EastWest/Quantum Leap announces the debut of its latest release, Hollywood Strings virtual instrument — a collection of string instruments with unprecedented control over sound and performance.

"Hollywood Strings has many groundbreaking features not found in any other virtual strings collection. Finger position is, for the first time, controllable by the user, so they can play as far up the strings as they want, and get a fuller, more romantic, Hollywood sound. Vibrato intensity and extensive dynamics are controllable by the user. Extensive multi-dynamic true legato has been sampled for all sections in three different categories: slurred, portamento, and bow change. This results in unsurpassed legato performance that has never been available in the sample world, says EastWest. Hollywood Strings has five user-controllable microphone positions including main pickup (Decca tree), mid pickup, close pickup, surround pickup, and an alternate vintage circa 1945 RCA ribbon room pickup."

Pricing and Availability TBA.

The 'Electronic expansion' is a big preset and feature expansion pack for Gladiator 2, the hybrid virtual synthesizer by Tone2. Designed by the professional sound designers Markus Feil, Bryan 'Xenos' Lee and Bastiaan van Noord, 'Electronic' is a collection of more then 300 sounds and new add-on features.

Expansion highlights :

• 300+ inspiring, unique presets aimed at miscellaneous genres of electronic music. The additional sounds can be accessed directly from the interface.
• Stereo Trancegate: Featuring no less then 22 patterns for rhythmic gate effects
• Reverb Ultra: Reverb Ultra uses a new high-quality reverb algorithm, its soft and diffuse sound make it especially
suitable for larger rooms and sculpting the proper ambience.
• Three new early reflection effects: Early reflection, reverse reflection and gated reflection
• Aliaser: A LoFi retro-effect that works by mirroring the signal's spectrum at the cutoff frequency
• Stereo Enhance: A stereo width effect, equipped with a High-Shelf filter to expand the stereo field while keeping the lower frequencies intact.
• Three additional skins as free bonus content: Black, gold and red skin

Electronic Expansion costs €49 / $69.

Audio Ease today announces the release of Cabinet, a plug-in which contains the three features guitarists like best in Speakerphone :

• five guitar amp speaker cabinets
• a top class recording studio live room
• a classic spring reverb

The effects in Cabinet are convolution based and rely upon actual samples made of the speaker cabinets shown, a spring reverb and a top class recording studio live room. Cabinet and the 33 cabinets in its mother plug-in Speakerphone provide the ultimate real-world sounding final stage of your guitar tone: the speaker cabinet within a good studio live space.

Plug-in your favourite pre-amped signal from a real hardware amp, or your favourite pre-amp modeling plug-in and use Cabinet to put the real world into your tracks.

Cabinet is available for Windows and Mac OS X in VST, AU, RTAS and MAS plug-in formats at a price of $59 / €49. Demo versions are available.

Blue Cat Audio has launched education offers for all their audio plugins : it is now possible for students to purchase the plug-ins developed by the company with 25% reduction. A student card is necessary to access the offer.

For more information, please visit the link below :

Intelligent Devices has released MegaDelayMass, a new kind of multi-tap delay plug-in.

Think about this: up to 100 separate delay taps that can be either rigidly time synched or completely randomized. Go from vocoderish resonation to unusual, non-linear, reverby sounds. Control the volume of the head of the delay or the tail. Randomize panning. Control randomized "clumping" through a logarithmic curve. Use it as a non-linear room simulator (especially if you're a fan of pre-delay). If you're familiar with Pure Data, MAX/MSP or REAKTOR, you can easily create patches that allow you to "play" the resonation.

Features :

• Quickly create and control an army of delay taps.
• Put them in mathematical order for resonant and tube like results
• Use randomization and log patterns to create dense and rich trails.
• Create sweeping or alternating panning patterns for stereo or bounce trails.
• Control individual tap phases as a percentage
• Automate the parameters with your favorite host software to "play" a dynamic resonator.

MegaDelayMass is available now for both Mac and PC in VST format at a price of $49. Note that a demo version as well as audio examples are also available at :

Togu Audio Line has updated its free virtual analog bass synthesizer TAL-BassLine to version 1.4.0.

After some user feedback, it was decided that the filter in version 1.1 sounded better than in later versions so it has been reworked and improved. The problem in version 1.1 was the aliasing, that occurred in the self oscillating filter (full resonance) at high cutoff frequencies with a 44,100Hz sampling rate. Now there is no aliasing and a much improved self oscillation filter sound.

