Steinberg is pleased to announce that the new maintenance update for the Nuendo 4 advanced audio and post production system will be available for all registered Nuendo 4 users from July 31 as a free download from the Steinberg website. Version 4.3 mainly focuses on improving the overall stability of the program by addressing important issues like file import, surround and general session handling.

"This new update is also future proof by offering support for the eagerly awaited Nuendo SyncStation synchronizer by Steinberg," comments product marketing manager Timo Wildenhain. Furthermore, Nuendo 4.3 follows the cross-product policy of Steinberg by being able to open projects of the Cubase 5 advanced music production system.

Rob Papen announces the upcoming release of RP-Verb, a new algorithmic reverb plug-in.

Reverb is a very critical effect when mixing. A bad sounding reverb can break the mix, and your music. Today, in the age of powerful computers, it is possible to run far more complex reverb algorithms than in the past, but it is still down to the algorithms if a reverb sounds great, or not.

In 1981 Rob Papen was recording in the Wisseloord studios. At that time legendary engineer Ronald Prent sent the "electronic" drums, using speakers, into a big recording room, and picked up the sound with microphones to add "room" to the electronic drum sound.

As a young synth player, Rob became fully obsessed with rooms and reverbs.
Together with Jon Ayres, Rob Papen has dived into codes and searched for ne ...

Ableton is offering up to all Sampler owners, old and new, the free Samplification audio package, which offers Construction Kits, Live Sets with drum clips, new Instrument Racks, new lessons, and sounds from Puremagnetik, Cycling '74 and Sonarte's Sound Objects Lite collection. Samplification will kick-start any Live user's sampling skills and demonstrate what Sampler is really capable of.

Samplification is a Live Pack—450 MB download, 950 MB installed. Samplification requires Sampler and Live 8.0.4 or higher.

Samplification is available here :

NuGen Audio has updated the SEQ1 and SEQ2 Linear Phase mixing and mastering equalizers to version 1.2.5.

Changes :

• Several minor GUI fixes to both SEQ1 and SEQ2.
• A Plug-in Delay Compensation (PDC) issue that some users were experiencing with certain host/machine combinations has been fixed.

On top of that, the demo period has been reset for those wishing to re-trial the software.

Ableton is launching a special deal for the summer of 2009. Every customer who buys Ableton Live 8 before August 31st will get Sampler, Ableton's advanced sampling instrument, absolutely free.

Sampler, worth €99/$129, combines traditional sampling features with advanced sound design functions. Although perfectly well suited to handling multi-gigabyte instrument libraries, it's Sampler's sound design capabilities that make the instrument really unique.

For more details, please visit the link below :

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.