PC and Music News

The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th 2007 at his home in Kuerten-Kettenberg and will be buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Kuerten. The "father of electronic music" ad founder of the WDR studio composed 362 individually performable works (Kontakt, Gruppen, Momente, Stimmung, Helikopter-Quartett, Hymnen, Licht). The works which were composed until 1969 are published by Universal Edition in Vienna, and all works since then are published by the Stockhausen-Verlag. Numerous texts by Stockhausen and about his works have been published by the Stockhausen Foundation for Music. tockhausen always said that God gave birth to him and calls him home.

On Thursday, December 13th 2007, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. it will be possible to personally say farewell to Karlheinz Stockhausen in the chapel of the Waldfriedhof in Kuerten (Kastanienstrasse).

AudioWarrior has just released TRON 'Mello-Rack', a sample library for Kontakt 2 produced by Greg Giametta and based upon the famous Mellotron.

The original hardware version of the Mellotron was an electromechanical polyphonic keyboard musical instrument that was originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It was used on countless hits including The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, etc... Unlike the original Mellotron the 8 second samples in TRON 'Mello-Rack' have been perfectly looped for the modern world however the loops may be turned off to recapture the vintage effect of certain voices ending at variable times.

TRON 'Mello-Rack' for Kontakt is available now for Windows XP | Vista and Mac OS X. Note that it requires Kontakt 2 or higher from Native Intruments.

SM Pro Audio is proud to announce the immediate availability of their portable multi-purpose acoustic treatment panel The Mic Thing in white. Designed for minimizing room artifacts and improving separation during microphone recording sessions, The Mic Thing is great for a range of applications including helping to control room ambience, minimizing spill from instrument amplifiers, or even creating temporary control rooms.

It can be mounted on just about any microphone, drum, or speaker stand up to 1" (25mm) in diameter. Its two winged panels can also be adjusted to create anything from a flat planar absorber to a tight semi circle enclosing the microphone. This way, the amount of separation and absorption can be easily be manipulated to suit requirements.

Like the black edition the Mic Thing white is shipping with the Mic Stand for a limited time.

This week, Greg Paxton and our partner audioMIDI present a full review of Steinberg's Sequel, entry-level DAW.
That "entry-level" statement could be put into perspective, as says the author : "Sequel offers a feature-rich program for anyone getting started - on both a PC and a Mac. The instrument library provides a versatile palette of sounds[...]. The loop library and editing capabilities are more than impressive. Other features [...] make Sequel anything but "entry level"."

Ueberschall has announced the release of 80s Punk & New Wave, a new state-of-the-art Punk & New Wave library, including 23 construction kits which contain over 1.6 GB of loops, phrases and samples. Ueberschall's newest Elastik Player product is inspired by the rudest guitar driven LA Punk, NY Punk, UK Punk, Ska, Hardcore, PostPunk and New Wave from the early and up to mid eighties. This library is packed with loads of "intoxicating" licks from guitars, bass, keys, drums and more. All loops are based on live performances from mic'd stacks, kits and analog favorites of the time. The user has the choice of Dry mix or 80ies infected over-bloated commercial saturation for all loops. Drumkit multi-tracks from kick, snare and overheads for each construction kit mix are also included.

The sound library comes complete with the "Elastik" loop player which includes features like :

- Highspeed timestretching and pitchshifting in best quality.
- Innovative "LoopEye" for fast loop variations.
- All parameters MIDI controllable.
- Multiple content management.
- Each product separately installable.
- Mapping tools (automatic slice- & chromatic-map).
- Save audio of original and modified loops.
- Creation of user presets.
- Filter with "kill function" (-72db).
- Adaptable to tempos from 10 to 480 BPM.
- Audio engine for quick adaptation.
- And more...
- Compatible with Mac OS X / Windows - AU / VST / RTAS.

Ueberschall's 80s Punk & New Wave is available for $119 / €99.

Sims Audio has announced the Primus A25 Midi/USB controller. Basically it's a 25 key MIDI/USB keyboard controller featuring both line and microphone level inputs so it can also function as a USB interface.

Features :

● 25-key MIDI keyboard controller with 16 channel MIDI I/O
● 24-bit / 96 kHz Audio interface
● 8 assignable MIDI controller knobs and encoders
● Function keypads and a data wheel with 3 digit 7-segment LED display
● 5 fully-editable internal user banks
● 4 presets optimized for bundled demo software and 1 useful preset
● Pitch bend and modulation wheels
● Sustain pedal jack
● 2 line inputs (1/4" TS), 1 MIC input (1/4" TRS) and 1 Hi-Z input (1/4" TS)
● 2 line outputs (1/4" TS) / Headphone output with level control
● Direct monitor switch for zero-latency monitoring
● USB 2.0 bus powered
● Additional 9V DC power socket
● Supports WDM, ASIO, DirectSound and Core Audio driver with low latency
● Native Instruments Pro53 DEMO, FM8 DEMO, B4II DEMO and Battery 3 DEMO software included

The Primus A25 has an MSRP of $270 USD, and will be available in the first quarter of 2008.