Mac and Music News

Apple today unveiled its new MacBook Pro notebook computer featuring a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor and an all new system architecture that delivers up to five times the performance of the PowerBook G4. The new 17-inch MacBook Pro 17-inch MacBook Pro will begin shipping next week for a suggested retail price of $2,799. It includes:

- 17-inch widescreen 1680 x 1050 LCD display with 300 cd/m2 brightness;
- 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor;
- 1GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 2GB;
- 120GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
- a slot-load 8x SuperDrive(TM) with double-layer support (DVD+R DL / DVD+/-RW / CD-RW) optical drive;
- PCI Express-based ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB GDDR3 memory;
- DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included,
- Composite/S-Video out;
- built-in Dual Link support for driving Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Display;
- built-in iSight video camera;
- Gigabit Ethernet port;
- built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
- ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
- three USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, and one FireWire 400 port;
- one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog;
- Scrolling TrackPad and illuminated keyboard with ambient light sensor;
- the infrared Apple Remote;
- 68 watt hour lithium polymer battery; and
- 85 watt Apple MagSafe Power Adapter.

Expert sleepers announces the Universal Binary version of Crossfade Loop Synth Audio Units for both Intel-based and PowerPC-based Macs. Crossfade Loop Synth is a simple sample playback synth plug-in. It plays samples in the classic sampler manner - by simply altering the playback speed according to the desired note. No fancy timestretching or pitchshifting is applied.

This shareware is available in our siftware section.

MacMusic proudly announces a new article about speakers and monitoring, written by our friend Bruce Dunet. You'll know all about what are good monitors, closed cabinet versus bass–reflex, woofer mass, dynamic and more...Bruce Dunet is active in the Proaudio market for many years as sound engineer, responsible for the Sales and marketing of many of the top manufacturer's products.

Enjoy your reading.

Apple Expo will take place from 12 to 16 September 2006 at Paris-Expo Porte de Versailles. You can ask online for visitor badges now on the Apple-Expo registration form. You will then be sent an ebadge by email which needs to be presented onsite to receive your entrance pass.

Applied Acoustics Systems has updated Ultra Analog VA-1 to version 1.0.2 in order to fix several bugs. Ultra Analog VA-1 is a virtual analog synthesizer. It offers 32 voices of polyphony and its highly adaptable signal path is driven by two super rich, alias free oscillators featuring standard waveforms, sub oscillators, hard sync, and integrated pitch envelopes. Two audacious multimode filters with distortion are then applied to shape its sonic character.

List of bugs fixed and donwload in the MacMusic software section.

TC Electronic announces version 2.0 of PowerCore for Mac OS X. This version brings 20 hours trial time (try out fully working optional plug-ins), new control panel with overview over the PowerCore(s) in your system, all-in-one installer for easy setup of all plug-ins and a mini view with "always on top" feature: keep an eye with your CPU ressources.

Cakewalk announces that a demo version of Rapture, its new wavetable synthesizer designed to produce pop, dance and electronic sounds, is now available. Rapture combines an advanced modulation system with an non-aliasing wavetable resampling engine. It features 40 Envelope Generators, LFOs, and Step Generators per patch, and comes with more than 500 programs including Basses, Leads, Pads, Arpeggios, Textures, Electronic Percussion and Sequences.

This demo version has some limitations (mute, ...) and is avalable on the Cakewalk web site.

Steinberg has updated its Nuendo to version 3.2.1. This release features : new option "process all" in the Detect Silence dialog allows processing of all selected events in a project in one go with the detect silence functionality, and on the Yamaha 02R96, the User Defined Functions (UDF) are now implemented. Nuendo is a recording, editing and automated mixing tool for film score, post production, creating a musical masterpiece or surround sound design for a new video game, television show, or even a radio play.