Universal Audio has also announced the release of the UAD-2 Omni, a comprehensive package including all thirty-four UAD-2 Powered Plug-Ins accompanying either a Duo or more powerful Quad DSP card.

The UAD-2 Duo Omni has an MSRP of $4249 price and the UAD-2 Quad Omni has an MSRP of $4999, offering savings of up to $2,200 vs. buying the plug-ins individually. Both Duo Omni and Quad Omni are available in stores now.

After four years of development, Camel Audio are very pleased to announce the release of Alchemy, together with two accompanying soundbanks.

Described as "the ultimate sample manipulation synthesizer", Alchemy features additive, spectral and granular synthesis and resynthesis, sampling, and a virtual analog engine with unison and PWM. You can morph or crossfade between sources. You can import your own samples from SFZ, WAV or AIFF files. A wide range of analog modelled filters are included, in addition to a flexible rack of effects which includes all those from CamelPhat and CamelSpace as well as many new effects such as a high quality reverb. The modulation system is extremely flexible, yet easy to use. Alchemy also features an arpeggiator with the ability to import the groove from any MIDI file for immediate synchronization to a beat.

Alchemy ships with over 2GB of samples and analysed content from in-house designers Tim Conrardy and Biomechanoid, as well as designers such as Ian Boddy, Robert Rich, Scott Solida and Nucleus SoundLab. A library of over 300 presets is included, arranged into categories for rapid access to the sound you require.

Camel Audio has also released two Alchemy add-on soundbanks. Atmospheric Alchemy is a collection of over 150 presets including beautiful pads, musical soundscapes, strings, vocals and sound effects. Electronic Alchemy consists of over 150 sounds covering arps,
fat basses, soaring leads, synths and loops. Each preset has fully programmed perform assignments which make them fun and easy to tweak, and comes with 8 remix pad variations for a total of over 1200 sounds per soundbank.

Available for both Mac (AU / VST) and PC (VST), Alchemy is priced at $249 / €199 / £179. The soundbanks cost $59 / €49/ £39. Note that discount prices are available for owners of Camel Audio products.

UAD Software version 5.2 is finally available for download. Version 5.2 includes 14-day fully-functional trials of the new Harrison 32C Channel EQ, and Little Labs Phase Alignment Tool. It also includes UAD-2 support for all Powered Plug-Ins, and Pro Tools support for UAD-2 with auto delay compensation.

Pro Tools RTAS Support with Mellowmuse ATA
UAD-2 is now fully RTAS compatible. As a special bonus, UAD-2 users will also receive a free license for Mellowmuse ATA. Mellowmuse ATA provides automatic delay compensation for Pro Tools LE, even for regular plug-ins, with ease. UAD-1 users may download Mellowmuse ATA for the special price of $39.

Harrison 32C Channel EQ
Partnering with Harrison Consoles Ltd., Universal Audio recreates the Harrison four-band 32C channel EQ pl ...

Future Audio Workshop, a.k.a. FAW, has just updated its great semi-modular software synthesizer Circle to version 1.0.6. This new version including some bug fixes and minor feature updates.

The third volume of their free sound packs for Circle is also available. This pack includes some festive sounding presets by Dajan Izzo and a collection of electronic music sounds designed by Thomas Koot. Note that this latest Circle Sounds pack along with all the previous releases are now included in the latest Circle installer.

By the way, FAW is working on an iPhone application and is looking for beta testers. If you have an iPhone/iPod Touch and want to help out, just send through an email to their support service stating your iPhone/iPod Touch OS version and they'll get you set up.

Following two years of research and development, Event Electronics is proud to announce that the Opal studio monitor has commenced shipping worldwide.

The Opal's EX8 driver provides a raw response of 30Hz to 10kHz and a power handling of up to 1000 watts. A high powered neodymium motor provides 36mm of linear excursion to the bespoke high-strength glass fiber polyamide cone. Event's X-Coil technology dramatically increases the driver speed and control, lowering distortion to levels previously unavailable in its class, and providing defined and accurate mid range reproduction as well as powerful, high speed bass.

The ULD1 tweeter combines ultra light and rigid beryllium-copper with an extremely powerful neodymium motor to produce unbelievable high frequency clarity. It is mounted in the Opal's innovative high frequency waveguide, which has been designed not only to provide excellent stereo imaging and a wide soundstage, but also to enable users to remove and rotate it for accurate reproduction in horizontal mounting applications.

The Opal's cabinet is moulded from aluminium to provide strength and minimise resonance. Each surface is a combination of complex radii to eliminate any diffraction inside the cabinet. The front mounted ports incorporate a variable impedance design that completely remove any port noise, and does not rely on room acoustics unlike rear porting solutions.

Softube has just released the FET Compressor plug-in.

When creating FET Compressor, Softube set out to make the most accurate emulation of the most famous solid state compressor, and very much effort has been spent modeling the real hardware to make sure that the emulation sounds exactly the same.

Nothing must stand in the way of the sound. Every single part of the simulation contributes to making this piece unique. The extremely fast attack, all the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) distortion that comes from the different parts of the compressor and the extremely careful way the signal is handled and conditioned throughout the signal chain.

On top of that they have added some useful features that still have that analog sound - but features that would've been hard or even impossible to implement with analog electronics, such as the continuous ratio, parallel compression, detector filtering and lookahead. That way you will be able to get the best of two worlds.

Available for both native VST, AU, RTAS as well as the DSP-based TDM and VENUE formats, FET Compressor is priced at $279 for the native version and $429 for the TDM/VENUE version (excl. VAT). Note that a fully functional 10 day demo is also available.