Hal Leonard Books has published a new book called "In The Studio With Michael Jackson".

No one was closer to Michael Jackson at the height of his creative powers than Bruce Swedien, the five-time Grammy winner who, with Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, formed the trio responsible for the sound of Jackson's records.

Friend, co-creator, and colleague, Bruce Swedien was already a seasoned recording engineer — plucked from a job at legendary Universal Audio in Chicago — when he began working with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones on the soundtrack to The Wiz, and he was the master technician who gave the records their sound as the trio progressed to Jackson's greatest triumphs, Off the Wall, the iconic, history-making Thriller, and beyond,

Part technical guide, part anecdotal narrati ...

Antares has announced the availability of Harmony Engine Evo, the next generation of its tool for vocal harmony creation.

Building on the power and ease of use of the original Harmony Engine, Harmony Engine Evo incorporates Antares' Evo Voice Processing Technology for faster, more accurate pitch detection, smoother, artifact-free pitch shifting, and seamless, natural-sounding throat modeling. And with the addition of 5 channels of Antares' unique CHOIR Vocal Multiplier, Harmony Engine Evo allows the creation of huge vocal ensembles from a single vocal line.

With four independent harmony voices, a variety of powerful harmony generating modes, humanization features for natural sounding performances, and a flexible real-time preset system for harmony and vocal type, Harmony Engine Evo provides easy-to-use tools to quickly produce virtually any vocal arrangement one can imagine.

Harmony Engine Evo is available for RTAS (Mac OS X and PC), VST (Mac OS X and PC) and Audio Units (Mac OS X) at a U.S. MSRP of $249.00.

Steinberg is pleased to announce that its much-anticipated major update to The Grand is now shipping to resellers worldwide.

The Grand 3 offers the sound of three legendary concert grands, as well as leading electric and upright pianos, all recorded in outstanding quality with two microphone positions in up to 20 velocity layers. Additional features include onboard equalization tools, a full tuning editor, a range of technologies to enhance computer resource efficiency as well as a stand-alone mode.

The Grand 3 supports VST3, VST2, AU and ReWire and runs on Mac OS X, Windows XP and both Windows Vista 32- and 64-bit versions. The Grand 3 costs €349.00/£291.00. Video and audio examples are available at :

Featured by the Urbanic Series, the Finest R&B by Ueberschall is an all new massive release which includes 16 Construction Kits providing 2.7 GB of smooth high quality R&B Music. Including tempos between 61—84 BPM, you'll find primarily slow and calm Kits with applicable accents, which are perfect for creating love tunes, ballads or even melancholic/moody tracks.

All Construction Kits are filled with extraordinary samples, beatz, guitars, Rhodes, pianos, basslines, synths, pads, fx sounds and a whole bunch of Drum and Percussion sounds. Every sample on The Finest R&B is labeled with BPM information and root key (key signatures).

Furthermore, the kit contains up to 4 sub-kits and a drum single sound folder, material is organized as follows :

• Main Kit — Includes the main them ...

Audio Ease has updated its famous convolution reverb plug-in Altiverb to version 6.3.3.

Changes :

• [ALL] update reduces memory footprint by 30 to 50%.
• [TDM] fixes loading problem on HD process board (non accel) systems.
• [TDM] fixes a crashing bug on 96k on expansion chassis systems.

This update is free for all registered users.

Yamaha introduces two new Arranger Workstation keyboards, the PSR-S910 and the PSR-S710.

Songwriters and arrangers will find that the PSR-S910 fulfills their needs for a great-sounding instrument with pro capabilities, but it's also perfect for so-called "one-man bands" because it puts the performer in charge of hundreds of different virtual bands that sound great due to ultra-realistic accompaniment styles. It's like having instant access to top session musicians at the touch of a key or the press of a button.

The new model adapts feature sets from Yamaha's flagship arranger Tyros3, including Super Articulation Voices, which give strings, guitars, reeds and brass sounds real-time expressiveness previously unattainable on a keyboard instrument, including the slide of a guitarist's fi ...

Digidesign is proud to announce the availability of MassivePack 8 and MassivePack 8 Pro – the next level of professional plug-ins for mixing and sound processing available from the leader in Audio. These special plug-in bundles will be available for a limited time from July 21st, 2009 through December 22nd, 2009

Designed exclusively for Pro Tools|HD, the new MassivePack 8 features a revered set of plug-ins used by leading studios and pros to create mixes for albums, TV, and film. The bundle includes 11 of the top Pro Tools Development Partners plug-ins, plus your choice of 12 more from Digidesign®, at extraordinary savings of up to $11,105 off retail (when purchased separately).

Need more processing power ? MassivePack Pro 8 provides even greater value, offering a performance-boosting PCIe HD Accel card (worth $4,995 just on its own!) and the same set of MassivePack 8 plug-ins at savings of up to $13,900 off retail (when purchased separately).

MassivePack 8 and MassivePack Pro 8 are available for a limited time through Pro Tools|HD dealers worldwide for $1,295 and $3,495, respectively.

Wanna learn more about this great deal, then visit the following link :

TransAudio Group has announced the immediate availability of ATC's most reasonably-priced reference monitor — the SCM11 two-way passive speaker. The newest studio monitor in the ATC lineup is the passive version of the SCM16A.

The speakers feature an innovation called Constrained Layer Damping (CLD): two lightweight driver cones sandwich a constrained damping layer. CLD is dramatically more efficient than conventional damping because of the way it shears when the cone flexes. The shearing causes unwanted vibration energy to dissipate as frictional heat, instead of as acoustic distortion. Thus, ATC's CLD design reduces harmonic distortion between 300Hz - 3kHz, creates an extended resonance-free axial frequency response, improves the off-axis frequency response, and, if all that weren't e ...

