PC and Music News

Blue Cat Audio has announced a new version of Blue Cat's Triple EQ series, a set of three hybrid parametric EQ / shapeable filters plugins, as well as prices drop on their entire catalog, to follow the fall of USD exchange rate. The new version of these plugins brings a complete user interface redesign and many new functionalities such as undo/redo, presets import/export.

The new TripleEQ 3.0 plugin is now free, and the Stereo and Widening versions are available for a special introduction price, separately or within the TripleEQ Pack bundle.

Prices:
- Blue Cat's Triple EQ: free
- Blue Cat's Triple EQ Pack: 39.20 EUR (instead of 49 EUR) or $55.66 (instead of $69.58) [-20%]
- Blue Cat's Stereo Triple EQ: 24.65 EUR (instead of 29 EUR) or $35 (instead of $41.18) [-15%]
- Blue Cat's Widening Triple EQ: 33.15 EUR (instead of 39 EUR) or $47.07 (instead of $55.38 ) [-15%]

AlgoMusic and BK SynthLab has released Atomic, a new VSTi for Windows.

Inspired by circular step sequencers such as the Buchla Arbitrary Function Generator and Future Retro Revolution, Atomic is a 16 step sequencer composing tool with a built in synth that also has the ability to control other softsynths or even hardware via it's MIDI out function. The design is circular which allows a different approach to composing and sound design. Note that this VSTi is dedicated to electronic music pioneer Allen Strange (1943-2008).

Atomic is available now at a retail price of $39.99 / €25.31. Demo tunes are also available.

Synthogy unveils Ivory Upright Pianos. a new virtual instrument which presents the unique, intimate sound of upright pianos using Synthogy's technology and piano-building expertise.

This all new collection of Vertical Pianos consists of four complete instruments. Each piano was carefully chosen, and the vintage instruments selected after an exhaustive search among hundreds of vintage uprights. Each of these authentic pianos was recorded with Synthogy's usual meticulous attention to detail to capture the unique personalities of these instruments.

Features :

- 4 hand selected Upright Pianos including :

. Yamaha U5 Modern Upright
. 1914 A.M. Hume Vintage Upright
. Honky Tonk, Barroom Upright
. Real Tack Piano

- Comes with Ivory piano engine
- More than 50 GB Core Library
- Over 5000 Samples
- Up to 10 Velocity Layers
- Custom Upright Soundboard Emulation DSP
- Separate, selectable "creaks and clunks" layer, for added funk
- Release samples triggered by velocity and duration
- Full EQ and Effects section
- All of Ivory's Piano Specific features and controls
- Dozens of new programs and effects presets

Note that Ivory's "unified interface" feature enables you to use just a single instance, and one interface, to play and control all of Ivory's pianos, no matter how many pianos you install.

Ivory Upright Pianos will be available soon for Mac OS X and Windows in VST, AU, RTAS and Standalone versions at a retail price of $299.

Sinevibes announces the immediate availability of vastly-anticipated 5th edition of the Fantom Tweakbook, the sound design and music post-production guide for Roland Fantom-S, Fantom-X, Juno-G and SonicCell synthesizers.

This new edition is the biggest update to the Tweakbook ever: there are now 62 illustrated articles explaining the capabilities of these amazing instruments even deeper. The look and layout has been totally reworked from scratch and, in addition to the helpful synthesizer and effects parameter map, there is a little dictionary which makes it even easier to navigate and understand the book.

The Fantom Tweakbook now covers an overwhelming amount of topics, including subtractive, additive and vector synthesis, ring modulation, analog sound replication, creating complex effects on patch level, envelope, LFO and matrix modulation, using effects processors as synthesis blocks, sampling and re-sampling, advanced processing of internal and external sounds, using in conjunction with other gear and much beyond. The 5th edition comes with over 220 example patches and templates, as well as a new collection of raw sample material and rhythm kits — so you can instantly start making your own sounds and music.

The Fantom Tweakbook 5th edition is available online from our partner DontCrac[k] for $19.

Schaack Audio Technologies has just released Transient Shaper v2.0.

New features :

- 3 different Attack shapes (sharp/mid/soft).
- 3 different Release shapes (sharp/mid/soft).
- Analog saturation (for smoothly cutting off the 'head' of too sharp transients or using Transient Shaper for plain saturation).
- Smoothed parameters (to avoid zipper noise when turning the knobs).

Transient Shaper v2.0 is available now for Mac OS X and Windows in VST and AU formats at a price of €49 (+VAT).

G-Sonique has announced a new VST plug-in that will be released on May 2008 : XBass4000.

The XBass4000 is basically a bass enhancer. Its "virtual circuits" combine two different algorithms for emphasizing the bass spectrum of the track :

- a psychoacoustic algorithm BassEnhancer that emphasize the intensity of hearable bass content.
- an analog style saturation unit that enriches bass spectrum of a requested "fat" and "warm" sounds known from tube circuits. It also adds higher harmonic frequencies that expands and enlightens the hearable spectrum as well as sub-bass spectrum.

XBass4000 will be available for Windows as a VST effect plug-in. Price TBA.