PC and Music News

SamplePad is the perfect addition to any drumset or percussion rig: it's compact, very easy to use, and allows drummers to load their own sounds.

It has 25 percussion and electronic drum sounds built in, and allows drummers to load their own samples using a standard SD card to create stunning sound combinations. An external trigger input and the ability to mount it on virtually any snare stand or rack make SamplePad one of the easiest ways to expand any drumset.

IZotope, Inc. announces the release of Ozone 5 and Ozone 5 Advanced. Ozone 5 is an update to iZotope‚s critically acclaimed software mastering suite. Ozone 5 Advanced is a professional mastering suite that expands Ozone‚s feature set with individual component plug-ins, extended features, and the brand-new Ozone Meter Bridge.

"Whether you‚re a musician, engineer, or mastering pro, Ozone 5 lets you master music and other audio simply and efficiently", says Nick Dika, iZotope Senior Product Manager. „Ozone 5 is the biggest update we‚ve ever offered, with improvements that will appeal to Ozone experts and new users alike. Ozone 5 Advanced is designed to set a new industry standard for mastering tools. Advanced includes many exclusive features, and offers mixing and mastering engineers an even higher level of flexibility, precision and control.

Biolabs: Dark Space is a nightmare blend of science fiction and horror that is both fascinating yet strangely chilling. Featuring an extensive collection of moody and twisted soundscapes, tortured machines, a host of distressed hits, scrapes and evolving impacts, possessed basses, freaky effects and disembodied voices, each of its 75 presets is a mini-world of possibilities fuelled by fiendishly clever programming.

Dark Space includes 1 GB of newly sampled material and costs just 35USD / 29EUR / 25GBP. In addition to the usual range of detailed audio demos, biomechanoid has created a chilling video to capture the spirit of his new sounds.

Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH today released its latest VST Sound Instrument Set. Triebwerk is a sound expansion pack for HALion 4, HALion Sonic and HALion Sonic SE, boasting more than 400 presets, created for pop, house and everything in between by renowned sound designers and industry professionals.

Triebwerk comprises 430 presets including synth, bass, pads, FlexPhrases and drum sounds, providing over 700 MB of sample content and perfectly tailored to music productions of pop, electro, house and dance music. All told, Triebwerk offers seven drum kits, additional percussion kits, more than 200 new synthesizer sounds, 240 brand-new HALion FlexPhrases and over 170 beats and loops.

Five12 has updated Numerology (SE and Pro) to version 3.1.1. This maintenance release includes reduced MIDI transmission latency with the Numerology VST and Audio Unit plugins, fixes for issues when loading large projects, various stability improvements, fixes related to OS X Lion, and various other tweaks and improvements. A complete list of fixes can be found in the readme file that is installed with the program.

Numerology is a music sequencing and audio plugin environment which uses an innovative approach to electronic music composition based on modular step sequencing. It is available in two versions, a Standard Edition for anyone that wants an economical step sequencing addition to their studio, and a Pro version with advanced features including multi-output support for Audio Unit hosting, OSC support, custom scale quantization, and several advanced modules for processing control signals. Numerology 3.1.1 is available for purchase from the Five12 website. Numerology Pro is $199 and Numerology SE is $129, both prices are in US Dollars.

VocaLive for iPad takes an already powerful vocal processing app that has become a favorite on the iPhone® and iPod touch® and makes it even more powerful. The iPad version adds a fourth effect slot to the signal processing chain, and two of those effect slots can hold the specific "vocal effects" compared to just one vocal effect per chain on the iPhone version.

The preset browser is also available in the main window of the interface making loading and saving VocaLive presets even easier. The Favorites section has been expanded from 4 to 40 in the iPad version utilizing a new bank button. Favorites put presets right in the bottom panel on large, accessible buttons for immediate loading of the artist's most-used settings.