Mac and Music News

Roland announces it is now shipping the much anticipated SP-404 Portable Power Sampler. Picking up where Roland popular SP-303 sampler left off, the new SP-404 is built on a foundation of more: more features, more voices, more pads, and more memory.The SP-404's onboard pattern sequencer allows up to 8,000 notes to be recorded. Up to 24 patterns, each 1–99 measures long, can be stored in the internal memory simultaneously. The the SP-404 also provides a Lo-Fi sampling mode. WAV and AIF files can be imported and exported via CompactFlash card.

McDSP will launch a new RTAS plugin bundle, the Project Studio bundle 1.0, which will contain five McDSP plugins : Revolver LE, FilterBank LE, CompressorBank LE, Chrome Tone LE and Synthesizer One LE. This pack will come with a pre-programmed McDSP Green iLok.

ProjectStudio bundle will be available in November for $495. Owner of two or more plugins included can upgrade for $195.

Luxonix announces the release of its new virtual sound workstation software, Purity. It will be available in October and will feature : GM (General MIDI) Compatible, 16-part Multi-instrument, integrated Pattern Sequencer, Super-fast Preset Browser, over 1000 Factory Sound Presets, integrated mixer, 2 Stereo Send-Return Effect Buses, Chorus/Reverb, 24 types of Insert Effect and VST/AU plug-in interface.

Purity will be available as standalone application, and as ASIO and CoreAudio versions.

According to Apple, Soundtrack Pro is not only an update to its audio software Soundtrack, but "a new way of working with digital audio". So MacMusic is very proud to publish a review of Apple's Soundtrack Pro, written by our friend Jay Shaeffer from Macaudioguy.com

On September 29th 1997, a funny guy created a discussion list on the internet for computer music and digital audio addicts on Mac. Eight years later, MacMusic has become a reference site for computer music fans on Mac with a growing number of visitors and over 57,000 members. MacMusic managed to overcome times of trouble on the net and is definitely present and faithful to what has made it a success : professionalism, curiosity, open-mindedness and freedom of speech. This 8th birthday is the perfect opportunity for me to thank, on your behalf, the whole team of MacMusic who make every effort to provide you with your site daily : Soif, Nolot, June Bug, Lepetitmartien, Babaille, Miss Kiki, Ptilou, Tulavu, the big army of moderators, the battalion of translators, the article authors, as well as all our advertisers, our partners and our software developers.

And above all, this 8th birthday is the opportunity for me to thank all our members and
visitors of MacMusic. Indeed, thanks to your talents, your questions, your doubts, your
skills, your fits of rage, your freedom of speech (that we will always value) and your
fidelity, MacMusic has this very special savour. Very happy birthday and thanks to all of you!

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.