Mac and Music News

RTGS-X by LowNorth is a Real-Time Granular Synthesizer that can be used to generate brand new sounds or to manipulate and distort existing sounds. It is very useful in generating dense sonic textures, which can evolve quickly or over long periods, to create alien soundscapes. It is also useful for creating short sound effects or sonic motives, which could be used in musical or theatrical situations.

More info on this shareware is available on the MM softwares section.

A nice article from our friend Clouvel. Discover the Minimoog emulation from Arturia's. History, description, tips and links.

At Plasa tradeshow at Earls Court in London, Digidesign has introduced Venue, it's new system for live sound reinforcement. This new system incluses the D-Show mixing console with its expandable digital mix engine and control software, internal 48-bit processor, mix position analog and digital I/O, remote-controlled mic/line preamps, a multi-channel digital snake, and the innovative Personal Q artist-controlled monitor mixing option. Every channel of the D-Show console is equipped with delay, full 4-band parametric EQ (including additional 4th order HPF), and two dynamics processors. Venue also supports DSP effects plug-in processing and features an integrated recording and playback option for Pro Tools systems.

For more detailed information about Venue, visit the Digidesign website.

AkBrowser by Stephen Norum is a Yamaha samples converter. This freeware can read samples from both Yamaha A4000/A5000 and A3000 Sample Disks and convert sample waveform data into AIFF files. Samples can be auditione by simply double-clicking the file in the browser.

AkBrowser is available as a free download from the MM Softwares section.

If I tell you that she's been here for a few days, that she's a woman, a singer, an author and programmer, guess who she is ? Don't rely on me to give you any more information on her, but you just have to know that she's the 40,000th member on MacMusic ! We have truly moved forward since the time your favorite site was only a discussion list. Today MacMusic is the site you know, the site you bring to life everyday thanks to your posts on the forums (over 100,000), your acticles, your fits of anger and favorites, your ads and your news...

Thanks a lot to all the visitors and to the 40,000 members (oops sorry we are already 40,084..)

MPC Pad 187 is an editor for the Akai MPC 1000, which allows users to editi and create MPC 1000 program files. It can edit all values that are found in the Slider, Mixer, and Program modes of the MPC 1000 (Pads 1, 8, and 7) including their sub-windows. It has been updated to version 1.1. and features drag & drop capabilities, audition samples by clicking the pads, and keyboard shortcuts.

MPC Pad 187 Editor for Akai MPC 1000 is free and needs Mac OS 10.3.

Tascam released the VL-S21 monitoring system, designed for home recording and multimedia use, which bundles a pair of thin speakers (5 W) and a powered subwoofer (15 W). The speakers use NXT technology, which provide wider dispersion and more uniform frequency response.

This system costs $129.

Sample Manager, made by Audiophile Engineering, is a full-featured batch audio processor includind Change Gain, Fade, Trim, Reverse, Convert, Process with AudioUnit, and many others, with full support of Aiff, Wave and Sound Designer II audio files. This 1.4.2 update improves support for Waves plug-ins, adds speed improvements on "large" audio files, and fixes several bugs.

This shareware is available from the MacMusic Softwares section.

Metro is a fast-operating, easy-to-learn high-powered sequencer for the design of professional audio projects. It stands alone as a complete and integrated MIDI, audio and video production system. Sagan Technology has announced updates to v6.2.1.7 for Metro, Metro LX and Metro SE. These updates are free.

List of new features and bugfixes available from the MM softwares section.

Digidesign released MassivePack 3, a powerful plug-in bundle offering unprecedented savings on plug-ins. This pack bundles third party plugins : Echo Farm, Filterbank, H949 Harmonizer, MC2000, MDW High-Res Parametric EQ, Oxford OXF-R3 EQ, Slightly Rude Compressor, Smack, SoundBlender, Speed, and TL Space.

This bundle costs US$1,195, and the Pro version (bundle and one HD Accel card) costs $3,495. MassivePack 3 will be available on Sept. 30.