PC and Music News

Future Audio Workshop (FAW) has released a new bank of 30 sounds for Circle, their fabulous semi-modular software synthesizer. Designed by Dajan Izzo, this first Circle Sound bank is available now on the Circle downloads page, here.

Note that you will also find on this page a comprehensive template for using Circle with the Lemur multi touch control surface. This template can be used in its entireity or as base for making your own custom templates.

Virsyn is happy to announce the release of Prism, The Pitch Designer. The multi-band pitch shifter Prism takes a fresh approach to solve the problem of shifting the pitch of complex sound sources in realtime.

Prism splits the spectrum in 27 bands and applies a different amount of frequency shifting to each band emulating a harmonic pitch shifting. This gives you perfect pitch shifting for all kind of drum sounds over a vast shifting range of +/- five octaves without disturbing the transients or introducing metallic distortions. With harmonic sounds you will get inharmonicities but it's much better behaved than pure frequency shifting. The extreme range of shifting gives you access to a vast field of unknown sonic territory.

Features :

- 27 band realtime frequency shifter.
- 27 band equalizer
- Linear phase precision filters for maximal transparency
- +/- 5 octaves frequency shift per band
- Envelope follower controlled pitch modulation.
- LFO controlled pitch modulation.
- Surround operation *
- Minimized latency ( 12 ms )

Prism is available now for Mac OS X and Windows in VST3, VST2.4, AU and RTAS formats at an introductory price of €129 till August, 31st.

*only available for AU / RTAS / VST3 version.

Sample Logic is proud to present its latest virtual instrument, Synergy. Weighing in at over 18 Gigabytes, this epic collection of 1200+ instruments, tempo-synced loops, and multis delivers the next generation of diverse sounds in an intuitive user interface.  

Powered by Native Instruments Kontakt Player engine, Synergy utilizes extended sample synthesis and effectual techniques to provide you interactive, ready-to-play instruments. With Synergy's flexible sound sculpting interface, control is in your hands. Simply put, all instruments can be modified, redesigned, and customized to your preference. This makes Synergy perfect for any performance and production environment.

Ambience (295 patches)
Bass (54 patches)
Drums (55 patches)
Impacts (269 patches)
Melody (173 patches)
Pads (57 patches)
Rhythms (270 patches)
Multis (40 patches)

Synergie is available now for Mac OS X and Windows in VST, AU, DXi, RTAS and Standalone versions for a fee of $299.

RealTraps has announced the new educational video All About Diffusion as the latest release in their "See and Hear" video lecture series. Most people have no way to hear what diffusors do or how they sound in a room. So this video explains diffusion in plain terms with no math, then lets you hear an acoustic guitar recorded in close proximity to five different surface types — a QRD diffusor, a poly diffusor, absorption, a bare wall, and a typical bookcase.

Find this video and more at :

The d16 group has just released Fazortan, the new plug-in in their "Silver Line" of effects.

Fazortan is a controllable space phaser based on a retro phaser from the 70s but it has been expanded to take advantage of the flexibility software can provide.

Features :

- True emulation of classic analog all-pass phase shifter.
- 2 full controllable LFOs.
- Unique sound different from the others digital phasers.
- Presets organised into groups.
- MIDI learn function.
- 64-bit internal processing.
- No harmonic distortions at output.

Fazortan is available now for both PC and Mac in VST and VST/AU formats respectively for a fee of €29. Note that audio examples are available.

Propellerhead announced it has recently supported the Bob Moog Foundation with a monetary contribution. In addition, to raise awareness and entice others to donate, Propellerhead is releasing a free Moog-inspired ReFill to registered users.

With this donation to the Bob Moog Foundation, Propellerhead wishes to help pay tribute to the enormous contribution Bob Moog made to the music industry. The Foundation's overall mission is to document, celebrate and teach innovative thinking and to support and honor the legacy of synthesizer pioneer Moog. Presently, the Foundation seeks to raise awareness and funds to preserve Moog's extensive archives.

Industry pro's (and Reason experts), Craig Anderton, Mark Vail and Gordon Reid, donated their best Moog-style patches, built using Reason's Thor polysonic synthesizer, with the aim to shed some light onto the world of music synthesis that Bob Moog pioneered. Those patches have been assembled into a single Reason ReFill and are available free to registered Reason users on Propellerhead's website.