Sonic Reality and Toontrack Music are pleased to announce a new power bundle of Toontrack Music's MIDI arranger plug-in, EZplayer pro, with Sonic Reality's Kontakt Player-based drum products. With the addition of EZplayer pro, Ocean Way Drums and Drum Masters will now have the powerful MIDI features found in Toontrack Music's popular drum products such as EZDrummer and Superior Drummer 2.0 plus more.

EZplayer pro will be offered as a download free of charge to anyone who purchases the following qualifying bundle products :

• Ocean Way Drums DL Edition
• Ocean Way Drums Silver Edition
• Ocean Way Drums Gold Edition
• Ocean Way Drums Platinum Edition
• Drum Masters Silver Edition
&b ...

ReFX today announces the release of Nexus v2.2 as well as two new expansions : Vintage DrumKits and Crank 2.

What's new in Nexus v2.2 :

• New insert FX: Gate.
• New insert FX: Compressor.
• New modulation destinations: Layer 1-4 cutoff and resonance.
• Clicking in the title-bar of the librarian cycles through three font-sizes.
• Under certain conditions, the ARP-shuffle would introduce clicking/noises for the shuffled notes. If an All-Note-Off MIDI-message arrived directly before a Note-On, the ARP wouldn't start. Mainly Logic was affected.
• Osc1-4 volume/panning modulations caused zipper-noise.

The Vintage DrumKits expansion features 65 complete drumkits (each containing 61 GM-mapped samples), 66 loops and 10 bonus-sequences. Virtually every cu ...

Meet the smallest addition to Sony's family of portable audio recorders. The new PCM-M10 Linear PCM Recorder adopted many of its features and style from the PCM-D50 model, including rugged construction, compact size and cool design.

The PCM-M10 is conveniently small on size, but packs in many cool features: a five-second pre-record buffer, WAV and MP3 format record and play, USB port for easy upload/downloads, Digital Pitch Control and a MicroSD/Memory Stick Micro slot. Providing 96 kHz 24-bit recording, a 4 GB built-in flash memory and user friendly operation, the PCM-M10 is the ideal choice for making live musical, nature sound and field recordings.

The PCM-M10 should be available in Octobre at a price of $399.

VirSyn has updated its reverb plug-in Reflect to version 2.01. What's new :

Features

- 12 new reverb presets using the new RealIR engine.

Bugfixes

- VST3/Mac version: Keyboard focus sometimes got lost in preset name field.

This update is free for registered users.

The STEREO|iO by Numark is an interface box with a USB cable. One end has female RCA phono plugs for use with virtually any audio equipment from DJ mixers to turntables, and the other end has a USB connector. DJs can connect any line or phono-level gear to their Mac or PC via USB for recording, mixing or processing. DJs can also use STEREO|iO as an output cable from their computer to inputs on an analog mixer, enabling them to mix MP3s and other music from their computer in their traditional DJ mixer.

STEREO|iO is a low-cost problem-solving tool that can be invaluable for DJs and musicians at the gig or in the studio when a connection needs to be made. The class-compliant USB device works plug and play for Mac and PC, requiring no software-driver installtion or external power for operation.

Pricing and Availability TBA.

Error by 9 Soundware is a set of instruments for the EXS24 sampler within Apple Logic Pro. The theme of the sound set is glitching. These sounds are the result of misusing hardware and software to introduce distortions not usually associated with conventional signal processing.

The instruments are based on 100 samples (40 loops and 60 hits). The source sounds for the samples include audio files which were deleted and erroneously retrieved using data recovery software, a DAT machine on vari-speed mode, sounds which were processed and reprocessed with the opposite settings, a digital delay pedal, and a skipping audio CD.

In addition to the 78 MB Error.exs instrument which uses all 100 samples, included are 30 instruments which make extensive use of the modulation capabilities of the EX ...

MXL announces the R77, a new ribbon microphone described as being "reminiscent of RCA ribbon mics of the 1930s".

Features :

• Smooth transient response and stunning realism
• High SPL handles electric guitar, horns and percussion
• Classic body design with gold and chrome metal finish
• Figure 8 polar pattern for outstanding side rejection and precise directivity
• Includes R77 Ribbon Microphone, sturdy wooden case, desktop stand,
25-ft Mogami® XLR cable, manual, application guide & cleaning cloth

Note that a limited edition, the R77L, comes fitted with a Lundahl transformer, which offers a different tonality and character to the standard version.

The R77 costs $600, while the R77L is priced at $700.

The evolution of the MuRF continues with the MF-105M MIDI MuRF. The MF-105M combines Bob Moogs classic MuRF and Bass MuRF to make one powerful Moogerfooger. Its warm, resonant, 100% analog Mid and Bass filter bands bring you everything from shimmering timbral morphing and rhythmic stuttering to deep bass grooves, and like all Moogerfoogers, its built like a tank to stand up to the toughest touring and studio use.

Moog did not stop there. In addition to the full range of Control Voltage inputs, it also sports an extensive MIDI implementation. Create tempo-synced filter sequences with MIDI Clock Sync. Change patterns with MIDI Program Change messages. Control front panel knob settings with MIDI CC messages and play the filters in real-time with MIDI Note On commands.

It is equally at home on the floor, table-top or rack mount, and with all this sound and control in one package, the MF-105M MIDI MuRF connects you to a world of sonic expression, with tight integration into todays performance, production, DJ and remix environments.


Pricing and Availability
August 2009, $479