PC and Music News

URS has announced Saturation, a new plug-in designed to recreate four different and distinct pre amplifiers, each featuring: a different type of input stage saturation, even and odd ordered harmonics and soft clipping.

Features :

- Four Vintage Pre Amplifier Algorithms
- Even and Odd Ordered Harmonics
- Tube and Discrete Analog Saturation
- Soft Clipping

The initial four Pre Amplifiers models include :

- Class A Tube Mic Pre Amplifier - Vintage Motorcity
- Class A Tube Mic Pre Amplifier - German
- Class A Discrete Pre Amplifier - British
- Class A Discrete JFet Pre Amplifier - Modern

Native Support only, the URS Saturation plug-in currently supports Audio Units and VST for both Mac OSX (VST for WinXP, Vista to be released soon). Note that RTAS is currently supported with a VST to RTAS Wrapper only. The URS Saturation is available now at an introductory price of $199.99 (regular price $249.99).

PreSonus has announced not less than 3 brand new products at the 2008 NAMM show, including the DigiMAX D8, AudioBox USB, and the FireStudio Tube.

The DigiMAX D8 is the newest member of the DigiMAX family, offering you 8 XMAX mic preamps, 8 direct analog outputs, and ADAT optical light pipe expansion capability.

The AudioBox USB is a portable, USB bus-powered recording interface featuring 2 mic/instrument preamps with 48V phantom power, 2 balanced TRS outputs, and MIDI in/out.

Last but not least, the FireStudio Tube expands your studio with 8 Class A XMAX microphone amplifiers, 16 analog ins/outs, PLUS 2 tube preamp channels.

The DigiMAX D8 will be available on February while the AudioBox USB and the FireStudio Tube are expected on Q2, 2008.

M-Audio unveils a new FireWire audio interface : the ProFire 2626. This new interface delivers 26 x 26 simultaneous I/O, complete with an onboard DSP mixer sourced from up to 52 audio streams.

Features :

- 26 x 26 simultaneous analog/digital I/O
- eight preamps with award-winning Octane technology
- flexible on-board DSP mixer
- up to 24-bit/192kHz for pristine audio
- features critically acclaimed JetPLL jitter elimination technology
- Pro Tools M-Powered compatible

The ProFire 2626 interface is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2008 and carries an MSRP of US$899.95.

Solid State Logic has announced Duende Mini, a 'one third rack width', all metal construction, desktop box that hooks up to your computer via Firewire. Mini makes a stack of DSP processing power available to drive up to 16 channels of plug-in processing (at sample rates up to 96kHz) within your host application. Duende Mini is upgradeable to 32 channels of processing power and you can run two Duende units on a single computer system for up to 64 channels of processing.

Key features :

- Classic SSL console channel strip features and sound.
- 4-band EQ, two shelving sections and two parametric.
- Variable low-pass and high-pass filter.
- Switchable EQ characteristics between E Series and G Series EQ.
- "Over-Easy" soft ratio compression characteristic for smooth transitions.
- Variable process order routing.
- Dynamics side-chain processing with independent side chains for compressor and expander/gate.

Mini also ships with fully functional trial versions of the growing portfolio of plug-ins available for the Duende platform.

Pricing & Availability

Duende Mini will be available from February 2008 via SSL Resellers.

* Duende Mini $799 (+Tax)
* Duende Mini 16 to 32 channel upgrade $399 (+Tax)

Solid State Logic has also announced the release of Pro-Convert, the Digital Audio Project Translator application for moving sessions from one DAW environment to another.

Key Features :

- Streamlines project transfer between Digital Audio Workstations.
- Compatible with over 40 different applications.
- Converts to and from Pro Tools 7.x.
- Simple step by step operation.
- 'Audio Tool' audio file format batch converter.
- Frame accurate offset feature.
- 'Housekeeping' features for cleaning up projects.
- Fade curve translation control.
- Pan and Volume automation curve conversion.
- Includes Track Markers and PQ Data.
- Search & Replace missing audio file functions.
- Rapid offline conversion process.

Pro-Convert is available through SSL Resellers priced $699 + Tax. Pro-Convert will also be available to order online via the SSL web shop in February. For more information including format compatibility, FAQ's and User Guides, please visit the link below :

Yamaha unveils the KX Series, including the KX25 (keys), the KX49, KX61and KX8 (piano style) USB Keyboard Studios.

The KX Series keyboards come with Cubase AI4 and the set up for seamless Steinberg integration. Open windows, add instrument tracks, switch control templates for different tone modules, quantize and delete functions are also preset to assignable keys to reduce setup time and procedures.
They also feature a range of drum, guitar, bass, keyboard and other musical phrases built in, minimizing the need for complex manual MIDI data programming.
Also built in are thirty different software tone model templates, and the most commonly used parameters are automatically assigned to the KX keyboards four real time control encoders.