PC and Music News

SoundHack has released Delay Trio, a collection of three plugins that Tom Erbe developed as class demonstrations while teaching computer music and studio technique at UC San Diego. All of these are derived from the same basic delay algorithm: a hermite interpolated delay line with variable modulation, and a feedback loop with dc blocking and saturation. Pitch shifting is achieved with a dual head crossfading delay (ala Eltro Tempophon/Dennis Gabor/Pierre Schaeffer phonogene) and is decidedly low-fi. The saturating feedback also allows them to be great drone and noise generators.

The three plugins are :

• +delay (classic delay effects).
• +pitchdelay (essentially the same plugin with controls oriented toward pitch shifting).
• +bubbler (a granular delay in which grains are pulled from the delay line with randomized start time, delay time and pitch shift value).

These plug-ins are available for Windows (VST, RTAS) and Mac OS X (VST, RTAS, AU); all are freeware.

Native Instruments just launched Guitar Rig Hero, a four-week worldwide video contest that challenges musicians to demonstrate their skills and creativity in combination with Guitar Rig 3. Hosted on a dedicated YouTube channel, the competition features prizes worth over $10,000, and is co-hosted by a jury of international pro guitarists.

Participants are asked to capture a video of their most original and spectacular performance using Guitar Rig 3, without any sonic or artistic limitations applying. Musicians who don't own Guitar Rig 3 can download the full-featured demo version from the NI website and use it for the contest.

Submissions will be accepted until September 30th, and the winners will be determined on October 14th. On top of the public voting by the YouTube community, the artist jury will judge the ten most popular entries for an additional grand prize.

Native Instruments has also announced the release of Kore Electronic Experience which merges seven Kore Soundpacks into a single package at a substantial price advantage. Ready for use with the included Kore Player and with Kore 2, Kore Electronic Experience includes the following Soundpacks :

- Best of Absynth
- Best of Reaktor vol.1
- Deep Transformations
- FM8 Transient Attacks
- Massive Expansion vol.1
- Synthetic Drums Reloaded

It also includes an online voucher of $59/49€ for the download of an additional sound pack of the user's choice from the remaining Kore Soundpack.

Kore Electronic Experience is available for a suggested retail price of $229 / €199.

IK Multimedia has launched the "Master Your Room Promotion". From September 1st until October 31st, 2008 every customer purchasing their acoustic room correction system plug-in ARC System (full or crossgrade), will receive a copy of their mastering plug-in suite, T-RackS for free as a download.

ARC System is available for €539.99/$699.99 for new customers and for €419.99/$549.99 as a special reduced crossgrade price available to previously registered IK users of full or OEM bundle products.

De la Mancha has just released erratic 2, a new commercial version of its drum sample player.

erratic 2 is a drum sample player with many randomising and velocity sensitive options to make any drum pattern sound different on each loop. It can be used to add realism or surrealism depending on how you want to set it up. At the core you have a 15 slot drum sampler with 6 velocity layers per slot, each layer can be played according to velocity, cycled (round-robin) or randomly triggered. To vary things up a bit you can determine the hit probability and hit repeat probability for each slot and add a random factor for the velocity, pan and swing for each hit.

In addition to the velocity layers, this update adds velocity-sensitive decay envelopes for volume & filter cut-off, as well as velocity sensitivity to pitch and filter cut-off. Another new feature is the hit repeat probability, with delay time, repeat velocity and velocity sensitive feedback. The step-sequencer is replaced by a more flexible MIDI / piano-roll triggering, which allows better management of note precision, long patterns and different time signatures. Improvements have been made to give 4 choke groups across all samples, better mute/solo options, sample reverse, sample normalisation, MIDI out, support for 32 bit wavs and more samples than ever before.

erratic 2 is available now as a VSTi for Windows and costs $39.

Native Instruments has just released a new software-only version of Kore 2, and also established more affordable pricing for the original Kore 2 version bundled with the hardware controller.

The new Kore 2 Software Edition is offered due to popular demand, and accommodates all musicians and producers who want to primarily combine Kore 2 with their existing MIDI controller equipment. The Software Edition provides the full functionality of the Kore 2 application, but leaves out the dedicated Kore hardware controller in favor of a more affordable price point. All owners of Kore 2 Software Edition will also have the option to add the Kore controller later on at any time as a separate purchase.

Kore 2 Software Edition is available now for a suggested retail price of $229 / €199. The suggested retail price of Kore 2 with hardware controller included has also been reduced to $449 / €399.