PC and Music News

Contributing to the ongoing debate about M/S Mastering, SPL introduces a new, powerful analog tool that can manage M/S signal separation and integrate external processors seamlessly - The M/S Master. It's world premiere will be at the MusikMesse in Frankfurt.

The M/S Master allows a fully adjustable separation of stereo L/R signals (X/Y) into middle/side signals (M/S). M/S separation and positioning, as well as the stereo image, are defined by the Balance and Level knobs, while a switchable frequency filter for the Side signal controls the lower frequencies and the room ambience.

One of the main features of the M/S Master is that it can integrate external processors via switchable inserts. Thus, outboard gear can be easily integrated into the X/Y or M/S mix with a single button and without the need of any cabling. These processing possibilities make the M/S Master an essential tool in mastering environments.

The M/S Master will be displayed at the MusikMesse in Frankfurt from the 24th to the 27th of March, 2010. You can find the SPL stand (B82) in Hall 5.1.

Image Line has released Drumaxx, a percussion modeling instrument that gives you total control over 16 physically modeled drum pads that can be routed to independent outputs for external effects processing.

At the core of Drumaxx is a model where the vibrating membrane is represented as a mesh of interconnected points. Each point is given physical properties including mass, inertia, stiffness, damping, and all that good physics stuff. For the musician, this means Drumaxx gives you control over multiple parameters such as material, thickness, tension and shape. More importantly, the parameters can be modulated in real-time as a function of velocity or external controls. The drum body is also under user control too, including body material, size, vibration damping, and shape. All this giv ...

CEDAR Audio is proud to introduce the DNS One which signals the arrival of CEDAR's DNS series as a Pro Tools plug-in. Here's what they say about it :

"The DNS One is everything you ever wanted from a software-based dialogue noise suppressor. A Pro Tools plug-in that runs on both Mac OS X and Windows, it makes no compromises in sound quality and offers the same Academy Award winning performance as its illustrious siblings, the DNS1500, DNS2000 and DNS3000. Coupled to a superb new user-interface that allows you to control hundreds of channels of DNS (software and hardware, in any mix you choose) from a single Pro Tools host, DNS One is the most powerful and flexible noise suppressor ever developed.

"Ethnic Bagpipe" is a sampler instrument, made from an authentic Baltic bagpipe.

Main features:

• Two tonalities - C and D.
• Diapason: one octave + drone.
• Two articulations, selectable by keyboard velocity.
• Recorded multiple samples to recreate natural feel of the instrument. Each note of the articulation presented has 9 variations. Every time you press a single note, you will hear a different variation. There are 193 samples total recorded.
• As bagpipe can play continuously, all samples in this instrument are precisely looped.
• The sound is pure - you can add your favorite reverb or other preferable effects.
• Dedicated to: folk, neo-folk music composers, movie, theatre soundtrack producers and composers with special needs to add something unordinary and extra natural to their creations.

"Ethnic Bagpipe" is available for samplers EXS24 and Kontakt. Sample format - 24-bit/44.1 kHz @ aiff.

It costs €19.99 but is available for the introductory price of €9.99 until the end of March.

Brainworx has announced the release of bx_cleansweep V2. This freebie Hi-Pass filter and Lo-Pass filter plug-in features their "Anti Crush Technology" and offers analog-style filter curves, without the typical Nyquist problems, in a filter design taken from Brainworx's pro mastering EQ bx_digital V2. First order filters (6 dB) guarantee a musically sounding filter set and unique joystick control (taken from bx_hybrid) gives you fast and intuitive control.

Clever shortcuts (Alt/Shift/Ctrl) allow for detailed control over the X-axis and Y-axis of the joystick, and the EQ knobs can be set to precision mode by shift-click as well.

Brainworx claims that bx_cleansweep is the plug-in that should go into every mix channel as the first plug-in. This way you can filter out any unwanted hi-end and lo-end and the result is a clean and tight mix.

bx_cleansweep V2 is now available for Windows and Mac OS X in VST, VST3, AU and RTAS plug-in formats.

MOTU's Ethno Instrument 2 is now shipping. The Version 2 upgrade more than doubles the size of Ethno's included sound library of instruments, loops and phrases. Significant new features have also been added, including preset searching, microtonal scales, state-of-the-art time stretching, and much more.

To help users quickly find sounds in this 21 GB library, Ethno 2 lets users browse presets by geographic region or instrument category, or by a new search feature: users type in an instrument name or other text phrase and all presets with that text in their name instantly appear in the browser list. Users then simply click to audition sounds, without having to close the browser, for fast previewing and loading of sounds into separate parts. Version 2 now supports unlimited parts, so user ...