PC and Music News

EastWest has released "The Dark Side", a new virtual instrument created and produced by Doug Rogers and David Fridmann.

The Dark Side is an unconventional, hip and exciting collection of virtual instruments, some dark and eerie, and some which have been purposely—and skillfully—mangled, distorted, or effected out of all recognition.

The Dark Side includes a vast, 40 Gigabyte collection, including dark and eerie instruments, and highly processed drums and percussion, basses, guitars, ethnic, keyboard, strings, and effected instruments, all organized into instrumental groups so you can create complete tracks.

The Dark Side includes EastWest's Play 2 software, which can operate standalone or as a plug-in inside popular DAW hosts that support VST, Audio Units, and RTAS. The Dark Side is available for Mac OS X and Windows for $395 MSRP.

The Vienna Symphonic Library has announced the release of Vienna Instruments PRO, a new powerful sample player.

Features :

• Human Performance Control for adjusting the timing and intonation of your virtual musicians.
• Polyphonic legato.
• Super-fast loading times, even after cold starting. Load progress bar. You can even play the sounds while the sample patches are still loading!
• New GUI design: Basic View for an easy overview. Advanced View displays all of the important parameters in the same window.
• Tuning scales: You can even switch scales using controllers while you're playing, e.g., from just intonation to an Arabic scale, or use your own scales.
Time stretching – works great on, e.g., staccatos, runs, crescendos etc.
• Built-in reverb ( ...

Korg has announced that the microSTATION is now shipping.

Features :

• Lightweight, compact, and equipped with 61 mini-keys, the microSTATION travels easily and fits into any home, stage, or studio workspace.
• EDS-i (Enhanced Definition Synthesis-integrated) sound engine delivers high-quality sound in the tradition of KORG's flagship synthesizers.
• Enjoy 480 ready-to-use sounds - including keyboard sounds, synth sounds, drums, leads, basses, etc. Tweak, edit, create and save up to 512 sound Programs.
• 256 dynamic Combinations place different sounds on different areas of the keyboard, or layer multiple sounds together for exciting performances - right out of the box.
• Find the right sound fast with eight quickly accessible categories; hundreds of ...

HALion Sonic, the successor to Hypersonic 2, is Steinberg's premier VST Workstation, featuring the latest sampling and synthesis technologies, a world-class library and an intelligent user interface that excels in the studio as well as on stage.

Features :

• Easy-to-use yet powerful premier music and production workstation
• Next-generation audio and synth engine
• Outstanding library including over 1,200 instrument sounds
• Unique morphing filters; FlexPhraser module for driving beats, arpeggios and complex tonal phrases
• Wide range of audio effects, including REVerence convolution reverb
• Integrated MediaBay sound management system
• Made to be played live: tweaking sounds on stage has never been faster
• Full VST Expression support for smart articulation editing
• Cross platform: Windows (VST3, VST2.4) and Mac OS X (VST3, VST2.4, AU) plug-in support

Pricing : €249

The Acoustic Panels and Bass Traps specialist GIK Acoustics has just anoounced that they had such a great success with the free shipping in Europe (orders over £1000) that they have decided to make it standard.

Propellerhead Software has announced the release of Record 1.5 and Reason 5. These highly anticipated upgrades introduce new instruments, effects, sequencing, sounds, patches and more for composing, beatmaking, loop-mangling, vocal treatment, songwriting, remixing and music production.

Reason Record Duo feature highlights :

• Introducing Kong Drum Designer (Reason): Load, sculpt, build and tweak your sounds with your choice of drum synthesis, sampling, REX loops, physical modeling and custom-made effect modules for percussion on Kong's 16 pads.
• Dr. REX octuples into Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player (Reason): No matter how you use it—as a pattern sequencer for loops, or to completely mangle your REX'ed audio – it is "guaranteed to inspire".
• New Neptune Pitch Adjuster and ...