PC and Music News

Native Instruments today introduced the latest installment of their DISCOVERY SERIES – the range of KONTAKT Instruments based around specific musically vibrant locations. DISCOVERY SERIES – CUBA celebrates the sounds of the master musicians of Havana – rich, varied, and joyful music that encompasses the melodic and rhythmic traits of son, rumba, salsa and merengue. KONTAKT users can now add the special flavor of Cuba to almost any production style – from house and techno to pop, indie, and world styles.

DISCOVERY SERIES – CUBA delivers a host of meticulously-sampled instruments arranged into melodic and percussive ensembles. Its eight melodic and nine percussive ensembles are organized into authentic instrument combinations, expertly compiled to reflect the varied styles of Cuba's musical landscape – suitable for traditional projects as well as contemporary pop and dance productions.

CUBA offers a library of rhythmic patterns and harmonic progressions – all easily tweakable to fit specific productions using the powerful, built-in sequencer. A more human feel can be applied via the Groove and Feel knobs. Users can also adjust microtiming at the instrument level for an added level of rhythmic nuance. The Intensity knob adjusts the overall velocity of the performance, and 6/8 or 4/4 timings can be selected depending on the production style.

Also included is a mixer section featuring studio quality effects, including Solid EQ, convolution reverb, tape saturation and compression.

DISCOVERY SERIES – CUBA is available now for $99 / 99 € / 9800 YEN at the NI Online Shop.

Complete Composers Collection 2 is perfect for music, film, TV, and game composers: a choice of 20 award-winning virtual instruments that cover virtually every musical genre, including seven new additions:
- The Hollywood Gold series with Strings, Brass and Woodwinds
- The Dark Side
- Ministry of Rock 2
- Spaces
- Quantum Leap Solo Violin
Each of these virtual instruments is a veritable masterpiece with truly authentic sounds, and the incredible detail and sound options are unprecedented. Anyone familiar with EASTWEST knows that all their sounds are recorded with today’s top talent in their world-class studios with the best equipment available, and are used and endorsed by some of the most successful composers in the world. With Complete Composers Collection 2, any musician has access to these ultra-professional instruments and articulations at a fraction of the price of buying them individually.

FabFilter has updated all plug-ins to add 64-bit AAX support, enabling all FabFilter users to start working with Pro Tools 11 immediately after its release.

The update also includes various bug fixes and small improvements that benefit all plug-in formats.

Audiobus compatibility

The new version of iVoxel can be used in the Input, Filter and Output slots in the Audiobus signal chain.
The carrier signal and the vocal signal can now be fed by any Audiobus compatible Apps.

bout iVoxel

iVoxel is not only an amazingly sounding vocoder - the unique concept of iVoxel turns this vocoder into a singing machine. iVoxel is a combination of a voice optimized synthesizer and a vocoder. The vocoder part is based on the Matrix vocoder from VirSyn used by many famous artists - one of them the well known german group Kraftwerk. The channel filters used by iVoxel are based on the Sennheiser Vocoder VSM201 resulting in a rich and fat analogue sound characteristic.

COSMOS is designed to improve clarity and punch without increasing gain, which results in a more balanced sound. The plug-in uses harmonic enhancement instead of traditional EQ boosting to bring out desirable frequencies in your audio material. COSMOS works great to improve the sound quality of any audio source, including compressed mp3 files, podcasts and voice-over work.

COSMOS also features a tuneable synth sub-generator that can give your audio a huge boost in the low frequency department. For years, audiophiles have used this secret technique to fatten bass parts, kick drums and give mixes a thunderous bottom end. COSMOS’s built-in limiter and imaging add an extra dimension of control and stereo enhancement.

Native Instruments today launched a limited time offer for the TRAKTOR KONTROL S4 – the all-in-one 4+1 channel DJ system.

This new price of $599 / 599 € /₯ 59,800 is valid at the NI Online Shop and at participating retailers, and represents a substantial saving on the previous price of $899 / 799 € / ₯ 83,800*. This offer is valid from today until August 31 2013, or until stock lasts.