PC and Music News

Mabuse is a real-time Audiovisual Composition and Performance tool for all electronic music and video makers. Musicians, video artists, performers, VJ's who want to make music, and DJ's who want to make videos in real time. It is a real-time Audiovisual Composition and Performance tool based on Max/MSP/Jitter and extra coding. It is a fully functional AVJ tool - that's AUDIOVISUAL, not just Audio/Visual. You make music and video, all at once on the same machine in real time.

The forthcoming 1.5 version will add in the next 6 months:
• Automatic segmentation of Audio and Video files.
• Dual channel video with keying support.
• freeframe plugin compatibility.
In future releases:
• Ability to record whole Mix on instant record.
• MIDICLOCK external synchronisation
• Recall different movie clips via MIDI.
• Adding floating text to the video.

Mabuse runs on OS X 10.4 on both Intel and PPC, as on Windows XP and Vista. Recommended hardware: Mac Pro, MacBook Pro or MacBook Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz and 2 GB RAM or on PCs: anything faster than a Pentium 4 3GHz with 1GB RAM

Limited time introduction price £65, normal price will be £95.

Native Instruments update Kontakt to 3.01. The new stuff:
- New CPU management according to the instrument type.
- EDIT mode revised
- Distorsion, Saturation and synth filter revised.
- Faster search in the database.
- New patches.
- New manual
- New manual part: "script language".
- A start up guide and localized versions of the manual of Kontakt 3.

Fixed bugs:
- Some cosmetics
- No more freeze with Cubase 4 and Spectrasonics
- Various libraries fixes
- …

Following the release of Sonar 7, Cakewalk has announced the launch of new academic versions of Sonar 7 Producer and Sonar 7 Studio Editions. This latest version is a music and audio production tool for students in both secondary and further/higher education. Included is Sonar Music Projects, a set of materials aimed at secondary school Music classes up to GCSE. The 10 projects introduce some of SONAR's easy-to-use features and help students develop a range of musical and technical skills. Each project contains teacher notes and student project sheets in PDF format, along with Sonar files. A Sonar Skills Guide provides easy reference to the program features used in the projects. The Sonar Music Projects CD-ROM also includes a "starter" set of audio clips to inspire ideas.

Cakewalk's UK distributor, Edirol Europe, has also made Sonar Music Projects available separately on a free CD-Sonar that includes the current trial version of Sonar. This enables teachers to explore some program basics in the context of actual lesson material, before deciding to purchase. To request a CD, contact education[at]edirol.co.uk.

Apple updates today QuickTime to 7.3 and iTunes to 7.5. The last requires the 7.3 version of QuickTime. iTunes 7.5 brings support for iPhone activation anywhere it's available and for a musical game on the iPod nano, classic, and 5G, plus bug fixes and performance enhancements.

We strongly suggest not to update in a pro environment or if you're using Pro Tools or Logic with sound to image jobs on the go. At least until the road is known to be safe, that is.

"About QuickTime 7.3 for Leopard
QuickTime 7.3 addresses critical security issues and delivers:
- Support for iTunes 7.5
- Updated support for creating iPhone-compatible web content
- Updated JavaScript support in the QuickTime Web Plug-in
- Numerous bug fixes

This release is recommended for all QuickTime 7 users."

If you purchase Linplug Octopus Dual-Matrix synthesizer until the end of November from Linplug webshop, you will receive the Summa Signature soundset (250 patches) for free. it's a 49 euros/ $59 give-away. You can hear the soundset from linpug website here

Octopus is VST and AU, for Mac and windows and costs 129 Euros/$149

Toontrack Music offers for free their Solo and SoundMover apps to all the registered users of EZ Drummer and Superior samplers. Solo is ToonTrack host application, providing standalone, multi-instance operation for ToonTrack samplers. SoundMover is a small utility for EZdrummer users on Mac OS who want to move their libraries on another hard drive.

Solo specifications:
• Stand alone operation of Toontrack samplers
• Optimized for real-time, low latency operation
• Full ASIO/Core Audio/Core MIDI support
• Routable mixer with support for up to 16 physical OUT
• Each instance can be assigned a discrete MIDI channel
• Support for specialist MIDI controllers

Solo System Requirements:
• Windows XP SP2, PIII/Athlon 1,8GHz with 512 Mb of Ram
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