"Beat Box Anthology is the one-stop shopping collection for drum machine sounds and loops, covering almost every generation of these instruments. Even if these cult machines were a milestone in the 70s, 80s and 90s music production, their sounds are still used today in a lot of Urban, Hip Hop, Electro House and even Electro Pop productions." said Alain Etchart, Founder and Director of Marketing at Univers Sons / Ultimate Sound Bank.

Beat Box Anthology is divided in three sections : Classic, Analog & Digital. In the Classic category you will find the cult machines that are still used a lot today, like the 808 or the 909. Sampling and recording was particularly complete, covering every parameter and setting you can find on these machines. To capture the essence of these pieces of history, ...

Here's a new Pro Tools Corner issue by our VIP Moderator Brian White from audioMIDI.com.

"While the new interface is stunning to say the least, it is hard to ignore the mother load of new plug-ins that ship with Pro Tools 8. Dubbed the "Creative Collection," the fresh suite of plug-ins from Digidesign's Advanced Instrument Research division shines with creativity from every angle. While many have fixed their ears eagerly on the new virtual instruments, the 20 new AIR effects are sure to have the mixer in us screaming for attention. As a toast to all of these free new effects, I thought it would be appropriate to showcase a handful here at the corner as an on going series I am dubbing "Mixing on AIR." The goal being to both introduce you to some of the plug-ins you get with Pro Tools 8, and share with you some tips and tricks for integrating them into your projects. This week I thought I would kick of the series by showing you how to add some presence and sparkle to lifeless signals using the AIR enhancer."

If you have a Pro Tools related question that you would like Brian to take a shot at answering or have any feedback, please post-it in our Mac ProTools Forum or Pc ProTools Forum. Brian will do his best to select the questions that seem to stump the most people.

Arturia unveils "The 10 Year Suite", a collection of 9 software instruments Arturia built over 10 years.

The luxury box contains the following virtual instruments :

• Minimoog V
• Moog Modular V
• CS-80V
• ARP2600 V
• Jupiter-8V
• Prophet V
• Prophet VS
• Brass
• Analog Factory

Each instrument will receive a free online upgrade this summer – as part of Arturia's 10th anniversary celebration.

This bundle is available now for Windows and Mac OS X in Standalone and VST, AU and RTAS plug-in formats at a price of $649 / €549.

Universal Audio today announced that the UAD-2 SOLO, a compact ExpressCard-based DSP Accelerator, is now shipping worldwide.

The new SOLO/Laptop DSP card brings Universal Audio's world-class analog emulations–authenticated by Neve®, Roland®, SPL®, Moog®, and more–to laptop DAW users. The UAD-2 Solo/Laptop enables large, professional mixes on laptop DAWs without the need for cabling or power supply. It includes studio staples like UA's 1176SE Compressor/Limiter, Pultec EQP-1A Equalizer, RealVerb Pro Room Modeler, and CS-1 Channel Strip, and offers access to the entire Powered Plug-In library.

Like all UAD-2 hardware, the SOLO/Laptop supports VST, AU and RTAS plug-in formats on both Mac and PC.

The UAD-2 SOLO carries a MAP price of $499US.

D16 Group has announced that Nithonat has been released for Windows and Mac OS X in VST and AU plug-in formats and is now available for purchase for €79. The final release version includes an updated GUI and a revised feature list since the original announcement.

Nithonat is a fully synthesized drum machine based on the classic Roland TR-606. The unique sound of this machine has been used by many artists over the years in the production of Electro, Hip-Hop, R'n'B, etc... Nithonat emulates the original 606, however, since Nithonat is software based, D16 were able to enhance the original with extra functionality.

Features :

• Fully synthesized drum sounds.
• Additional parameters to get yet more control over the sound.
• Many ways of controlling the device :
  ...

Toontrack Music is proud to announce a major update of Toontrack Solo, the Toontrack host software for Toontrack drum plug-ins.

Toontrack solo 1.2 boosts significantly the versatility of Toontrack's standalone host, offering long time requested features and then some :

• Graphical interface has been rebuilt, main drummer is treated as any other.
• Re-organization of the application menus for a cleaner, more OS compliant experience.
• Convenience toolbar for common application components and EZplayer.
• New Master mute button to supplement existing shortcut.
• New metronome feature, with time signature setting and volume control.
• Support for multiple MIDI interfaces and ports (to be used at the same time).
• Support for MME audio drivers on PC.

Toontrack solo 1.2 also introduces support for Rockband® and Guitar Hero® drum controllers, expanding further the appeal of the award winning range of Toontrack products.