Right now : it's midnight sharp and I know that you steadily enter the New Year that is showing up. Wether you are alone, with the family, with your darling, at work for some of you, ill for some others, with your friends or in front of your favourite Mac, I do wish you all, each one of our 60,604 members, our visitors, each one of our chatters on the forum, whether amateur, professional, discreet or super talkative, in the name of our dearest webmaster "Soif" and of the whole team of MacMusic a perfect, excellent and explosive New Year.

Since I have decided to drink a glass of champagne in the honour of each of our members, you easily understand that you will see yours truly and the news only tomorrow. Happy New Year 2006 !!!

Audio Ease has updated its reverb Altiverb to version 5.1.2. This new version of Altiverb features : can now load songs with preset in Logic, bypass is automatable again in Pro Tools, conversion from HTDM plug-in to RTAS plug-in when loading "old Pro Tools" sessions (before Pro Tools 7), and fixes not clickable window while starting up problem. Altiverb is a sampled acoustics processor that offers realistic one-, two- and four-channel sampled acoustics of real halls, cathedrals, bathrooms — and virtually any acoustic environment.

Rekliner Records released a beta version 0.9 for its VST looper Loopy LLama. This looper was made to emulate the Jam Man or DL-4 - but also generate a click track so it could be used with a drummer live. It is designed to work with Plogue Bidule for live performance, but it can be used as a regular VST plugin as well.

List of new features and beta version available in the MacMusic software section.

Native Instruments has updated its Bandsant to version 1.0.1. The new version of this General MIDI compatible sound module features : Greatly improved relative volume of instruments and drum sets, Reduced ld loading times for big instruments, Added forward, rewind, and seek to the Player, Added playlist to the Player, Added relative tempo to the Player, Added MIDI song loading by double-click on files, Shortcuts are now disabled in hosts so that they do not interfere with important host functionality, Fixed misc bugs...

The updater is available in the MacMusic software section.

IK Multimedia announces that SampleTank 2.1 is now shipping. This upgrade for the IK sample workstation plug-in comes complete with enhanced application features and an enlarged 2 DVD sound set. SampleTank 2.1 features more multi-sampled instruments, loops, phrases, percussion, traditional instruments, world percussion loops and a wider range of electronic and acoustic instruments in every category and style. Sampletank is available as as a stand-alone application, and in VST, RTAS, and Audio Units formats.

SampleTank 2.1 XL costs $499 and SampleTank 2.1 L is $299. All SampleTank LE/SE and previous SampleTank 1.0 customers can upgrade to the new SampleTank 2.1XL for $299 or the new SampleTank 2.1 L for $199.