PC and Music News

Steinberg Media Technologies has just announced that its new virtual drummer Groove Agent 3 is now shipping. It provides new virtual drummer modules, drum kits and a range of other features to provide "a complete and unique" virtual drumming solution within one VST instrument.

Features :

- Special Agent and Percussion Agent: Adding to the Classic Groove Agent of previous versions, the two new modules offer ultra-realistic modelling of a real studio drummer as well as a range of new percussive instruments in a vast range of styles
- Dual Mode: Any two of the three modules can be combined in a virtual jam session for more dynamics and variability
- New acoustic kits with an additional assortment of digital drum machines and percussion
- 42 all-new drum styles: over 120 styles total ...

Sugar Bytes has just released the little brother of its big polysynthesizer Unique. Unique LE delivers the same fat and analogue sounds including the super warm and versatile 5-Mode oscillators, 5-mode Filter with Vowel and Classic mode and 5 integrated modulators.

Features :

- 2 Multimode Oscillators with individual Envelopes
- 5-Mode Filter with Classic and Vowel Mode and 5 Modulators
- Multi Effect with 6 Effect Algorithms
- Internal Controller Section (LFO, Envelope, Stepsequencer)
- VST and AU Support
- Consequent integration of MIDI and Host Automation
- 300 Presets

UniqueLE is available now at retail price of €69 in VST and AU formats for Mac OSX and Windows.

Roland has just released SonicCell, another avatar of the Phantom Line in tabletop form. It is both a sound module, expandable with SRX expansion boards and a USB audio interface.

Main features :

- 128-voice sound module
- USB audio interface
- SMF and audio data (WAV, AIFF, MP3) playback
- Plays MIDI files
- USB port can host USB memory sticks
- 2 SRX slots
- PC/Mac Editor

SonicCell is available now at a retail price of $899. For more information, please visit the link below :

Platinum Samples is proud to announce the release of Joe Barresi's Evil Drums, the second BFD Expansion Pack in their Master Engineer series of drum samples featuring multi-platinum award producing recording engineers. Featuring an ominous 6 full drum kits, 6 kick drums and 6 snares recorded to analog tape at two legendary rock studios using compression and EQ, Joe Barresi (Tool, Queens Of The Stone Age, Bad Religion , The Melvins, Weezer, etc...) has captured a diverse ensemble of drum sounds with as many as 250 velocity levels to create a unique and exquisitely evil expansion pack. Evil Drums also includes MIDI grooves performed by Pat Wilson (Weezer, The Special Goodness).

Delivered on 6 DVD's, the Evil Drums expansion pack has 4 installation options to best suit your needs, with the 74 GB SuperSize installation having as many 250 velocity levels for ultimate realism. Evil Drums is available now for $249.95

Maize Sampler, a full-fledged VST sampler, has been updated to V1.3 with some substantial enhancement.

New features :

- LPF ADSR envelope section
- VST parameter automation
- Supports drag'n drop from the sample list
- Editable layer names
- more detailed control of the reverb

The Sound Guy, Inc. has announced the release of ReSpatializer, an advanced panning, surround sound and spatialization plug-in. ReSpatializer supports up to eight input channels, each of which can be individually positioned. The panning is presented in an easy-to-use heads-up display with access to positioning, channel gain, mute/solo selection, and spreading. Other special processing includes variable-rate source rotation that can synchronize to the host tempo, low-frequency effect (LFE) tools for monitoring or bouncing to disk, and a large variety of output speaker formats (up to eight channels, DTS, Dolby, ITU, Film and others). It also offers simulated surround sound through headphones. After mixing your tracks for various surround formats, you can create a binaural headphone mix. This ...