HARMAN's BSS Audio today announced its Soundweb London BLU-806 and BLU-326 with Audinate's Dante-enabled processors are now shipping.

The BLU-806 and BLU-326 offer the same configurable signal processing features as the existing BLU-800 and 320 devices with the addition of Audinate's Dante digital media networking capabilities.

Native Instruments today launched the Freedom of Sound sales special on REAKTOR and select REAKTOR-based instruments and effects.

The special celebrates the unrestricted freedom to design completely new instruments and sound devices REAKTOR provides. During the offer period, REAKTOR is available at the NI Online Shop for $99 / 99 € / ¥ 9,800 – a saving of $300 / 300 € / ¥ 30,000 compared to Native Instruments' online shop price. Six REAKTOR Instruments and Effects are also available at a 50% discount: RAZOR, THE MOUTH, THE FINGER, REAKTOR SPARK, and REAKTOR PRISM. The Freedom of Sound special runs now until June 20, 2013.

Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH today released three new VST Sound Loop Sets, which perfectly complement existing content libraries in Sequel, Cubase and Nuendo.

Klanghaus offers close to 300 experimental sounds, created by German musician, instrument maker and composer Ferdinand Försch. The loops and samples concentrate on rhythmical patterns and percussive elements, perfect for a wide variety of music styles.

Platinum Guitars comprises more than 300 acoustic guitar and electric guitar loops of rhythmic phrases, melodic leads and catchy riffs. Ideal for pop and electronic music productions, the content is easily accessible from the included construction kits.

Guitar Spheres boasts in excess of 300 guitar loops including a broad scope of processed, six-string ambience. The loops are arranged in construction kits, and will be enjoyed by movie soundtrack and ambient music producers.

Following a year of intense instrument modelling deep inside XILS-lab’s ear-opening laboratories, the XILS V+ virtual instrument and effects plug-in has finally emerged, sounding nigh on indistinguishable from an instantly-recognisable keyboard vocoder classic much loved by both contemporary and acclaimed artists alike.

But what keyboard vocoder are we talking about here exactly? And what’s a vocoder, anyway?
By definition, a vocoder is a synthesizer that produces sounds from an analysis of speech input. Vocoders arguably had their musical heyday in the Seventies with the likes of British record-producing heavyweight Jeff Lynne’s symphonic rockers ELO making much use of them throughout several striking recordings — think smash hit ‘Mr Blue Sky’ and the Time album (featuring the Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus keyboard) — while German techno pop pioneers Kraftwerk crafted themselves an ongoing robotic vocoder-led career that’s still resonating throughout EDM’s many modern-day stylistic offshoots;
French house music stalwarts Daft Punk became big vocoder fans with several memorable club-friendly hits to their eminently danceable name, par exemple. Historically speaking, the aforesaid Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus is also musically immortalised on celluloid thanks to Greek synth wizard Vangelis’ memorable early-Eighties electronic scores to the Oscar-winning Chariots Of Fire and Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film noir classic, Bladerunner, both of which made much use of the instrument’s signature Strings — ‘emulating’ the sustained portion of orchestral strings — and Human Voice Ensemble ‘choir’ — remarkable and unique — sounds. Subsequently the long-since-discontinued VP-330 Vocoder Plus has become something of a sought-after classic itself… for those in the musical know. Yet finding a fully-functional, pristine example of this 30-plus-year-old temperamental hardware has become nigh on impossible. Which is exactly where XILS V+ comes into play, of course, thanks to XILS-lab’s labours.

Radial Engineering Ltd announces the PreMax channel strip, a combination preamp and 3-band equalizer module for the popular 500 series format.

The PreMax begins with a low-noise Op-Amp input coupled with Radial's unique Accustate gain control that simultaneously sets the input sensitivity and signal gain to deliver ultra-quiet performance at all levels. Visual monitoring is supported with LEDS for signal and overload. The preamp then feeds a traditional 3 band shelving EQ for tone shaping. A front panel switch enables the user to bypass the EQ to compare the pre-post effect. This is augmented with a high-pass filter to eliminate low-end resonance that can cause a recorded track to sound muddy. A 180°polarity reverse works double duty to either help align stereo mic placement or to help tame acoustic hot spots when using the PreMax in a live stage setting. For safety, the 48V phantom power switch is recessed to prevent accidental turn-on which could damage tweeters or vintage ribbon microphones. When used with a Radial Workhorse power rack, the Omniport jack is configured as an instrument input and activated using the front panel switch. When not connected, the switch acts like a microphone mute.