PC and Music News

G-Sonique presents its new virtual synth called Renegade. Described as an alliance between "the warm and organic analog sound and the sharpness, toughness and preciseness of digital", Renegade is based on algorithms of DSP chips and analog circuits of real hardware synthesizers. It includes special features like Supersaw oscillator, serial combination of vintage analog filters with precise and tough digital filters or the amplifier section without inner clipping with non-linear analog saturation.

Renegade is intended especially for tough fat lead sounds, basses or organic analog sounds and is most effective in the following music styles: Trance, Dance, Drum and Bass, Breakbeat, Electro, EBM, Tek House, Psytrance, Goa and many more.

Renegade is available now as a VSTi for Windows and is priced at €36.

BBE announces its all-new D82 Sonic Maximizer plugin. Based upon BBE's 882i and 482i hardware Sonic Maximizer processors, this plug-in aims to restore the high frequency definition and detail while focusing bass frequencies for any sound source.

The D82 Sonic Maximizer is compatible with all VST, AU and RTAS hosts on Mac OS X, Windows XP and Vista. It will be available on February 2008 via download and March 2008 in retail boxed product at BBE dealers worldwide.

Blue Cat Audio has released Blue Cat's Remote Control v2.0, a new version of their virtual control surface. It is a set of VST and DirectX plugins for Windows which let you control and monitor in real time several MIDI controllable plug-ins or hardware devices from a single customizable user interface. The new version introduces many user interface changes and new features such as window opacity control and undo/redo.

New features :

- New user interface design.
- New joystick skin with XY controls.
- Undo/Redo support.
- Window Opacity Management: make the plugin window transparent and see behind.
- Load/Save presets in a host-independent format: you can now share presets between the directX and VST versions.
- New toolbar to access main functionalities.
- MIDI settings are now available from the plugin user interface.
- Improved Skins loading performance.
- Curves are now anti-aliased.
- Improved the display of parameters values in the MIDI settings panel and the host application.
- Improved graphs refresh rate.
- Reduced memory consumption when using several instances.
- Default values for MIDI controllers have been changed to be more convenient.
- Blue Cat's Skinning Language 1.4.1 support.

Blue Cat's Remote Control is available now with a limited-time 15% discount: €41.65 / $58.31 (instead of €49 / $68.60). Note that free tutorials for this product are available from the company website.

Sontronics has just announced a major add in it's microphone line : the CHIMERA, a hybrid pre-amp, a real new cornerstone for futur development of the company.

CHIMERA is a pre-amp/DI box single channel including two separate circuits, with a simple switch you can choose: a transparent sound from a solid state pre-amp, or the warmer tone of a Tube pre-amp. Each of these circuits is an original conception from Sontronics.

Fine adjustements can be done with the help of a variable high pass filter, a 3 way attenuator and a phase control, allowing multiple sonic colors. The frequency response is flat between 20Hz to 20kHz, In/outputs are balanced electronically.

Features :

- frequency response : 20Hz to 20kHz max. +/-0.5dB (solid-state), max. +/-0.7dB (valve)
- inputs (analog) ...

[CodeOperator] has just announced that PlugAdmin Pro will be released on February 12th. PlugAdmin Pro is designed to administrate all types of audio plugins on your computer.

A lot of new features and a completely new structure were designed. PlugAdmin Pro can handle a lot more Plug-In types and you can create own groups to arrange your Plug-Ins for a better overview. The new history function is comfortable to jump to every step you want and undo previous steps.

PlugAdmin Pro will be available for Mac and Pc next week. Note that a special discount for PlugAdmin 1.x customers will be available.

In partnership, Vision DAW and East West announce an 8-Core Xeon Server-Class Workstation, including the complete Quantum Leap Orchestral collection. This set runs with Play software (64 bits) and the virtual orchestra takes up a 4U rack with 2 Quad-Core Xeon 5440 at 2.83GHz, with 16 Go RAM (8 x 2Go at 667MHz), 1 Teraoctet storage, a dual screen video card and a sound card RME Hammerfall 9652. Possibility to customize RAID configuration.

Dreamin' Price for the whole symphony orchestra starts at 5 800 $.