Mac and Music News

Motu has updated MachFive to version 1.2.3. This new release adds Mac OS X Tiger compatibility for all plug-in formats, and adds support for publishing MOTU Symphonic Instrument banks for use within MachFive. Please also note for Logic users, that MachFive version 1.2.3 requires an update to Logic 7.1 for compatibility under Tiger OSX 10.4.

Presonus annouces the release of a new multi-unit driver for its 24-bit/96K FireWire interface Firepod. This new driver enables up to three Firepod's to be daisy-chained for a total of 24 inputs in just three rack spaces. The new driver also allows the Firepod to work in "stand alone" mode so that the Firepod can be used as an 8-channel microphone preamplifier without connecting the Firepod to a computer.

Presonus has also lowered the price on its second interface, the Firebox to $299.

Rob Papen and LinPlug have updated Albino to v2.2.1.to fix a bug in Cubase and the empty bank List bug. LinPlug has also updated Cronox to v3.0.4 which fixes a 5.1 mix bug in Cubase / Nuendo and also makes it compatible with Muse Research's Receptor.

Sagan announces a pre-release version 6.3.2.4 of Metro. This updated version now features : software no longer limits its compensation of plug-in latencies to audio packet sizes, fixes a problem with USB audio devices, fixes a crash occuring when mixing or rendering a 24 bit source audio file to 16 bits, recording multiple MIDI tracks from different sources may not have been allocating the correct amount of memory fixed, and other minor bugs fixed.

Metric Halo has released the Version 2.2 update of Mobile I/O Console and driver software for Mac OS X. This update provides increased performance across all Mobile I/O hardware models. Users of the Mobile I/O 2882, 2882+DSP, ULN-2, and ULN-2+DSP can now take advantage of the update with Mac OS X 10.3.9 through 10.4.2.

This update is freely available to all registered users of Mobile I/O hardware.

EDiMu-"Edition de Diaporamas Musicaux" -Musical Slide Shows Editing in English - is a soft that allows you to create animations from one or several images (such as scores), a cursor, graphical notes or even one or more sound files. Thus, you can easily synchronize scores scrolling on screen with sound files, add a cursor as well as some notes. Cursor mouvements and notes showing or hiding can also be synced with sound files. This software is especially aimed at music teachers or musicologists.

This is only a beta version for the moment.

Arboretum Systems announced an update to version 3.1.2 of Ray Gun Pro Audio Units. This release adds a general Bypass button in the output module of the Ray Gun window. Ray Gun Pro is an ideal tool for cleaning up scratchy vinyl, tape hiss, noisy dialog, HVAC noise, and any track with poor sonic quality.

It's a good news coming from Rod Mansell at Sony Plugins Support. He writes to a newsgroup that "The current versions of the Oxford plugins for the Powercore platform, (EQ, Dynamics, Inflator & TransMod), will run as both VST and Audio Units compatible versions, but require Powercore hardware to provide DSP resource. We will, at some time in the future, produce native 'Audio Units' versions of the Oxford range of plugins, but this won't be before the first half of 2006 at the earliest due to other workload commitments".

So it seems that Sony plugins will be available as native Audio Units version, and as native VST version too.

Camel Audio has released version 1.6 of their additive synthesizer Cameleon 5000. This update adds an improved noise generator with key tracking, improves editing abilities and fixes several minor bugs. Cameleon 5000 is an additive synthesizer with morphing and resynthesis abilities.

Reminder that this update improves general user interface reliability for Apple's professional applications and is recommended for all users of DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Logic Express, Motion and Soundtrack. It is downloadable form the the Software Update within OSX.