PC and Music News

Thermionic Culture has unveiled the Earlybird 4, a 4 channel all valve preamp using a Class A bias valves in a push-pull circuit. Company founder and chief designer Vic Keary believes that "this is one of the finest pre-amplifiers available today".

Specially designed Sowter transformers the Earlybird 4 boasts well under .01% distortion, as Vic explains that "it's like connecting a pair of wires with gain to your mic, it's so clean!" It has a very high output level of +32dB and if desired, 2nd order harmonics can be introduced by increasing mic gain and reducing output gain. The unit has switched gain controls with a maximum of 62dB of mic gain and a variable output along with pads, phase, 300 & 1200 ohm impedance and stepped filter. A pair of meters can be switched between 1 & 2 and 3 & 4.

Pricing and availability TBA.

Korg has announced that their popular Electribe·R has been reborn as a dedicated iPad app – the Korg iElectribe virtual analog beatbox.

Main Features:

• Faithful recreation of the Electribe·R's entire sound engine and sequencer
• 64 Preset patterns ready for immediate use
• 8 Supercharged effects
• Advanced Motion Sequencing takes the iElectribe to new frontiers


Available now at Apple's App Store (inside iTunes Store) for a special introductory price of $9.99. Promotional pricing expires June 30, 2010 (regular price is $19.99).

Bodhisphere is a unique collection of twisted textures, warped soundscapes and mangled mayhem inspired by FM3's celebrated Buddha Machine. Complete with 5 menus of high quality 24-bit audio, Bodhisphere joins Puremagnetik's "spheres" collection as a lush resource for sound designers, film composers or anyone looking to get their hands on some seriously tricked out audio! The following is a list of boutique effects and processors used in the production of Bodhisphere:

• Co-Pilot FX Mantis ii
• Co-Pilot FX Antenna
• Dwarfcraft Devices Shiva
• Symbolic Sound KYMA X
• Tech-21 Bass Sans Amp
• Line 6 X-Pod Live
• Effector 13 Truly Beautiful Disaster
• Moog MURF
• Malekko Spring Chicken
• Blckout Effector's Fixed Fuzz
• Ensoniq D ...

Zoom has presented the H1 pocket recorder.

The Zoom H1 handy recorder uses only one AAA battery, which enables it to record for up to 10 hours. It records in 24bit 96kHz PCM and MP3. Further more it features a lowcut filter, XY Mic capsules, USB 2.0, external mics and audio device in-outputs.

Pricing and availability : €119, expected in June 2010.

XILS-lab is proud to announce the release of its new product : the polyKB. The polyKB is a recreation of a very rare, very powerful polyphonic synthesizer released in the 80's by a french company. It is a polyphonic substractive synthesizer based on two waveform morphing, aliasing free oscillators and a self oscilating 4 poles low pass filter.

One of its features, never heard on other analog synthesizers, was the continuously modulated waveform, sort of a modulated waveform morphing. Recreating this feature in the digital domain, without aliasing was a very big challenge.

Features :

• two aliasing-free morphing oscillators: from triangle to pulse, through saw.
• one 4 poles low pass self oscillating filter
• two envelope generators (ADSR)
• two MIDI sy ...

SPL has released a beta version of DrumXchanger, a plug-in that can replace drum sounds in multitrack sessions irrespective of their level.

The beta version is now available for download for Windows and Mac OS X. A 750 MB sample library is included. An iLok is required.