PC and Music News

EastWest/Quantum Leap announces the debut of its latest release, Hollywood Strings virtual instrument — a collection of string instruments with unprecedented control over sound and performance.

"Hollywood Strings has many groundbreaking features not found in any other virtual strings collection. Finger position is, for the first time, controllable by the user, so they can play as far up the strings as they want, and get a fuller, more romantic, Hollywood sound. Vibrato intensity and extensive dynamics are controllable by the user. Extensive multi-dynamic true legato has been sampled for all sections in three different categories: slurred, portamento, and bow change. This results in unsurpassed legato performance that has never been available in the sample world, says EastWest. Hollywood Strings has five user-controllable microphone positions including main pickup (Decca tree), mid pickup, close pickup, surround pickup, and an alternate vintage circa 1945 RCA ribbon room pickup."

Pricing and Availability TBA.

Intelligent Devices has released MegaDelayMass, a new kind of multi-tap delay plug-in.

Think about this: up to 100 separate delay taps that can be either rigidly time synched or completely randomized. Go from vocoderish resonation to unusual, non-linear, reverby sounds. Control the volume of the head of the delay or the tail. Randomize panning. Control randomized "clumping" through a logarithmic curve. Use it as a non-linear room simulator (especially if you're a fan of pre-delay). If you're familiar with Pure Data, MAX/MSP or REAKTOR, you can easily create patches that allow you to "play" the resonation.

Features :

• Quickly create and control an army of delay taps.
• Put them in mathematical order for resonant and tube like results
• Use randomization and log patterns to create dense and rich trails.
• Create sweeping or alternating panning patterns for stereo or bounce trails.
• Control individual tap phases as a percentage
• Automate the parameters with your favorite host software to "play" a dynamic resonator.

MegaDelayMass is available now for both Mac and PC in VST format at a price of $49. Note that a demo version as well as audio examples are also available at :

"Beat Box Anthology is the one-stop shopping collection for drum machine sounds and loops, covering almost every generation of these instruments. Even if these cult machines were a milestone in the 70s, 80s and 90s music production, their sounds are still used today in a lot of Urban, Hip Hop, Electro House and even Electro Pop productions." said Alain Etchart, Founder and Director of Marketing at Univers Sons / Ultimate Sound Bank.

Beat Box Anthology is divided in three sections : Classic, Analog & Digital. In the Classic category you will find the cult machines that are still used a lot today, like the 808 or the 909. Sampling and recording was particularly complete, covering every parameter and setting you can find on these machines. To capture the essence of these pieces of history, ...

Togu Audio Line has updated its free virtual analog bass synthesizer TAL-BassLine to version 1.4.0.

After some user feedback, it was decided that the filter in version 1.1 sounded better than in later versions so it has been reworked and improved. The problem in version 1.1 was the aliasing, that occurred in the self oscillating filter (full resonance) at high cutoff frequencies with a 44,100Hz sampling rate. Now there is no aliasing and a much improved self oscillation filter sound.

Here's a new Pro Tools Corner issue by our VIP Moderator Brian White from audioMIDI.com.

"While the new interface is stunning to say the least, it is hard to ignore the mother load of new plug-ins that ship with Pro Tools 8. Dubbed the "Creative Collection," the fresh suite of plug-ins from Digidesign's Advanced Instrument Research division shines with creativity from every angle. While many have fixed their ears eagerly on the new virtual instruments, the 20 new AIR effects are sure to have the mixer in us screaming for attention. As a toast to all of these free new effects, I thought it would be appropriate to showcase a handful here at the corner as an on going series I am dubbing "Mixing on AIR." The goal being to both introduce you to some of the plug-ins you get with Pro Tools 8, and share with you some tips and tricks for integrating them into your projects. This week I thought I would kick of the series by showing you how to add some presence and sparkle to lifeless signals using the AIR enhancer."

If you have a Pro Tools related question that you would like Brian to take a shot at answering or have any feedback, please post-it in our Mac ProTools Forum or Pc ProTools Forum. Brian will do his best to select the questions that seem to stump the most people.

Universal Audio today announced that the UAD-2 SOLO, a compact ExpressCard-based DSP Accelerator, is now shipping worldwide.

The new SOLO/Laptop DSP card brings Universal Audio's world-class analog emulations–authenticated by Neve®, Roland®, SPL®, Moog®, and more–to laptop DAW users. The UAD-2 Solo/Laptop enables large, professional mixes on laptop DAWs without the need for cabling or power supply. It includes studio staples like UA's 1176SE Compressor/Limiter, Pultec EQP-1A Equalizer, RealVerb Pro Room Modeler, and CS-1 Channel Strip, and offers access to the entire Powered Plug-In library.

Like all UAD-2 hardware, the SOLO/Laptop supports VST, AU and RTAS plug-in formats on both Mac and PC.

The UAD-2 SOLO carries a MAP price of $499US.