Mac and Music News

We finally have some consistent information for crazy Storm-users who so far felt abandoned by Arturia which was so busy with CS80 and ModularV, its excellent virtual synths that came out this year.

The major update just announced, will finally come to life in February 2004... This means you will need to be a little bit more patient, however I can tell you a bit about it in the meantime:

- Unlimited rack (instead of four synths and samples readers or effects)
- Import of midi files
- A better sequencer
- Piano roll for pattern and sequence editing
- new general midi instrument
- and other surprises...

Storm 3 will run under Mac Os X (which will be a minimum), so bye bye OS9. This update will cost only a few euros to registered users. Nothing is set yet about the full package's price.

M-Audio (aka Midiman) has posted Panther-compatible drivers for their keyboards and Midi or audio interfaces. Products supported include: USB Midisport, Keystation, Oxygen 8 and Radium devices.

A student at the University of Cologne (Germany) is currently writing a thesis about music software. The thesis is based on an online survey for which he needs your help. Please head over to the following link and fill out the form, it will approx. take 5 min. All your information is kept anonymously and private;the survey serves only a scientific purpose

SmartScore Pro is a "scan & play" software, made by Musitek Corporation, who announces an upgrade to version 3. With SmartScore your scores appear on-screen in editable and playable form after scanning, and this new version adds news features and improvements:improved lyric and text recognition, more symbols and usefull tools (burn ENF playback to AudioCD or convert ENF to PDF files).

SmartScore Pro 3 update costs 99 euros, and a demo version is available on the Musitek web site.

AudioFinder, the playing, scanning and extracting audio software from Iced Audio is fastly becoming the Swiss Army for the digital studio. This new version add a lot of improvements including:

- Added Sysex Transmit for dumping of Sysex data to MIDI devices
- Reordered the menus moving the user defined ones to the right
- Added copy to Desktop
- Added Generate Report to the Scanner Tab (produces a spreadsheet or database compatible file)
- Added AAC (.m4a) support.
- Granted all trial users a new round of launch counts. All feature flags have been reset.
- Added the ability to set Color Labels on files. (Panther required)
- Improved the Sample Extractor so If the source folder is read-only the extracted samples are created in the Favorites folder.
- Added Bookmarks popup on th ...

For them a pad is "un attenuateur", a keyboard "un clavier" or a score "une partition"... They are the happy translator's team of Mac Music: A well organised and compact team facing a constant flow of "News and articles" to translate every day from one language to the other and vice versa. Acting daily in the shadow (sometimes credited with some spare candies) to assure the bilingual of MacMusic which is one of its particularity.

Directed by the firm but sweet hand of Ptilou, this team that we would like to celebrate for its precious help and its devotion is composed of:

Pesji (special mention for his job since he joined the team) - barpi75 - elebuhe - raoulb - Anonym - ben021 - krisg - Presto - Sunny Voice - BC-KDM - marklyn - Beenome - closud2003 - oune - cendrine - Edward - djkbfh

Again thanks for your help ! BTW, dont hesitate to propose your help to translate.

Sagan Technology just released a new version of its sequencer software, Metro 6.1.0.5. Metro stands alone as a complete and integrated MIDI, audio and video production system. The audio system supports up to 64 audio tracks. Each track can have its own effect chain. Eight aux busses are also supported, each with their own chain. Chains can be made up of VST effects and/or AudioUnits (OS X only). All effects can be automated. Real-time editing is encouraged. Software audio play-thru allows the original audio to be recorded regardless of what plug-ins are currently in use.

For electroacoustic music fans, the CRFMW ("Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie") organizes the "Sound Pictures 2003" Festival ("Images Sonores 2003") at Liege-Luik-Lûttich (Belgium), Church "Saint André", Square of Market called "Place du Marché" (in front of the town hall of Liège) . 5/6/7 December 2003

If for you Sibelius only evoke the Lemminkaïnen or the Oceanides you probably didn't leave too much the Finnish plains. Anyway during the last years the London company Sibelius Software Ltd has became one of the leader in the musical composition and notation.

The version 3.0 is coming, with a lot of new functionnalities (around 170) including the mp3 export option on CD or internet, the use of 30 new plugins and also 164 sampled instruments from Kontakt player (specially developed for Sibelius by Native Instruments).

on Sibelius web site you'll find: a demo version, as well as the update program informations along with the list of local dealers.

As you already do with the "News" you can now post a comment on every article of the "Articles" section, it will open a new thread in the relevant section of the Forums.

Don't hesitate to send your feedback, share your advices, questions, remarks by using the window at the end of each article.

Wave Arts announces Version 4 of Power Couple, a pair of music production plug-ins : TrackPlug (a 64-bit 10-band EQ + compressor, expander-gate) and MasterVerb (a reverb). This version 4 offers a new user interface, a cross platform Preset Manager, an Undo feature and A/B Buffers for easier editing, and is AudioUnit, VST and MAS on Mac OS X Panther (10.3) compatible

Power Couple 4 is available for $249.95. Registered users can upgrade from Power Couple 3 for $50 or upgrade from MasterVerb or TrackPlug for $100. A demo version is also available on Wave Arts web site.

SoundHack announces SoundHack Spectral Shapers, a group of four VST and AudioUnits plugins based on the SoundHack program, the underground sound design tool widely used in music and film.

Spectral Shapers, the first release in a series of three groups of plugins, will expand on the filters in SoundHack, and explore new spectral techniques as well. Spectral Shapers bring timbral morphing and reshaping into the realtime interactive mainstream.

The four plugins in the Spectral Shapers group are all filters which emphasize the reshaping of the timbre of sound: +morphfilter, +spectralgate, +spectralcompand and +binaural. Each plugin works as a group of 513 coordinated filters, performing with both macro- and microsonic focus.
Spectral Shapers can be automated by MIDI controller message ...