Mac and Music News

WayOutWare announced the TimewARP 2600, the software synth version of the ARP 2600. All of the original control features from the ARP 2600 are there, but this plugin version features : 8 voice polyphony, extensive patch manager, real-time performance, and more...

The TimewARP 2600 is scheduled to ship November 2004. More info on WayOutWare web site.

Bass Tuner AU 1.0 by Laidman & Katsura is an Audio Unit plug-in tuner just for bass guitar. Small but powerful ! Hands-free operation, listens while you tune. Optimized bass register pitch detection.

You can download it from the MM softwares section.

Primacoustic has introduced the IsoPad series of speaker isolation devices. The pads are designed to eliminate the coupling and associated low-mid resonance of speaker cabinets as they vibrates sympathetically with solid surfaces.

More info on Primacoustic web site.

Grand Staff Audio Units 1.0 by Laidman & Katsura is a plug-in tuner for pianists, singers, and budding musicans. Shows single note on a Grand Staff. Hands-free operation, listens while you tune.

This shareware is available in the MacMusic softs section.

The Australian Smart Ltd. announced the Smart Console, a mixing control surface designed for mixing and editing large numbers of channels. The Smart Console is designed to both reduce the number of knobs on a panel and reduce the number of actions required in order to gain access to out of reach controls, and is also designed as an 'open platform' to capitalise on the strengths and experience of other leading audio manufacturers.

info on Smart web site.

Applied Acoustics Systems has announced that the demo version of Ultra Analog VA-1 si now available. Ultra Analog VA-1 is a virtual analog synthesizer with 32 voices of polyphony.

This demo version of Ultra Analog VA-1 is available at Applied Acoustics Systems'
website.

Ultimate Sound Bank announced that X-treme FX is now shipping. X-treme FX is a virtual instrument plug-in for Mac OS X (VST/AU/RTAS) made for sound effects and atmospheric sounds. It comes with 5000 sound effects on over 8 Gb of disc space.

X-treme FX is available now for $399.

M-Audio introduced the FireWire Solo, an audio FW interface for recording guitar tracks, which features a 1/4" guitar input and a microphone input with phantom power (both featuring gain control and clipping LEDs), 2 line inputs, and coaxial S/PDIF digital I/O.

FireWire Solo can be powered via the FireWire bus or optional power supply, and is shipping at $249.95.

URS announced Audio Units support for the Classic Console EQ Bundle (A and N series only). The URS A equalizer is digital emulation of a vintage Neve EQ, and the URS N is a digital emulation of a vintage API equalizer.

The Audio Units versions are a free upgrade for both TDM and Native Classic Console EQ Bundle owners.

Yellow Tools has released Logic 7 compatible public beta Audio Units versions of Culture and Majestic plugins. Culture is a modular virtual percussion instrument and Majestic is a virtual instrument which contains more than 16GB sounds of various basses.

Info and download on Yellow Tools web site.

Expert sleepers has released Latency Fixer, a free AU plug-in that reports to the host application that it has a latency (controlled by the plug-in parameters) but does not actually apply any processing to the audio signal. This causes the host to use its own latency compensation to advance the audio fed into the plug-in by the requested amount.

More info in MM softs section.

Native Instruments has released a hotfix for the Audio Unit version of Kontakt, making it compatible with Logic 7. It passes Logic 7 Audio Units Validation.

Info and download on NI web site.

In Sonasphere 1.2b, functional units, such as sound samples, effects and mixers, are represented as small spherical 'Objects' floating within 3D Space. Users can easily make connections between these objects via simple mouse interaction and establish signal stream networks.

Sonasphere 1.2b is available in our softwares section.