PC and Music News

Toontrack has unveiled more details about their Tonal and Percussive, Open Surface, New Generation Virtual Instrument – Beatstation.

Andreas Sundgren from Toontrack says "Although it is firmly planted in the Toontrack legacy of designing the best percussive virtual instruments Beatstation marks a departure for Toontrack, introducing melodic instruments, REX support, and recording capabilities making it the ultimate open surface sampler for sound designers, producers, musicians and songwriters alike."

Features :

Thermionic Culture has presented the Freebird, a 3 Channel valve EQ.

Company director Nick Terry explains : "We've introduced a new product that can be considered as part of a modular system, in our own unique style of course. The Freebird has 3 channels of broad but versatile valve EQ. The unit is a half rack design but can be put together in a 19 inch rack case with another unit to give 6 channels of EQ.

There will be other products in this format to follow, so

XLN Audio releases Ballad Grooves MIDI Pak.

Features :

• 120 MIDI Files
• 15 Grooves
• 4/4 and 6/8 Time Signatures

Light the candles, slip into something more comfortable and start producing heart breaking classics in no time with the Ballad Grooves MIDI Pak. Included are 120 MIDI files divided between 15 different Ballad Grooves in different tempos and feels, all recorded live by a drummer. Grooves in both 4/4 and 6/8 are included.

The Ballad Grooves comes with seven different variations, for example hihat, ride, sidestick, tambourine specials etc. With these grooves you will be able to create your own complete ballad drumtracks in a couple of minutes and of course you can use the grooves with any drums or presets in Addictive Drums.

Ballad Grooves is an Ad ...

Avid has announced the release of the Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack, featuring all five Digidesign's virtual instruments - Structure, Strike, Velvet, Transfuser and Hybrid.

This pack is available now and carries a USMSRP of $499. Upgrade options for existing customers are also available.

ESI unveils the KeyControl 25 XT and the KeyControl 49 XT Controller Keyboard. Here is what they say about it :

"KeyControl 25 XT and KeyControl 49 XT have an exceptionally stylish aluminum cabinet and white solid glossy plastic side panels. They provide four fully programmable endless encoders, function buttons as well as a pitch bend and modulation slider. The keyboards work without the installation of any drivers under Windows XP, Window Vista and Windows 7 as well as Mac OS X.

KeyControl 25 XT and KeyControl 49 XT are bundled with Cubase LE 5 from Steinberg, the amazingly powerful multitrack audio & MIDI software for Mac and PC."

Ohm Force is announcing the first real collaborative music workstation in the history of music production: the Ohm Studio — a project with which they aspire to redefine the meaning of online music collaboration.

We're talking about real time collaborative MIDI/audio editing, envelopes, a piano roll, audio effects, and virtual instruments: the very same tools we computer based musicians already enjoy, but that you'll now be able to use with your friends, online.

How is this possible? Using an audio core made from scratch, of course, an adaptive audio transfer protocol, a transactional document management engine, some Ohm-style interface innovation, an integrated web Cohmunity, server based projects and much more…