Mac and Music News

Switchcraft is proud to introduce the latest additions to the StudioPatch Series family... five Audio Pass-Through Panels designed to meet all of your input/output needs. Everything from the anodized extruded aluminum panels, to the hard-wired 110 Ohm AES/EBU digital audio cable, to their world-class XLR connectors and TRS Jacks have been precision engineered for long-lasting quality, durability, and dependability. All versions terminate to two DB25 connectors wired to the TASCAM DTRS standard pinout. They are perfect for anyone requiring easy access to their I/O's in any permanent or mobile studio/broadcast environment.

Available now in five configurations :

- PT16FX2DB25 (16 Female XLR's)
- PT16MX2DB25 (16 Male XLR's)
- PT8FX8MX2DB25 (8 Female and 8 Male XLR's)
- PTAESEBU2DB25 (8 Female and 8 Male XLR's in groups of four)
- PT16TRS2DB25 (16 Quarter-Inch TRS Jacks)

For more information, please visit their website.

Best Service has announced the imminent release of Galaxy II - Grand Piano Collection, the successor to Galaxy Steinway 5.1, extended with the Vienna Grand Imperial and the 1929 German Baby Grand. Powered by the Native Instruments Kontakt 2 engine with a specially designed user interface, Galaxy II was recorded at Galaxy Studios and Hansahaus Studios using high end and vintage microphones by Brauner, Neumann and Bruel&Kjaer and state-of-the-art equipment by Neve, SSL, Focusrite and Digidesign.

Features :

- Galaxy Steinway 5.1 (Steinway D in Real Surround and Stereo).
- Vienna Grand Imperial (96 key Boesendorfer with incredible low end).
- 1929 German Baby Grand (vintage Bluethner with a beautiful, singing tone).
- More than 6000 samples in 24 Bit.
- Up to 13 velocity zones for a ...

AraldFX has announced the public pre-release of their gating effect Stormgate3. The public evaluation version of StormGate3 RC2 is available for download, free to try without any limitation until September 2007 for Windows and Mac OS X (UB) in VST and AU formats.

Kjaerhus Audio today updates its mastering limiter MPL-1 Pro SE to v1.02.

Changes:

* Fixed Bypass (ignored before).
* Presets are now loading in Mac.
* Fixed copy protection problem where external modem might have been detected as a part of the internal computer hardware.

U-he has released Oldskool Patch Collection for Zebra. Designed by Michael Kastrup, this collection features 128 "playable and lush sounding" patches that cover decades of synthesizer and keyboard history.

Oldskool Patch Collection for Zebra costs $30 (excl. VAT). Various demo MP3s are available.

Gallo Engineering has released Studio Devil BVC (British Valve Custom), a guitar tube amplifier modeling plug-in that is designed to mimic the character of "British"-style vacuum tube heads.

Features :

- Accurate 12AX7A vacuum tube preamplifier stage emulation with DRIVE control.
- Gain structure signal path that's true to those on vintage tube amp schematics.
- Authentic Bass, Mids, Treble, and Presence TONE controls just like those on real tube amps.
- Push-pull tube power amplifier model with DRIVE control.
- FIR-based speaker/cabinet/mic modeling filter built in for a "miked-up" tone.
- 4X Up-Sampling Engine with 64-bit Internal Floating-Point Precision.
- 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, and 192kHz sampling rate support.

Studio Devil BVC is available as a free ...

Defective Records has just released Major Malfunction version 1.5, a new version of the 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. You use it as either a VST or an AU plugin in Live.

New Features in version 1.5:

- new effects: distortion, vocoder, slow down, & silence
- new enhancements to gate effect
- new master multipass filter
- new click reduction
- new "effect gapping"
- new clock multiplier
- new randomize and evolve functions for effects
- grid state & all parameters now saved with Live session
- improved preset management
- improved automation support
- new ability to turn hints on/off
- new undo featur ...