Mac and Music News

SimpleChord, a freeware application written by Dan Grover, was released today by Wonder Warp Software. The application is a quick, handy reference to chords useful for musicians. It can be helpful in learning new chords, creating chord progressions, transcribing, and many other tasks. It's available for free at www.wonderwarp.com.

Thanks, Dan; could be a good tool for beginning musicians learning chords. -PK

Wave Arts has announced the availability of WaveSurround Pro version 4. This plugin is a spatial enhancer that uses psychoacoustic methods to expand sound beyond the conventional stereo field. The version 4 has a new user interface and is Mac OS X Panther (10.3) compatible.

WaveSurround Pro 4 is available for US$99.95. Registered users can upgrade for $20. A demo version is also available.

Ed: Digidesign recently acquired Bomb Factory, and now we're seeing the fruits of that purchase: a whole lot of plugins completely free for users of Pro Tools TDM or even Pro Tools LE on OS X! -PK

Digidesign has announced a complete series of free Bomb Factory Plug-ins: Bomb Factory BF76 , BF Essentials Clip Remover, BF Essentials Correlation Meter , BF Essentials Meter Bridge, BF Essentials Noise Meter, BF Essentials Tuner and Funk Logic Mastererizer.

For the record, Bomb Factory BF76 is available with TDM, RTAS and AudioSuite formats. Those plug-ins are downloadable on the site below. You'll need your Digidesign ID and password, but fortunately, no iLok authorization is required.

Good news for those who are looking forward to ProTools LE 6.2.3!

"L'Île de Black Mor" (Black Mor's Island) is a French animation movie made by Jean François Laguionie and just coming out in French-speaking countries' cinemas . It's great entertainment for everyone but also a MacMusic movie! 3 MM teamers worked on the soundtrack: Christophe Heral (Heral) composed the music and did field recordings on old wood ships, Miss Kiki worked on sound editing and design and our dear William (wfplb) mixed the whole thing together. We don't know yet when it'll be released in other languages but you can still look at the trailer to dream of pirates, desert islands, treasure maps and the salty taste of adventure.

Ahoi!

Ed: Congratulations, teamers! Hopefully we'll see this stateside! -PK

Russian Ethnic Vocals is the first-ever sample library of real Russian vocal patterns, which includes more than 800 samples. The samples were recorded in one of the oldest Russian provinces, where you still can hear the breath of ancient Russia. Ed: Very unique sounding offering, if you're looking for something different for your compositions! -PK

There was a little bug in the last version of OUTI (v 1.31), now fixed in version 1.32. Now, instead of being limited to 10 seconds for the buffer size, you can set whatever buffer size you like, ideal for adjusting to your amount of RAM.

Jasmine Audio announced today the newest release of their Macintosh-based audio editor, Jasmine Audio 1.8.

The newest release has been rewritten for OS X. As such, Jasmine now has a new Mac OS X interface, a flexible and robust import and export feature, help tags, bug fixes and more. Version 1.8 now allows for support of multiple file formats including MP4/AAC, WAV, AIFF, AVI, 3GPP, System 7, µLaw, and several QuickTime formats. This feature allows for changes in sampling frequency (up to 48 kHz), bit depth, stereo interlacing, and common compression/streaming protocols.

The $30 application is free for 14 days.

It's possible to broadcast your music on the web with NiceCast by Rogue Amoeba, an easy to use audio streaming solution for Mac OS X. This software enables broadcasts from your iTunes library and includes audio effects, a built-in streaming server, broadcast archiving, and voice over. This new version 1.5 supports Live365.com accounts, broadcasts iTunes crossfades and supports Icecast2 servers.

NiceCast 1.0 is EUR40 shareware.This 1.5 update is free.

MTSoftware has posted free VST software for Mac OS X: HostX, a VSTi host application; TsampX, a standalone sampler for OS X; and TdrumX, a standalone drum machine). A spectral filter patch for Max/MSP, "Turn to FFT" is also available for download.