With SPARK 2, Arturia has taken the opportunity to update the look and feel of SPARK to allow for faster workflow, while creating a layout that allows it to grow well into the future and secure its longevity — no easy feat in today’s here today, gone tomorrow’s world of rapidly disposable developments. New tabbed pages provide a cleaner look, more screen space, and faster access to the most needed features — features like an all-new MIXER window (with level, pan, and insert effects and sends — to 14 unique professional-grade effects, no less), expanded PATTERN edit screen, and enhanced LIBRARY page for better data management.

SPARK 2 also adds 50 new kits — including no fewer than 800 new instruments — that span many more musical genres than ever before, including trap, hip-hop, tech house, and nu disco, to name but a few modern electronic music styles, as well as acoustic drum kits capably spanning modern rock, funk, R ’n’ B, pop, vintage rock, and latin percussion. Vintage drum machine enthusiasts are also well catered for with ear-opening emulations of the likes of Roland’s TR-808, TR-909, TR-707, TR-606, and CR-78; LinnDrum, Linn 9000; Oberheim DMX; E-mu Drumulator; Sequential Circuits Drumtraks; Yamaha RX5; and Simmons SDS-V — analogue and digital classics all. And all kits come complete with 32 patterns that can be used by themselves or form the basis of user-programmed beats.

Bringing up the rear, SPARK 2 sees SONG mode updated, too. Song segments can now be configured and then replayed at the touch of a button. Users can create song sections that will play from one pattern to another and then recall these sections via the step buttons on the SPARK Creative Drum Machine and SparkLE Creative Drum Machine controllers — perfect performance enhancements!

AudioThing has released ChromaKey for Mac OS X and Windows in AudioUnit, VST plug-in and Kontakt formats.

AudioThing is also celebrating its third birthday with a 25% discount on all products, coupon code: 3YRS

ChromaKey is a collection of sounds ported to Kontakt and VST/AU plugin from AudioThing's soundset for AAS Chromaphone. It features 60 patches divided in 6 categories: Keys, Pads, Plucked Strings, Sequences, Soundscapes, and Various.
Chromaphone physical modelling synthesis combines acoustic resonators to produce dynamic and expressive sounds. Despite the Chromaphone tagline "creative percussion synthesizer", ChromaKey focuses entirely on hybrid and organic melodic sounds.

Details:
60 Instruments.
6 Categories.
616 Samples (44.1kHz / 24-bit).
Format: Kontakt 4/5, VST, AU.
Platforms: OS X, Windows.
Size: Kontakt 465 MB, VST/AU: MAC 430 MB / PC 285 MB.

Price: €12. ChromaKey is available for the introductory price of €9 using coupon code 3YRS until April 28th, 2014.

The Boom Drums are both vintage and modern sounding. We recorded brand new acoustic drums and layered those with old school, vintage sounding samples. To top it all off, we ran everything through an Empirical Labs Compressor to add some analog thickness.

The Boom Drums come with 345 24 Bit WAV samples that can be used in any DAW. It even comes with 7 Maschine kits.

75 Kicks
80 Snares
70 Claps
80 Hi Hats
40 Percussion
7 Drum Kits Formatted for Maschine
15 24 Bit WAV Drum Loops From The Audio Demos

Sounds from inside computers

Detunized has released Electromagnetic - a collection of ReFill Combinators and instrument patches that source their sounds from various computers upon booting, reading from CD-ROM, accessing WiFi, formatting hard disks or floppies.

All these often unwanted and disturbing noises where captured with several contact microphones and induction coils that revealed a deep look into the streams of electrons and bits. Once pulled to daylight it shows that these serenades of hums and crosstalks have far more potential than just producing a wall of buzz. So a good amount of the sourced noises is even capable of forming tunable sounds, rhythmic structures and sophisticated beat patterns.

