PC and Music News

Focusrite is now shipping the new Saffire PRO 24 DSP, a 16 Input / 8 Output FireWire audio interface that features VRM, a breakthrough monitoring technology, in addition to real-time DSP-powered tracking plug-ins, all tailor-made for the modern recording environment.

The Saffire PRO 24 DSP has an MSPR of $399.

AcousticsampleS and Lance Herring are announcing the upcoming release of the Kawai-EX sample library. It's a Kawai-EX concert grand piano that used to be in the Kennedy center in Washington DC. The product is already in an advanced state.

Here are some features of the final product :

- 5 "pedal up" layers, 5 "pedal down" layers, and 15 release samples per note (5 only for the light version).
- Thumps samples.
- Automatic Pedal noises samples.
- Multiple mic position and mixing from the interface (in PRO version).
- Ability to save polyphony by enabling / disabling each position.
- Sympathetic resonance (pedal down samples).
- Multiple releases. They have been carefully picked up for each note to really reproduce the real mechanical behaviour of a note.
- As always, a custom ...

Propellerhead introduce Record U, the University of Recording. Record U is a series of articles created for those who are new to Propellerhead Record, or recording in general. All you need to follow along will be a full or demo version of Record, and — of course — something to record.

Recording Electric Guitar is the first article in the Record U series – this article will teach basic techniques for recording electric guitar, with information about mic'ing guitar amps, and also recording directly into Record with no microphones or amplifiers at all, using Record's built-in Line 6 Guitar Amp device.

Loomer has released a new plug-in called Shift. It is a real-time diatonic granular pitch shifting and delay effect for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It has three independent, true stereo, delay lines, each with their own transposition and delay controls, which can be combined to build complex delay structures such as ping-pong delays or harmonized chord echoes.

Features :

• Three independent true stereo delay lines.
• Retro granular pitch shifting sound.
• Pitch shift each delay line by up to an octave up or down, with semitone transposition and finely grained cent detune controls.
• Three modes for each delay line: Chromatic, Recursive, and Diatonic.
• Diatonic pitch tracking for monophonic audio sources.
• Modulation LFO with independent time and ...

Vienna Symphonic Library's suite of nine audio processing tools, Vienna Suite, has just been released as a boxed edition.

Up to now, it has been available as a download product only. Both the download product and the physical product contain exactly the same software, now at version 1.1, that includes Vienna's brand-new Convolution Reverb. Vienna Suite is the only boxed plug-in suite with full 64-bit capability. It retails at €445/$665 and is now available from the company's worldwide network of distributors and dealers.

Voxengo has updated its mastering limiter plug-in Elephant to version 3.5.

Changes :

• Issues with DP/Mac OS X fixed.
• Popup windows appearing behind the main window in Logic 9 fixed.