Mac and Music News

Keyfax has released a new video called "Using Cubase 4 Recording The Band". Shot live in Santa Cruz and featuring rock band "the Liminal," this DVD lifts the lid on what it takes to record a band in the 21st century armed with Cubase as your recording medium.

The DVD shows how to hook up a hardware interface, how to deal with mic-ed amps and drums, monitoring, recording procedures and techniques, and how to prepare the best mix for mastering. Everything in the program is geared towards the practicality of a multi-musician, band type of recording experience.

"Using Cubase 4 Recording The Band" includes the raw audio files on the DVD (Cubase 4 Project file, plus the final mix) and is available from all good music stores or direct from the Steinberg web site for $44.95.

MPC-Samples.com has released the drum sample pack 'Vintage Cymbals', a single instrument collection containing 96 full stereo cymbal samples, cut to vinyl and re-sampled through valve processors to give a warm, vintage feel. Suitable for all models of Akai MPC including the latest MPC5000 and MPC500 models, this pack features 16 bit, stereo WAV and SND files laid out into MPC programs for quick loading.

Vintage Cymbals is available for download at a retail price of $29.99.

Puremagnetik has recently released TeeBee, a collection of instruments and loops for Ableton Live, Kontakt and Logic sampled from the famous Roland TB-303 synthesizer.

Programmed to flawlessly emulate the original synthesizer, Puremagnetik has employed many of the new features in Live 7, Kontakt 3 and Logic 8. Instead of using the DAW's built-in effects to emulate sounds, Puremagnetik has actually sampled the unique filter and envelope stages of the original TB-303. The TeeBee download includes 24-bit 96khz sample content and over 50 looped phrases styled after classic TB-303 articulations. For Ableton Live users, Puremagnetik has developed a version for Live 7 and a "light" version for Live 6.

Puremagnetik subscriptions start at $5.75 per month.

Apple releases a firmware update for MacBook and MacBook Pro. This update addresses an issue where the first key press may be ignored if the computer has been sitting idle. It also addresses some other issues.

For more information follow the link below :

Soniccouture has released a new sample library for Native Instruments Kontakt called Balinese Gamelan. A gamelan is a kind of musical ensemble of Indonesia typically featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums, and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings.

Features :

- 24GB Library — 24 Bit 96Khz Stereo Sampling
- 25 Individual Gamelan Instruments
- Up to 20 Velocity Layers
- Over 4000 Samples
- Multiple Round Robin Layers Kontakt 2 + 3 Format

This library is available now at a retail price of $499. To hear sound samples of Balinese Gamelan please visit :

Allen & Heath will unveil two new additions to the ZED range of small-format USB mixers at the forthcoming MusikMesse. The ZED-12FX (6 mono + 3 dual stereo channels) and ZED-22FX (16 mono + 3 dual stereo channels) retain the same feature set as other models in the range with the addition of a comprehensive section of in-house designed effects.

ZED's effects are divided into 4 types: tap tempo delays, short reverbs, long reverbs and modulation. They are controlled by three buttons for easy navigation and editing, allowing the parameters of each effect to be quickly 'dialled-in' to, for instance, pinpoint the ideal delay time or amount of reverb.

The new ZED FX mixers have a responsive 3-band swept-mid EQ on the mono channels, with a 2-band EQ on the stereo channels, 100mm long throw faders, 4 aux sends (2 pre, 2 post fade), a USB send and return (for PC or Mac recording or playback), a unique dual stereo input capability, and advanced monitoring facilities.

ZED FX models will be shipping in March at the following price :

- ZED-12FX: £369+VAT
- ZED-22FX £535+VAT

Muxer has released InstantSampler, a free virtual sampler that records audio from the audio input when a MIDI note is played for the first time. Any consecutive time you play the same note, it plays back the recorded audio with the possibility to vary or trigger :

- Velocity.
- Attack and release.
- The level of the input audio which is passed unaffected while no samples are played.
- Playback speed using the pitchbend control.
- Normal or reversed playback.
- Clearing of the sample memory.

InstantSampler is available now for Mac OS X as an AudioUnit plug-in and it is totally free.

The Audiofile-Engineering company has acquired RAX in September 2007 maybe a solution for the desesparete users which were forced to let aside all their third parties AU plug-in with the new Intel Mac's.

To be follow up...

Eiosis has announced that the E²Deesser is now available in all native formats for both Windows and Mac OSX. The update 1.2 now includes the VST version.

This new version supports Syncrosoft, and features the VST, RTAS and AU versions for Windows and Mac OSX.

A Syncrosoft demo version is available on our website, and now you can download the E²Deesser demo for both Syncrosoft and iLok.

Synful has announced the availability of Synful Orchestra v2.4.3 for RTAS on Mac OS X (RTAS on Windows support will follow). Version 2.4.3 also provides a number of bug fixes for all plugin formats (AU, VST, DXi, RTAS).