PC and Music News

Native Instruments today released TRAKTOR DJ – a unique, hands-on DJ app built from the ground up for iPad aimed at DJs of all levels from novices to touring professionals.

TRAKTOR DJ introduces the completely new Freeze Mode, which lets users slice up a waveform into playable parts for on-the-fly remixing and entirely new musical performances. The app also allows users to create beat grids in real time, intuitively mapping out a song's groove without having to stop the music. DJs are encouraged to discover the full extent of TRAKTOR DJ's capabilities at their own speed via the Notification Center, which tracks the user's progress through the app's features and unobtrusively offers tips, tricks, and techniques from within the app.

Dreamscape contains 148 presets ranging from lush and smooth pads to dirty screaming basses and otherworldly plucks and atmospheres. The set consists out of 71 main presets and 77 variations, these variations have different macro knob settings mostly resulting in radically different sounds.

It's highly usable for a wide range of music styles including: ambient, chill out, lounge, filmscore, electronica or even dance, trance, house and dubstep.

All presets have all 8 macro knobs assigned to the most useful parameters, allowing you to completely shape the sounds to your liking with very little effort.

The CMC Six-Pack is made up of all six controllers designed to offer users a modular controller experience. Arranging the units in a way that best suits the personal needs when using Cubase makes the CMC series a very customizable hardware control system. Each of the six slim-sized USB controllers provides tactile control over Cubase features.

- CMC-CH (channel controller)
- CMC-FD (fader controller)
- CMC-QC (quick controller with buttons)
- CMC-PD (pad controller)
- CMC-TP (transport controller)

The CMC-AI controller comes with Steinberg's AI Knob and ten function buttons for convenient volume level control, jog control, browsing and adjusting many plug-in and Cubase parameters.

Camel Audio announces Alchemy Player v1.55, a major update their popular free Alchemy Sound Library and SFZ player synthesizer.

Alchemy Player v1.5 is designed to keep inspiration flowing with a fully-featured preset browser, 200 presets, faster preset loading times, improved remote control from the Alchemy iOS app, and many more enhancements.

Audio Mind Project has announced the release of the Past and Presence soundset featuring 128 new sounds for the TAL-U-NO-LX software synthesizer by Togu Audio Line.

Past and Presence features:
- 21 Arps.
- 21 Key sounds.
- 24 Lead/Bass sounds.
- 22 Pads.
- 40 Synths.
Price: $11.99 USD until March 4th, 2013 (regular $17.99 USD). A free copy of the soundset is included with a purchase of any bundle.

MAGMA version 1.5 adds two significant new modules. The first is a Modulation Matrix with up to 32 source/destination routings, 8 programmable LFOs, and a programmable 16-step Envelope Generator that allows users to create up to 8 unique envelopes for modulation sources.

All sources, including MIDI messages, can control any parameter of any MAGMA effect loaded in the virtual rack. The second new module is called the VST Chainer, which allows users to load and access all other Nomad Factory plug-ins or any 3rd party VST plug-in for use in the MAGMA routing and processing environment.