Last year Avid decided to combine all of their brands (including Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius) into one unified Avid brand. During the past year Avid have been working hard to transition Digidesign to the Avid name. Below is an 'Open Letter' to all Digidesign customers to share information, answer questions, and explain how the changes will affect them.

"New website launching April 12th
Many of you told us that we needed to improve the navigation, organization, and the overall user experience of digidesign.com. In order to make these improvements, a major overhaul was necessary. On April 12th, we're going to launch a brand new avid.com website that will include all of the digidesign.com pages—plus a number of enhancements to make navigation faster and easier. At first, the website will be US-only, but over the next few months, we'll work on moving the international Digidesign websites as well. To help you get acclimated, we'll be posting an interim page at digidesign.com offering links straight to the pages that are most important to you.

Why move the website to Avid.com?

Toontrack has unveiled more details about their Tonal and Percussive, Open Surface, New Generation Virtual Instrument – Beatstation.

Andreas Sundgren from Toontrack says "Although it is firmly planted in the Toontrack legacy of designing the best percussive virtual instruments Beatstation marks a departure for Toontrack, introducing melodic instruments, REX support, and recording capabilities making it the ultimate open surface sampler for sound designers, producers, musicians and songwriters alike."

Features :

Thermionic Culture has presented the Freebird, a 3 Channel valve EQ.

Company director Nick Terry explains : "We've introduced a new product that can be considered as part of a modular system, in our own unique style of course. The Freebird has 3 channels of broad but versatile valve EQ. The unit is a half rack design but can be put together in a 19 inch rack case with another unit to give 6 channels of EQ.

There will be other products in this format to follow, so

XLN Audio releases Ballad Grooves MIDI Pak.

Features :

• 120 MIDI Files
• 15 Grooves
• 4/4 and 6/8 Time Signatures

Light the candles, slip into something more comfortable and start producing heart breaking classics in no time with the Ballad Grooves MIDI Pak. Included are 120 MIDI files divided between 15 different Ballad Grooves in different tempos and feels, all recorded live by a drummer. Grooves in both 4/4 and 6/8 are included.

The Ballad Grooves comes with seven different variations, for example hihat, ride, sidestick, tambourine specials etc. With these grooves you will be able to create your own complete ballad drumtracks in a couple of minutes and of course you can use the grooves with any drums or presets in Addictive Drums.

Ballad Grooves is an Ad ...

Avid has announced the release of the Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack, featuring all five Digidesign's virtual instruments - Structure, Strike, Velvet, Transfuser and Hybrid.

This pack is available now and carries a USMSRP of $499. Upgrade options for existing customers are also available.

ESI unveils the KeyControl 25 XT and the KeyControl 49 XT Controller Keyboard. Here is what they say about it :

"KeyControl 25 XT and KeyControl 49 XT have an exceptionally stylish aluminum cabinet and white solid glossy plastic side panels. They provide four fully programmable endless encoders, function buttons as well as a pitch bend and modulation slider. The keyboards work without the installation of any drivers under Windows XP, Window Vista and Windows 7 as well as Mac OS X.

KeyControl 25 XT and KeyControl 49 XT are bundled with Cubase LE 5 from Steinberg, the amazingly powerful multitrack audio & MIDI software for Mac and PC."