PC and Music News

Waves Audio unveils the Chris Lord-Alge Artist Signature Collection, developed in collaboration with GRAMMY®-winning mixing engineer Chris Lord-Alge (CLA).

For over 20 years, Lord-Alge has been the mixer of choice for rock-and-roll royalty, with credits including Green Day, U2, Nickelback, Foo Fighters, Bon Jovi, Pink, Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews Band, The All-American Rejects, and countless others. Created from CLA's custom processing chains, the Waves' Chris Lord-Alge Artist Signature Collection gives users an all-access pass to Lord-Alge's hard-hitting, radio-ready sound. Included are six application-specific plug-ins with dedicated tools for bass (CLA Bass), drums (CLA Drums), effects (CLA Effects), vocals (CLA Vocals) guitars (CLA Guitars), and acoustic instruments (CLA Unplugged).

CLA Bass
Designed to help users lay down a solid foundation for any song, CLA Bass offers six essential effects: bass, treble, compression, sub, distortion and chorus/flange. Notes Lord-Alge, "From sub-shaking smooth sounds to Mr. Buzzsaw, CLA Bass is just what the doctor ordered. Whether you want it to rip, roar, growl, bark or cut, CLA Bass delivers."

CLA Drums
When creating the CLA Drums plug-in, Lord-Alge had one thing in mind: that anyone who uses it could get a great drum sound for any song or mix and just have fun. There are six different modes: Kick, Snare, Toms, Overheads, Room and, CLA's personal favorite, Cowbell. There are three color-coded presets for bass EQ, treble EQ, compression, and reverb, plus a noise gate to get rid of leakage. Faders let users control the amount of each effect, and a phase switch is included so anyone can find the best setting for the kit, which Lord-Alge points out is "especially important for drums."

Toontrack unveils a new virtual instrument called Beatstation.

Not much information available yet but as you will see on the official website, Beatstation plays percussion pads, lead instruments and melodic basses. It uses a flexible and skinnable open playing surface and it handles custom samples, MIDI grooves and .rex files.

Stillwell Audio has announced the release of Bombardier, a buss compressor plug-in. Here's what they say about it :

"Bombardier is our most ambitious project to date – a premium quality buss compressor, tailored for smooth and musical processing of complex audio such as drum groups, vocal stems and your full stereo mix, lending a controllable sense of weight, fluidity and cohesion.

Bombardier gives a nod to the non-linear and frequency-variant subtleties of a wide range of Grade-A hardware buss compressors, and should you wish these can be pushed almost into the realms of a character compressor.

Due to its RMS compression engine (and unlike The Rocket, which uses peak compression), Bombardier is ideally suited to final mixdown and mastering usage, as well as for those who like to set up buss dynamics first and then mix 'into' the buss compressor.

SoundToys has just released Decapitator and PanMan.

Decapitator ($349 TDM/$179 Native) is an analog saturation modeling plug-in. It models the saturation or distortion created when driving professional analog studio equipment. SoundToys analyzed vintage and modern classics from Neve, API, Ampex, EMI and Thermionic Culture, and more to create accurate models of high-end studio gear. Decapitator creates that highly sought after analog sound from subtle harmonic changes to extreme driven distortion.

PanMan ($349 TDM/$179 Native) is an advanced auto-panner plug-in with groove control. It takes the process of moving audio back and forth in the stereo field and gives it that special touch that is uniquely SoundToys. It features a complete range of panning modes to recreate classic analog ...

The latest addition to the Milab product family is the DC-96C, a side-addressed large membrane microphone designed mainly for studio work, but also for many live applications. The DC-96C is the latest version of the classic DC-96 series — originally released in 1967 — and has been updated with the latest technology. It shares most of its components, including the capsule, with the DC-196, but like previous DC-96 versions, it is cardioid only and has a single layer mesh grid.

The DC-96C is suitable for a wide range of applications, including studio vocals, acoustic guitar and piano, hi-hats and overheads, guitar amps and more.

Features:

• Hand built in Sweden
• Cardioid
• Large rectangular condenser capsule
• 12 dB(A) self noise
• Transformerless
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MuTools announces that a pre-release version of Mu.Lab 3 is now available for download for Windows and Mac OS X.

Mu.Lab is an alternative, state of the art software application for OSX and Windows, transforming your computer into a rich virtual music studio.

New features :

• Function shortcuts: Map a key or MIDI event to almost any function.
• Step Recorder.
• Integrated virtual MIDI keyboard.
• Compressor Module.
• Sub Tracks.
• MIDI Clock Out.
• Relative audio file paths - easy to move sessions to another system.
• "Open Recent".
• Line tool for velocity beams.
• Improved sequence loop system.
• New comfortable editor zooming & scrolling system.
• New mouse tool system.