PC and Music News

Presonus has finally announced that the Monitor Station desktop studio control center is now shipping. Based on the Central Station this new device allows you to listen to your mixes on different speakers; with and without the subwoofer, compare your mixes to your favorite CDs and vinyl, listen in mono to check phase cancellation, use talkback to communicate to the artists during recording, and send Cue Mix to the four headphone amps and the Main Mix to your speakers.


Features :

- Main Speaker Volume control
- 3 stereo inputs (two balanced TRS, one RCA Aux/Phono)
- 3 sets of balanced TRS speaker outputs, each with level adjustment
- Talkback microphone with volume control to feed headphone and Cue output
- XLR input for external dynamic talkback microphone
- Accurate fast-acting dual 8-segment LED for metering
- 4 loud and clear headphone amplifiers with separate volume control and input selection
- Main and Cue stereo output have independent input source selection
- Dim with variable level adjustment
- Aux and Phono level adjustment
- Mute and Mono

The Monitor Station is available now at at a suggested retail price of $399.95.

Open Labs, designer and developer of computer based music production solutions, is proud to introduce the Timbaland Special Edition MiKo keyboard workcenter.

Building on the standard features of the MiKo LX, an all-in-one portable studio powered by Windows XP that is capable of running virtually any Windows XP compatible software including a variety of DAW software, virtual instruments (VSTi), virtual effects (VST) and other music applications, the Timbaland Special Edition is dressed in an all-new Arctic White Chassis. The Timbaland Special Edition MiKo upgraded to 4GB of RAM features E-MU new Proteus X2 Streaming Sound Module V2.5 with over 7,000 instruments, including the new Ensoniq Urban Legends Sound Library that contains the sounds from Ensoniq's ASR/EPS/MR/ASR-X/ZR instruments. ...

Are you ready for Spring? Enjoy all the Flux plug-ins at a very special price, Flux offers a -20% discount on the Spring Pack during February.

The Spring Pack includes the following plug-ins : Pure Compressor, Pure DExpander, Pure Expander, Pure DCompressor, Pure Limiter , Epure and Solera.

Here it is, our last review for January!

"This update is more than essential" says our reviewer, -i snor

To know why, read his words, see his screen captures and listen to his sounds, in this complete review of the 7.4 update.

McDSP will be running a special on the Classic Pack HD and Native bundles for the month of February. Classic Pack HD will run for $995 and Classic Pack Native will run for $495. The Classic Pack includes Analog Channel, CompressorBank, MC2000 and FilterBank.

For more information, please visit their web site.

NUSofting has just released Broken Drum Machine (BDM), a virtual instrument inspired by a combination of several old school beat boxes and the circuit-bending culture around the "toy" Casio and Yamaha keyboards of the 80s.

BDM is a plugin instrument designed for the musicians who love chaos and usually find the unpredictable behaviour of an uncontrollable sound machine stimulating and inspiring. It offers four drum pads in the style of an old beat box- one each for Bass Drum, Snare, Hi-Hat and Stick. Each pad features the usual suspects for shaping the synthesized sound, including tone, decay, pitch, pan and gain.

On top of the standard controls comes the broken factor - each pad features its own sliders for chaos and chance. Chaos sets the amount of variations to the original sound, and chance is the probability algorithm for the chaos to occur. By varying and automating the chaos and chance sliders, you can achieve an infinite range of wild and unpredictable sounds, similar to creating glitches and bleeps by manipulating an analog circuit.

BDM is available for Windows as a VSTi. Until the 15th of February, 2008, BDM can be purchased at the special introductory price of $44.90.