Mac and Music News

Synk Audio, a leading innovator in adaptive music, announces version 1.6 of their Musicbed DV music soundtrack generation software with Mac Universal Binary support, new music generation features, new surround music features and more than double the amount of royalty-free music content. But what's that ? Well, Musicbed DV is an easy-to-use Mac program for generating custom music soundtracks that match the mood and timing of video and audio projects. Users are offered a unique set of versatile controls for adjusting musical intensity, complexity, dynamics and more, all in real-time.
For more info see their web site.

Apogee Electronics Corporation has just released an update to their Symphony PCI driver to include two new features, VBus and Performance Tuning.
VBus provides unlimited routing possibilities across multiple applications in any Symphony equipped G5 or Mac Pro. With VBus, users have the ability to create virtual hardware buses, which allows for the routing of audio within an audio application or between different audio applications. For example, it is now possible in Logic Pro to record a submix of multiple audio tracks onto a new audio track, which was previously impossible without VBus.
The Performance Tuning feature makes it possible to further reduce the latency of a Symphony system. When set to High Performance, latency is reduced to previously unattainable levels.

For more information see their web site.

Pro-Sounds has announced the availability of "Unstable Oscillators" for the reFX Vanguard synthesizer. This new bank, designed by Lawrence Strand of Electronic Emergency, is made up of 128 rough, tough sounds in FXB and FXP formats. You won't find any "nice-guy" sounds here. Unstable OScillators is pure grit and grime, featuring ripping basses, blazing leads, dangerous rhythms, and more.

Unstable Oscillators is available for €17.95. Previous Pro-Sounds customers can enjoy a 20% loyalty discount via a special link sent via email.

As audioMIDI prepares for the Holiday Season, they like to offer a coupon to say thanks to their loyal customers. From now through the end of the year, take 10% off almost everything in their store, simply use coupon code YEAREND10 during checkout.

That sounded like something we should mention as audioMIDI has always been a great MacMusic supporter.

For a few months, AOL has decided to consider MacMusic.org and 440Forums.com incoming emails as spam. As the problem does not seem to end and as AOL seems not to know how to deal with outside email properly, we strongly suggest that you use email addresses from other mail providers which seem to know one or two things better like G-Mail, Hotmail, Yahoo… AOL emails will be banned from registering as they can't be verified, our mails never reach your AOL account! We are sorry about this issue but there's nothing that we seem able to do in order to solve it.

If you use an AOL address with us, please change it now in your profile to one which will work, answer the verification email from us, et voilà!

Expert Sleepers has released a plug-in client for NINJAM which is a program to allow people to make music together via the Internet. Every participant can hear every other participant. Each user can also tweak their personal mix to his or her liking. NINJAM is cross-platform, with clients available for Mac OS X and Windows.
There are various NINJAM client applications already in existence. Generally though these are designed around the assumption that you're just using the computer to send and receive audio, and that your instruments are just fed into your computer's audio interface. If however your instrument is your computer, it's not really possible to get audio in and out of the Ninjam system in a convenient way. By having the Ninjam client in a plug-in, it makes it very easy to combi ...

Apogee Electronics Corporation have announced that its Mini-Me, Mini-DAC and Mini-MP will now be available for sale at $795.00 retail through authorized dealers and distributors worldwide. Here's Apogee's own brief list of features for each unit...

Mini-Me:

* Two channels of Apogee 24-bit, 96 kHz A/D conversion, top-quality mic/instrument preamps and line-level inputs
* Headphone outputs
* AES/EBU, S/PDIF digital outputs
* Low-current, low-voltage-Ideal for location/ENG
* Optional USB Card available, $195.00 retail

Mini-MP:

* Superb two-channel microphone preamplifier with 75 dB of gain, phantom power and Hi-Z instrument inputs.
* Mid Side matrix processing

Mini-DAC:

* Two channels of Apogee 24-bit 192kHz D/A conversion
* High current headphone output
* I ...

VSL has announced the release of two brand new Vienna Instruments Collections, Saxophones and Elements. These two new products are the first of many upcoming releases to complement the existing 10 Collections of the Symphonic Cube.
The Vienna Instruments Saxophones Collection includes five instruments: Soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophone, with a total of over 35 GB of samples in 24bit/44.1kHz.
Vienna Instruments Elements is a showcase for water, metal, glass, and stone, Elements is a major expansion (18 GB) on the well-known Horizon Series Glass & Stones edition. It offers new instruments such as the bass waterphone, an unusual, evocative instrument with a diameter of 14 inches.

The Saxophones Collection retails for €395/$475 (Standard Library) and €345/$415 (Extended Li ...