Including 70 Combinators that are built up of 198 subpatches with access to more than 150 samples Electromagnetic addresses to sound designers and composers likewise.
The chromatically mapped "All-Combinators" provide an instant overview of the source material but at the same time they invite for thrilling explorations of what is going on noise-wise in everybodies computer.
The "Autorun" Combinators offer exciting patterns that reside at the borderline between rhythmic structure and otherworldly soundscapes.
The "Beat and Bass" section hosts beefy bass sounds and synched drum patterns that lay the foundation of rock solid IDM tracks. Beat and Bass also contains two fully staffed Kong Kits with single hits that range from versatile to funny.
The "Boots and Drones" Combinators are the perfect starting point for background layers whenever it comes to the scoring of thrilling moods, eerie ambiences or depressing atmospheres.
Once having mastered this dark area of sound fields there is still the "Keys and Pads" section to discover. This is the right place where a selection of lovely keyboards and evolving pads is awaiting deployment.

ReFill specifications:
70 Combinator Patches with multiple mapped controls and switches
2 Kong Kits
32 Kong Modules
158 NN-19 Patches
6 NNXT Patches
158 Samples (24 Bit, 44.1 kHz)
230 MB overall content (extracted)

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/refills-by-detunized/sets/electromagnetic-refill

Electromagnetic ReFill is available to purchase as download for 29.00 Euro at the Propellerhead Shop.

Self-confessed synth freak and world-renowned sound designer Rob Papen knows a thing or two about creating the sounds that people want to hear. He’s even published an informative instructional book/DVD set based on his subtractive synthesis masterclasses called The 4 Element Synth — perfectly pitched for the long-running analogue revival, but is best known for his namesake software company, dedicated to producing its trademark Inspiration Soundware.

Several years after its inception, Rob Papen, the company, collectively has 11 superlative software products to its well-known name: Blade (representing the cutting-edge of today’s synthesizers), BLUE-II (so-called ‘Crossfusion synthesis’ since it covers so much musical ground so effectively), Predator (‘phat’ analogue synth with killer presets and first-class features), Punch (speaker-busting, body-rattling drum machine), SubBoomBass (ultra-deep bass synth with built-in step sequencer), RG (electric and acoustic guitar grooves with sequencer and synth effects), RP-AMOD (modulation effects to spice up vocal tracks, enliven instruments, or even beef up drums and loops), RP-Delay (with six delay lines, eight filters, four LFOs, reverser, and more), RP-Distort (for distorting and dramatically altering tracks), and RP-Verb (advanced, transparent, and musical algorithm reverb).
Price: 699$.

Native Instruments has released the latest version of the world's most popular pro DJ app – TRAKTOR DJ 1.4 for iPad and iPhone. Along with new effects and usability improvements, this free update introduces seamless Mixcloud integration in TRAKTOR DJ and a new partnership with the sharing platform designed for DJs, radio presenters, and Podcasters. To celebrate this collaboration, Native Instruments is holding a special DJ mix competition to win a trip to Ibiza.

After winning the App Store's 2013 editor's "App of the Year", TRAKTOR DJ 1.4 now offers in-app integration with Mixcloud. A valuable new feature, DJs can record their mix, then upload it to their Mixcloud profile directly from within the app. This allows the great benefit of sharing TRAKTOR DJ sets freely online in an instant without having to export and manually upload the file.

Three new unlockable effects have also been added to TRAKTOR DJ's creative features. Iceverb, Transpose Stretch, and Reverse Grain can be accessed for free when a notification window prompts the user to unlock. Playlist and subfolder editing have been improved for better in-app track management in addition to a variety of smaller stability and usability improvements.

The new partnership with Mixcloud brings together TRAKTOR DJ for iPad and iPhone with the largest community of DJs on the web. In celebration, Native Instruments offers DJs the chance to share their sound for a paid weekend getaway in Ibiza. Until May 31, 2014, mixes recorded and uploaded to Mixcloud using TRAKTOR DJ will be automatically be entered in the contest. Acid house legend A Guy Called Gerald will guest-judge the mixes and select the lucky winner.

TRAKTOR DJ 1.4 is now available for download in the App Store for $9.99 / 8,99 € / £6.99 / ¥1,000 for iPad and $1.99 / 1,79 € / £ 1.49 / ¥200 for iPhone. Current users can update their version for free.