Mac and Music News

ApulSoft has ported Big Tick Audio's free plugin Ticky Clav to OS X in VST and AudioUnits formats. This plugin emulates the ultra-funky sound of the Hohner Clavinet, forever associated with Stevie Wonder's "Superstition". The synth engine is based on a physical modeling algorithm, faithfully reproducing the strings vibration and the 2 pickups of the Clavinet Model C.

Audio Damage has released two plug-ins modeled after vintage digital outboard effects. These two new plugins are : Discord - A model of the first mass-produced pitch-shifter, which was a studio standard found in control rooms the world over. Deverb is a dark digital reverberator which features twin filters for extreme shaping of the reverb tail, and unique MIDI controls allowing rhythmic "playing" of the effect.

Discord and Deverb are available as VST plug-ins for OS X and cost US$39 each or can be purchased together for US$68.

Crystal is a semi-modular software synthesizer, in Audio Units format, featuring both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. This 2.4.9b version features a new GUI and is now compatible with Logic 7.

Crystal is available in MacMusic softwares section.

Minky Starshine v1.0 beta 1 by Expert Sleepers is a new additive and subtractive hybrid synth available in Audio Unit format for Mac OS X. It allows user to control 16 independent partials and to assign them to three groups (each group has an envelope generator and an LFO). A resonant filter is available and a flexible modulation section too (with chorus, flange and delay effects).

This beta version will expire at the end of November 2004.

VST Wrapper by AudioEase allows user to run VST Plug-ins as MAS (Motu Audio System) in Motu Digital Performer. The VST Wrapper 4.1 supports multiple outputs for instruments, VST bank and preset saving and loading, Sample Accurate MIDI timing, Beat lock and Parameter Automation.

The aim of the MBROLA project, initiated by the TCTS Lab of the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (Belgium), is to obtain a set of speech synthesizers for as many languages as possible, and provide them free for non-commercial applications. The first release of the MaxMBROLA Package is online and is developed for Max/MSP 4.5 on Mac OS X.

The VST audio editor Audacity is a freeware which features an amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window. This new version 1.2.3 fixes a bug that causes random crashes on Mac OS X. It also includes several updated translations, and some other minor bug fixes and improvements.

Audacity is available in MacMusic softwares section.

Sagan Technology has released a new update (again...) for Metro. The soft is updated to v6.2.2.1 and now features :

- Version number column has been added to the plug-ins window.
- Multiple Undo with user size setting in buffer preferences. -
- Plug-in editor windows are remembered and restored.
- new MIDI Document Icon for OS X.
- new 'wait for note' mode now works with audio and soft-synths.
- optimization should improve drawing speed of audio overviews.
- recognized files dragged to the tracks window are now accepted.
- plug-in editor windows are marked with their section and track location in the windows menu.
- soft-synths installed after other soft-synths in an effect chain are now flagged and an error message appears.
- Metro now only saves program names to .ins files. ...

FracturedSoftware announced the release of Rondo v0.85, a new Midi player for MacOS X. Rondo has been designed from the ground up to be simple, uncluttered and easy to use. Rondo has many innovative features including a vertical piano roll with live scrolling and a pull down playhead with a piano that will play along with the music. This version includes new column types, a preferences panel, proper cursors, application icon, and keyboard zooming controls. Rondo can also be started up and files opened by dragging on the Rondo icon in the finder.

Rondo is alpha software and requires MacOS X 10.3 (it may work on earlier versions).