PC and Music News

Following a year of intense instrument modelling deep inside XILS-lab’s ear-opening laboratories, the XILS V+ virtual instrument and effects plug-in has finally emerged, sounding nigh on indistinguishable from an instantly-recognisable keyboard vocoder classic much loved by both contemporary and acclaimed artists alike.

But what keyboard vocoder are we talking about here exactly? And what’s a vocoder, anyway?
By definition, a vocoder is a synthesizer that produces sounds from an analysis of speech input. Vocoders arguably had their musical heyday in the Seventies with the likes of British record-producing heavyweight Jeff Lynne’s symphonic rockers ELO making much use of them throughout several striking recordings — think smash hit ‘Mr Blue Sky’ and the Time album (featuring the Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus keyboard) — while German techno pop pioneers Kraftwerk crafted themselves an ongoing robotic vocoder-led career that’s still resonating throughout EDM’s many modern-day stylistic offshoots;
French house music stalwarts Daft Punk became big vocoder fans with several memorable club-friendly hits to their eminently danceable name, par exemple. Historically speaking, the aforesaid Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus is also musically immortalised on celluloid thanks to Greek synth wizard Vangelis’ memorable early-Eighties electronic scores to the Oscar-winning Chariots Of Fire and Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film noir classic, Bladerunner, both of which made much use of the instrument’s signature Strings — ‘emulating’ the sustained portion of orchestral strings — and Human Voice Ensemble ‘choir’ — remarkable and unique — sounds. Subsequently the long-since-discontinued VP-330 Vocoder Plus has become something of a sought-after classic itself… for those in the musical know. Yet finding a fully-functional, pristine example of this 30-plus-year-old temperamental hardware has become nigh on impossible. Which is exactly where XILS V+ comes into play, of course, thanks to XILS-lab’s labours.

Radial Engineering Ltd announces the PreMax channel strip, a combination preamp and 3-band equalizer module for the popular 500 series format.

The PreMax begins with a low-noise Op-Amp input coupled with Radial's unique Accustate gain control that simultaneously sets the input sensitivity and signal gain to deliver ultra-quiet performance at all levels. Visual monitoring is supported with LEDS for signal and overload. The preamp then feeds a traditional 3 band shelving EQ for tone shaping. A front panel switch enables the user to bypass the EQ to compare the pre-post effect. This is augmented with a high-pass filter to eliminate low-end resonance that can cause a recorded track to sound muddy. A 180°polarity reverse works double duty to either help align stereo mic placement or to help tame acoustic hot spots when using the PreMax in a live stage setting. For safety, the 48V phantom power switch is recessed to prevent accidental turn-on which could damage tweeters or vintage ribbon microphones. When used with a Radial Workhorse power rack, the Omniport jack is configured as an instrument input and activated using the front panel switch. When not connected, the switch acts like a microphone mute.

AIR Music Technology has released Version 1.2 of their recently introduced Ignite music creation software.

Offering an entirely unique approach to making music with computers, Ignite v1.2 adds over a dozen features and enhancements, while delivering seamless integration with a growing list of top-name controller hardware from Alesis, AKAI professional, and M-Audio.

HumBuzz Live Pack is a versatile collection of 86 surprising Instrument Racks. The source material was created by capturing the electromagnetic fields emitted by fridges, microwaves, boilers, cell phones, TVs and computer components.

Like all modern electronics these devices produce a complex mixture of noises that cover wide frequency ranges. But surprisingly often there are also tonal elements that fit into useful scales.
Therefore HumBuzz not only contains hum and buzz but also thick pads, leads, bells and keys that do not deny their origin but are perfect in tune. Also included are many start-up and boot noises applicable for event-driven foleys, scoring or interface design.

Specifications
- Ableton Live Pack, compatible with Live 8/9
- 86 Ableton Instrument Racks
- 60 MB Sample content
- 9.00 Euro (download)

HumBuzz is also available as dedicated WAV Pack that contains 113 scenes with a length from 7 to 27 seconds. The scenes are organised into five categories: Buzz, Hum, Noise, Start-Up, Tonal

Specifications
- 113 WAV files, 24Bit/44.1 kHz
- 180 MB Sample content
- 9.00 Euro (download)

KV331 Audio has announced the release of Rob Lee EDM Expansion Pack 5, a new soundset for their SynthMaster software synthesizer geared towards electronic dance music production.

The preset bank contains 50 new presets designed by Rob Lee, in the following categories:

- 5 Arps.
- 13 Basses.
- 1 Chord.
- 6 Leads.
- 17 Pads.
- 8 Synths.

Registered users of SynthMaster can purchase the expansion pack for $15.