Mac and Music News

After nearly a year of development reFX has finally released NEXUS, a "next generation" ROM synthesizer plug-in for Windows and Mac OS X in VST and AU formats.

Feature highlights:

* Over 4 Gigabytes of previously unreleased sample material.
* Over 650 presets including all popular genres.
* Expandable: New samples and new presets. Three expansions are available already (with more in production):
o Dance Orchestra: Choirs, strings, brass, timpani, etc. $69.99.
o Dance Vol.1: 128 fresh dance sounds. $69.99.
o House Vol.1: 128 funky house sounds. $69.99.
* Production quality built-in reverb (by ArtsAcoustic).
* Freely programmable arpeggiator.
* Trance-gate.
* Skinnable: Five skins to choose from.

Nexus is available for Mac OS X (Universal Binary) in VST and Audio Unit formats and has an MSRP of $299.99.

Soniccouture have released their very popular KIM sampled instrument in EXS24 format. The Kim is a type of dulcimer or zither from Thailand, and is related to the Chinese yangqin. It is sometimes spelled khim. It consists of a flat soundbox with 42 wire strings stretched across in 14 sets of 3. The courses are struck with two thin bamboo mallets with soft leather tips. The Kim was sampled at 24-bit /44.1 and contains 184 MB - 137 separate unlooped samples. Each note was sampled individually with 4 velocity layers, twice, to give an extremely natural, expressive response.

For more information, visit their web site.

This week [CodeOperator] has a special offer for all their Bundles:

EverythingBundle for MacOS X (PlugAdmin, DelayPack, COModPack) $50 (save $25)
PlugInBundle for MacOS X and Windows (DelayPack, COModPack) $40 (save $20)

You can buy the Bundles using PayPal by clicking the ling below. For more informations about their products please visit the [CodeOperator] products page.

Camel Audio have updated their additive synthesizer, Cameleon 5000. Version 1.7 includes Universal Binary support, bringing the entire family of Camel Audio products to the Intel Mac. The update also provides VST 2.4 compatibility, and includes improved standalone and RTAS performance, as well as minor bug fixes and other improvements. The update is also accompanied by a new bank of 70 presets and a new tutorial.

The new preset bank 'TC Elementals' was designed by Tim Conrardy, one of Cameleon's leading sound designers. The bank contains a wide range of sounds, including basses, guitars, ethnic instruments, distorted and crisp leads, a great acoustic piano and ballad electric piano. The pads range from warm sounds which fit unobtrusively into a mix to extreme 'moving' pads and atmospher ...

Macscoop/MacOSXRumors claims that Apple is finishing development on a 12" MacBook Pro described as "ultra-thin":

"The new laptop should be even thinner and weigh less than the current
models in the MacBook Pro line-up. In spite of this very tiny and lightweight
form-factor, the miniaturized MacBook Pro should keep its built-in optical drive
and sport a dual-core processor, providing unequalled size/performance ratio in
the PC industry, sources told MacScoop."

This "ultra-portable" MacBook Pro is estimated to be priced in the $1700-$1800 range and sport a 12" widescreen display. The introduction of 12" MacBook Pro would fill a gap left by the 12" PowerBook model, which was dropped during the transition to Intel in early 2006.

Parallels has posted an early beta release of Parallels Desktop, enabling Intel-based Mac owners to install and use Microsoft Windows without the need to reboot the system. The update brings support for booting Windows XP on a Boot Camp partition directly in Parallels Desktop, as well as the ability to use an Apple Boot Camp partition with Windows XP installed as a virtual hard drive. The beta allows users to drag-and-drop files as well as folders from Windows to Mac OS X and vice versa, and features one-click Virtual Machine aliases to automatically start Virtual Machines.

The newly released beta is available as a free download, and Parallels is offerin ...

Scarbee has released version 1.2.3 of Vintage Keyboard FX, which includes the Mac-Intel (AU) of both VKFX and D6-C filter. Registered VKFX users can download the full version (22 MB) that includes All PC/Mac (VST/AU/Ma-Intel AU) versions.

Forever For Now has released Diatonic Shifter, a realtime diatonic pitch shifter for shifting audio in a custom musical key. It works on any number of input and output channels at any sample rate and has adjustable A440 tuning frequency, quality and oversampling settings.

Feature list:

* Diatonic pitch shifting and harmonizing on a per note basis.
* User configurable tuning frequency for the A440 note.
* Adjustable tracking delay setting to prevent note detection jitter.
* Works on any amount of input and output channels at any sample rate.
* Adjustable FFT size ranging from 512 to 8192 and dynamic oversampling.
* Three different windowing types: cosine, Hamming and Hann.
* Industry standard Cocoa user interface and compliance.

Diatonic Shifter is available as a Universal Binary Audio Unit for use with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher and it is free.

IK Multimedia has just released the new Ampeg SVX 1.1, providing compatibility for IK Users with Mac Intel Core Duo Systems. In addition there are several other enhancements that have been implemented into Ampeg SVX 1.1, such as Pro Tools 7 native support , improved CPU efficiency and a standalone version which includes SpeedTrainer, an audio player with pitch and speed controls that make it perfect for learning ANY of your favorite songs.

Ampeg SVX users may download this software update for free and will no longer require a USB iKey or dongle. Simply follow the instructions for the software-based authorization system to easily install Ampeg SVX 1.1.

Waves has released its V-Series plug-ins, developed by modeling "classic British analog audio components in painstaking detail," according to the company. The V-Series consists of three components:

- the V-COMP compressor/limiter, a feedback-based stereo compressor/limiter design with de-esser. The compressor features fixed-ratio settings of 1.5:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 and 6:1 with a fixed attack time and adjustable recovery time, with automatic make-up gain. The limiter also has adjustable recovery time including an "auto" setting and variable threshold.
- the V-EQ4 4-band equalizer which emulates a 4-band console equalizer with HF bell/shelving switch and multiple HF center frequencies. Two midrange controls are included, both with high/low Q switching. LF includes bell/shelving switchin ...