PC and Music News

Universal Audio unveils the 710 Twin-Finity, a radically new UA pre-amp design which uniquely combines both the classic retro warmth of UA tube design and the transient bite of solid-state in a 2U, half-rack, all-metal chassis.

The 710 Twin-Finity design with dual signal paths is centered around the innovative phase-aligned "Tone-Blending" knob which is continually variable from 100% Tube to 100% Solid-State offering easy access to a myriad of unique pre-amp tones.

Features :

• Vacuum Tube(12AX7) & Solid-State Dual-Path Preamp
• UA Sonic Quality, Twin-Finity Phase-aligned Tone-Blending
• Dual Gain Stages: Wire with Gain to Creamy to Crunchy
• Class A, High-Headroom, High Gain (70dB+) Mic Pre & DI
• Metal Chassis, Designed & Made in the USA, Rack-Kit Included

The 710 Twin-Finity will have an MSRP of US$999, an estimated street price of US$799, and will include a single or dual-unit 19" pro rack mount kit. The 710 Twin-Finity will ship worldwide in July 2008.

G-Sonique has just released the XBass4000, a new and unique VST effect plug-in for "maximal kick-up" of the bass frequencies. The virtual circuits of the XBass4000 combine two different algorithms emphasizing the bass spectrum of the track:

- a psychoacoustic algorithm BassEnhancer that emphasize the intensity of hearable bass content
- an analog style saturation unit that enriches bass spectrum of a requested "fat" and "warm" sounds known from tube circuits. It also adds higher harmonic frequencies that expands and enlightens the hearable spectrum as well as sub-bass spectrum

The XBass4000L is available for Windows as a VST effect plug-in at a price of €15. A demo version is also available.

PreSonus Audio Electronics is pleased to announce the Open Beta Driver Program allowing customers the opportunity to download and use beta version drivers for PreSonus products.

The first beta driver available for download is the all new driver, firmware and Control Console (version 2) for the FireStudio 26x26 firewire recording system. The new FireStudio driver package for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac Leopard increases overall efficiency and stability as well as introduces a completely new version of the Control Console DSP mixer/router software with a switchable "expanded mix mode" making the second bank of ADAT channels for mixing and routing available.

After Bitter Sweet II, Flux today announces the release of its new freebie plug-in called Stereo Tool.

Stereo Tool offers controls and visual feedback for the stereo stage. It features ultra precise controls of input gain and individual pan for left and right channels. A phase inverter is available for each channel. A global stereo pan and a stereo width setting are also implemented to complete the management of the stereo signal. Stereo Tool also offers an accurate visual feedback reflecting the signal content. A vector scope display, Peak meters for both inputs and outputs, and a phase correlation meter permanently monitor the signal. As all Flux plug-ins it features 64-bit floating point processing, up to 8 FS (384 KHz).

Stereo Tool is available for AU, RTAS and VST compatible host applications for Windows and Mac OS X.

CableGuys has just released FilterShaper, a new VST plug-in that aims to "bring life to your sounds and loops".

FilterShaper enables you to draw any curve, assign it to its 4 LFOs and use them to modulate filter cutoff and filter resonance of its filters, or simply modulate the volume. ts drawing possibilities are ultra-flexible, yet easy to use. You can draw any curves you like shaping hard-synced or analogue-sounding rhythms. Create interesting rhythmic strings, shape a bass sound, destroy vocal recordings, create vivid shaker rhythms out of white noise, etc. You can go from subtle changes to extreme modulations, from little sound corrections to nicely filtered rhythmic loops. Its various filters can be set to drastic values from zero resonance up to self-oscillation.

FilterShaper is available as a VST effect plug-in for Windows. The demo version gives you full functionality with the only limitation being that only one instance of the plugin can be used at the same time, so it is essentially free unless you want to use more than one instance in a project. The full license can be purchased for €29 / $44.

Expert Sleepers has released Clocker, a free utility VST plug-in for Windows that sends MIDI clock.

Why would you want a plug-in to do that, when your host app sends MIDI clock perfectly fine? Well, with Clocker you have a separate, adjustable source of MIDI clock. So you can send all kinds of crazy tempo to some of your outboard gear, while the rest of your stuff plays back in time as usual.