Mac and Music News

The 2007 edition of the NAMM Oddities is now online. It's an annual roundup of the weird and wonderful items found at the NAMM show made by a sound engineer called Barry Wood... just enjoy !!

Audix has expanded its line of DP-Series mic packages. The latest pack, the DP-7, is perfect for miking a 5-piece kit for both live and studio applications. As the name implies, the DP-7 contains 7 microphones. At the heart of the mic system is the D6 dynamic microphone for kick drum. For snare drum, the i-5 is provided; for rack toms there are two D2 mics, for floor tom there is a D4, and for overheads there are two ADX51 condenser microphones with pad and roll-off. Additionally there are 4 D-Vice rim mounting clips which eliminate the need for mic stands for snare and toms. The entire miking kit is packaged in a convenient aluminum carrying case.

The DP-7 carries an MSRP of $1,747. For more info, please visit their web site.

Soundcraft has announced a new processing card for their digital console Vi6. The card uses eight custom Lexicon DSP engines to provide eight mono or stereo effects units, which may be patched to aux bus outputs and then back into a channel input, or inserted into input or output channels. The real flexibility, however, comes from being able to control these effects via the desk's Vistonics II screens, which give the engineer a highly-intuitive and comfortable graphical user interface.

For more info, visit Soundcraft's web site.

Eliosound has released a time unlimited, limited features, demo version of ELS Vocoder. This demo version features the same sound and the same characteristics than the full version, but has some limitations :

- The access to the options panels is deactivated.
- Modification of the Formant Matrix/Filter Bank Patching is not available.
- No preset creation, edition or save.
- Parameters are not saved in host, that's mean that the parameters are reset on each launch.
- No automation support.
- No A/B Comparison.
- Render is deactivated.
- A sine wave is regularly added to the output sound.

The full-featured dongled demo version will be available in a few days, as the full retail version in Eliosound's online shop.

APS -Audio Pro Solutions have just released their first product - AEON. It's a two-way active studio monitor based around an excellent tweeter and a custom designed woofer. It's frequency response is 30 Hz to 30 kHz and it can deliver up to 220 Watts RMS.

For more info, please visit their web site.

This is only a rumor for now... but things ar getting more and more clear day after day so let's have a look ! Dave Smith and Roger Linn are working on a new analogue/digital drum machine, obviously inspired by the Evolver, but with the 4x4 pads of the MPC range... and it's called BoomChik. And... nothing else ! But if we get more details we'll certainly keep them "for eyes only" ;-)

Edirol launches three new keyboard controllers in the PCR-series. The PCR-300, 500 and 800 not only provide more physical controls than previous models but they also offer new innovative and intuitive controls such as velocity pads, a Crossfader which allows you to control two parameters at the same time and can work as a DAW software control for zooming screen views as well as for synthesizer filters and DJ gestures, or the longer-throw sliders which can control eight track faders and one master fader or function as organ drawbars. Dynamic Mapping allows the PCR to automatically assign its physical controls to the most important parameters in the current window of the software being used. Fifteen user memories are provided for storing your favorite setups.

For more information, visit their web site.

Defective Records has announced Major Malfunction v1.0, a new Mac OS X realtime audio plugin specifically created for use in Ableton Live. It allows you to easily mangle, glitch, slice and dice, and otherwise FSU in your audio stream, in either subtle or extreme ways. Major Malfunction syncs itself to the Ableton Live tempo automatically, and processes the incoming audio in a number of different user-specified ways, or even randomly selected ways.

Features :

- Realtime VST/AU plugin effect
- 6 different DSP effects, including "pass through" available to choose from
- Each DSP effect has 4 preset slots, individual volume and stereo pan controls
- 8 different 64 step patterns can be stored in preset slots, and saved to disk
- Global volume and dry/wet mix parameters
- Almost ...