PC and Music News

ModernBeats launches a new music production site : Hit Talk.

Hit Talk is ModernBeats' new music production website devoted to answering the question "How do you produce a hit song?". There is no single answer that covers it all. That's why Hit Talk provides the answer in a multifaceted fashion including :

- Hit Reports that analyze Billboard hits from start to finish, teaching musicians each hit song's music production techniques.
- Music Production Tips that are posted weekly, providing musicians with constant music production techniques, ideas, & learning.
- Music Production Contributions that come from Hit Talk's growing music producer community.
- Music Producer Spotlight Interviews that feature unsigned and up-n-coming music producers.

Hit Reports are offered as a download and priced at $14.95.

ESI presents the M8U XL, a new midi interface which features 8 independent MIDI inputs and 8 independent MIDI outputs, providing 128 MIDI channels - all via a single USB 2.0 (or USB 1.1) connection to your PC or Mac.

Features :

- 19" / 1 HE Case
- 8 MIDI in / 8 MIDI out - 128 MIDI channels
- high-speed connection to USB-equipped PC or Mac
- MIDI activity indicators for each port
- Plug & Play installation
- compatible with Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X
- fully class compliant, making it compatible with other operating systems

The M8U XL is priced at €227.

At AES 2008 (Booth #1218), Solid State Logic will demonstrate the Duende collection, the suite of DSP powered plug-ins that deliver the legendary SSL sound to your DAW. AES will be the first demonstration of Vocalstrip, the latest addition to the plug-in collection.

Combining EQ and dynamics sections with essential vocal processors, Vocalstrip aims to bring power, character and clarity to vocal tracks from a single interface. According to SSL, Vocalstrip solves the challenges of producing great vocal recordings with four processing tools carefully selected and calibrated to deliver great results every time.

Key features include :

- 4 selected vocal processing tools with a unique SSL twist
- Comparative analysis & dynamic envelope based De-esser
- Comparative analysis & dynamic envelope based De-ploser
- 3-band SSL EQ with High-Pass, 'asymmetric notch' and 'air' bands
- Compander featuring compression, downwards expansion and output drive
- Informative visual feedback showing EQ curves and real time FFT overlay

Pricing and availability TBA.

TL Audio announces the launch of its newly designed IEEE-1394 Firewire interface (The DO-F) at the 125th AES convention in San Francisco 2nd – 5th October 2008.

The new interface will be compatible with the new M1-F 8 and 12 channel consoles and also TL Audio's Fat Track Tube Production Suite. The DO-F is designed to offer an easy and high quality solution for interfacing TL Audio's products with your Mac or PC based DAW.

For Mac users, it's just a case of Plug and Play. PC users will need drivers... The DO-F provides 24-bit operation at 44.1, 48, 88.2 and 96kHz sample rates, with high quality AD/DA conversion and allows you to access all inputs and outputs of the analogue hardware via just one Firewire cable, making it a tidy, portable and reliable system. This also means that the Fat Track is now also able to be a unique interface for your DAW.

The DO-F is estimated to start shipping just in time for Christmas and the New Year and can be ordered to be pre-fitted to the Fat Track or new M1-F consoles.

Cakewalk has announced Sonar 8 Producer and Sonar 8 Studio.

New Sonar features include: updated Loop Explorer 2.0 view, dedicated instrument track (single track optimized for mono/stereo virtual synths), Send Assign Assistant (wizard); numerous audio engine optimizations; transport, control surface, routing, and editing refinements; workflow enhancements; QuickTime 7 Import/Export.

New Instruments include: Beatscape loop performance instrument; Dimension Pro 1.2 updated with Digital Sound Factory Volume 2 Classic Keys and Hollywood Edge Effects Library; TruePianos Amber VSTi Module.

New Effects include: TL-64 Tube Leveler, TS-64 Transient Shaper, Channel Tools stereo enhancement plug-in; Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 LE.

New Creative content includes: updated ACT Presets map ...

Roger Linn and Dave Smith have announced on their website that they won't be shipping the new Linndrum II this year and they can not offer any new delivery date for now.

Here is the message found on Roger Linn's website :

"I'm sorry to report that we won't be shipping in 2008 and I can't yet offer a new estimated ship date. The good news is that it's turned into a significantly more powerful and creative product. The bad news is that we'd prefer not to release details of the new design because it's so cool that I don't want to show our cards to the competition. However, I do want to thank all those who wrote in with suggestions because this interactive design process has very much helped to change what we thought the product originally should be into what we now know you really want. So please hold your questions while we're hard at work on it, and I'll be periodically updating this page as we release new information.
[...]
For those of you who are new to LinnDrum II, its new subtitle is "Beat-Centric Digital Audio Workstation with Integrated Analog Synthesis". Inspired by how the MPC product line that I (Roger) originally created for Akai has evolved a new genre of musical instrument, LinnDrum II aspires to raise the bar beyond the current crop of high-end pad-oriented music production station products in order to enable musicians around the world to better realize the next wave of beat-oriented music."