PC and Music News

After Mr. Sax T. (Tenor), Sample Modeling extends its family of Saxophone virtual instruments with two brand new brothers: Mr. Sax A. (Alto) and Mr. Sax B. (Baritone), exploiting the same technology, but based on completely new sample material, with a lot of new added features and supplied with Native Instruments' Kontakt 3.5 Player.

The Alto and Baritone Sax are completely new instruments, designed and programmed for the new NI Kontakt 3.5 Player. The current version is 1.51.
As in Mr. Sax T, v1.02, the main panel allows for monitoring and inputting control data. It includes a drop down menu for Keyboard, Breath-controller, Yamaha and Akai wind-controller input, symmetrical and asymmetrical pitchbend response, velocity or CC c ...

Rob Papen has just released its new reverb plug-in RP-Verb.

RP-Verb is an algorithmic, musical, reverb that aims to bring dimension and fullness to your mixes. It has a straightforward, intuitive interface that puts all the most essential parameters right at your fingertips and offers presets that range from intimate venues to abstract, surreal spaces.

Main section:
• Dry / wet control with FX bypass button.
• HQ Mode on/off.
• ECS (external controller setup).
• ? brings up the 'Quick Manual'.

Preset section:
• Uses sound banks composed of 128 presets.
• Preset handling with copy, paste, clear and compare function.
• 'Quick Browser', 'Recently Browsed' and 'Favorite' functions.
• Presets are stored in clear categories banks.

Disto ...

Mike Massberg and Dave Gamble proudly present Harmony Box, a free virtual synthesizer that has the rules of modal jazz built-in : you press a key, it plays the right chord. You just pick the key and the mode. An alias-free oscillator drives a self-oscillating filter and it has LFOs and Envelopes for fatness. Harmony Box was created especially for the Music Hack Day 2009.

Harmony Box is free and is available for Windows and Mac OS X in VST and AU instrument plug-in formats.

Universal Piper is a new high-definition Bagpipe virtual instrument for Windows and Mac OS X.

Features :

• Play Highland Bagpipe (other bagpipes coming).
• Sculpt your sound on each note.
• Add effects (Reverb, EQ, ...).
• Listen to BWW and MIDIfiles with the Universal Piper sound.
• Switch between tempered and natural scale.

Universal Piper is available for Windows and Mac OS X in Stand-alone and VST and AU instrument plug-in formats. It costs €49.

Pro Audio DSP has updated its DSM - Dynamic Spectrum Mapper plug-in to version 1.3.

The Dynamic Spectrum Mapper (DSM) provides multi-dimensional control over both the spectral response and dynamic characteristics of audio programme, bringing a whole new dimension of facility and artistic ability to the sound engineer.
Novel processing and programme capture algorithms provide the ability to achieve exemplary results in common tasks such as :

• programme compression
• loudness enhancement
• de-essing and vocal character processing

Furthermore, the ability to capture, modify and re-apply the spectral characteristics of programme is a powerful creative tool in all stages of the production cycle, from recording and mixing to mastering stages :

• personalise m ...

Best Service announces that Titan is now shipping.

Titan offers 5,500 multi-samples of the best sounds from 200 classic Analog Synthesizers and Modular Systems, including the biggest and most famous Digital Synths and Workstations of the 80s and 90s, and from the newest virtual instruments and current synths, all in one massive plug-in. That means 40 years of synth history and sound variety. Best Service put great emphasis on preserving the unique sound character of each instrument - that's why many of the instruments were partially sampled with their original effects and filters, which can be hard to reproduce in the virtual domain. All instruments were sampled and looped perfectly and inserted into the new Best Service ENGINE. ENGINE was developed by Best Service in cooperation with Yellow Tools. It is based on Yellow Tools' high-end sampler Independence Pro and offers all performance features of a contemporary sample engine.

Titan is available for Windows and Mac OS X in VST, AU and RTAS plug-in formats. MSRP is €249 (incl. VAT).