger Kay complains to the San Francisco Chronicle that Apple's making users upgrade OS X too often. Worthwhile reading just to bring back warm memories of Apple talking about OS upgrades being "like getting a whole new Mac" -- haven't heard that expression in a while. Macworld's Jason Snell defends the OS in the same article. David Pogue in the New York Times has a great overview of why ...

Audio and MIDI functionality was one of the last areas of Mac OS X to fully develop: basic functionality was not available until OS X 10.1, and only with the debut of Jaguar 10.2 last summer was OS X truly ready for music and audio. The good news is, for the many users who have made the leap to Jaguar and have enjoyed this operating system's superior stability and MIDI/audio compatibility thanks to Core MIDI and Core Audio, 10.3 Panther is another step forward.

MOTU's press release minutes ago has revealed some details about improvements to Apple's underlying audio/MIDI support. Despite Apple's acquisition of rival Emagic, MOTU clearly remains close to the development process at Apple and is actually ahead of Emagic in terms of support for features like audio input names in its flagship ...

MOTU has posted new drivers and software for full compatibility with OS X 10.3 Panther, the Apple OS update shipping today. MOTU has updated drivers for all its FireWire and PCI audio interfaces, including full Panther support plus new features such as custom input and output names (a featured enabled by Panther) and control surface support for CueMix DSP (pictured), the monitor mixing feature in its newest FireWire and PCI audio hardware. DP 4.11 update is available for free download for all registered DP4 users, a required update for full Panther compatibility, which also boasts new features, including a synthesizer expansion card patch name customization utility, and TDM plug-in menus for Pro Tools hardware users with categorized sub-menus. MachFive is already Panther compatible and needs no upgrade. Unrelated to Panther: MOTU has a new USB MIDI driver, 1.2.1, for all users of Mac OS X 10.2 and later with performance improvements for FastLane users.

I sincerely apologize with all the people who had troubles running MiniTAPE. There is a major update downloadable that fixes all the bugs.
In the achive section, you'll find 2 versions of MiniTAPE: fullscreen and floating window version (for all the guys who do not have enough screen resolution).
Plus, the presets section has been enhanced and the audio driver starts when you open the application. I hope all of you will be able to have fun with Mini. If you find any other bug or you want to share your satisfaction, please mail me.

Focal-JMLab, one of the few french companies in the monitoring market, announced new digital monitoring systems, SM11 and SM 8, bundled with a PC/Mac software called "Focal Manager".

The SM11 is an amplified speaker (250 W – 150 W), mostly designed for numerical projects, and made to be integrated in 5.1 systems by adding dedicated speakers (SM11-C center and SM11-S subwoofer). The SM8 is SM11's younger brother, it has the same conception.

Doug's AppleScripts has updated Make Mine MPEG-4 to version 4.5. Make Mine MPEG-4 is a $7 shareware which allows you to import and encode iTunes CD tracks as MPEG-4/AAC files (.m4a, .mp4, or .mov) while taking full advantage of QuickTime Pro export settings, including Audio Quality, Streaming and Compatibility settings.
New In Version 4.5 (free for registered users): support for Panther, option to convert iTunes AIFF tracks, eject a CD after conversion.

Channel D announces the availability of the Mac OS X native version of its audio signal analyzer and signal generator suite, Mac the Scope / Waavebox.
Mac the Scope 4X 4.1 comprises a versatile signal generator, vector FFT analyzer, sonogram display. The new version includes support for CoreAudio. The software runs on any 500 MHz or faster Macintosh with Mac OS X 10.1 or later. The software delivers optimum performance with Apple's Mac OS X Panther, OS X 10.3. Pricing ranges from US$49 to $449 depending on configuration, which is customizable.

The Apple Store is open again, and Apple announced some new products. The first news : Apple unveiled its new iBook line, all featuring PowerPC G4 processors. The new iBook generation contains three models, all shiping with a combo drive) :

- iBook 12" with 00MHz PowerPC G4 for $1,099.00
- iBook 14" with 933MHz PowerPC G4 for $1,299.00
- iBook 14" with 1GHz PowerPC G4 for $1,499.00

And regarding the eMac : the two models Combo and Super drive now ship with a 1 Ghz G4 processor, and Apple lowered prices for the eMac line : $799.00 for the combo drive and $1,099.00 for the SuperDrive .

In a CDR-info article, Michael Golacinski, Memorex' CEO, says that supply shortages, rising costs from overseas disc manufacturers and stringent enforcement of patent royalties will increase CD-R and CD-RW media prices 10 to 15 percent beginning january 2004.

Note that costs have increased 35 percent this year ...So, as you have done for the cigarettes, just stock.

Our Active Member Celmo had a little talk with the guys up at Geethree and they are working on a serial port adapter again on the modem port. they couldn't tell the release date but watch out!

Manyetas software announce the Panther's upgrade of his "Ritmo" plugin with these features in the 1.1 version :

- fixed a crash during startup when QuickTime 6.4 was installed, or
when run on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
- fixed some issues related to the initialisation and cleanup cycle
- several new sample drum kits are included
- including Logic 5.5 presets

Ritmo only costs $25.

Rogue Amoeba has today released Detour 1.2, with support for OS X 10.3 (Panther) and Unsanity's Xounds 2.1 (Coming Soon!).This update to Detour also includes new French and Italian localizations.

In addition, all of Rogue Amoeba's products have been updated over the
past week for 10.3 support. Both audio recording and enhancing tools, the original Audio Hijack and Audio Hijack Pro received minor updates., and are now available for free download on the :

During the AES, Digidesign announced some news :

- All Digidesign TDM plug-ins as well as most plug-ins distributed by Digidesign have been optimised for Pro Tools|HD Accel. An update software CD of these new Pro Tools|HD Accel plug-ins will ship free with new systems.

- As a distributor of Sonic Solutions' NoNOISE, Digidesign announce
a price reduction on the noise reduction/audio restoration plug-in suite. Effective 10th October, 2003, the new suggested retail price of Sonic Solutions' NoNOISE is 1495 EUR.

Steinberg announced "Hypersonic", a virtual digital music workstation. Developed with Wizoo, this VST or AU instrument ships with 1,000 patches, 64 effect sections, 32 freely assignable individual outputs and a polyphonic power of up to 1,024 voices!

Equally impressive is its sound generating engine. Though it happily serves up sample-based synthesis, with Virtual Analog, FM, Wavetable and Sliced Loop cooking in its kitchen, this machine cooks up four more menus to satisfy every appetite for synthesis.

Hypersonic is available for both PC or Mac, with a Mac G3-500 Mhz processor, 256 Mb RAM and Mac OS 10.2 minimum. Hypersonic will soon ship for a suggested retail price of 399.00 Euros.

Zebra is a virtual synthesizer plug-in. It combines subtractive and additive synthesis with a powerful modulation engine that even smoothly integrates with the built-in effects section. The Audio Units version for MacOS X will be available to musicians with fastidious sound requirements in December 2003.

Zebra will cost only 159$ (US)! - But as a special pre-order offer, users can save almost 50% by purchasing this now. Meanwhile, there's a public beta version you can check out for free until December 2003!

All MHC plugins -previously windows only- are now available for Mac OSX as Audio Units. Studio Setup is a $79 bundle of 16 AudioUnit (AU) plugins. Included in the Studio Setup are Space Synthesizer, Fatsondo, Voxynth, Vox FX, Space Effect and the FlexFX plug-in package.

MiniTAPE is a Freeware stand-alone Application for Mac OS9.x (OSX soon). Basically it is a 5 stereo tracks realtime editor with complex random engine for loop points, convolution matrix, EQ, delay, Sample frequency reducer and recorder designed for live applications (not conventional, you are warned...).

Requires: Apple PPC with OS9.x, 128 MB Ram, High Screen resolution (at least 1280*870..it is designed mostly for 15" Titanium Laptops), Soundcard, SoundManager