PC and Music News

Andris Nelsons has been appointed the 15th Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since its founding in 1881.

The announcement was made today by Chairman of the BSO Board of Trustees Ted Kelly, BSO Board of Trustees Vice Chairs Stephen B. Kay and Robert O'Block, and BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe, following a meeting of the orchestra's Board of Trustees earlier in the day at Symphony Hall. At 34 years old, Andris Nelsons is the youngest music director to lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in over 100 years; he is also the first Latvian-born conductor to take on the post.

Now available as a download only. The Pure Acoustic Special Edition features extreme high quality 24 bit samples. For Kontakt 3.0 or higher. Each note has been meticulously reproduced with up to 9 sample-layers per each note. The instrument selection is a Martin HD-28 “Herringbone’ and a Taylor 410 guitars.

Articulations include picked, fingerstyle and plucked with two fingers. Variations include picked vibrato soft, picked vibrato hard, half step slides, fingerstyle vibrato, harmonics, soft and hard muted notes, open strings, fret noises.

The presets include many velocity switches including: Picked to Pluck, Mute to Pick, Mute to Pluck, Mute to Pick to Pluck, Fingerstyle to Pluck, Open Strings to Harmonics. Mod Wheel is often used to add real vibrato. For both guitars, the low E string was de-tuned to low D to capture deep buzzy bass notes.

ProjectSAM is well-known for its ensemble recording concept, and this third volume in the critically acclaimed Symphobia series trumps this with even finer arrangements.

The warmth and beauty of orchestra and choir performing together has been captured in stunning, playable ensembles. Moreover, Lumina is packed with superbly orchestrated textures covering the full spectrum of fantasy and mystery. Refined with grand piano, harp and percussion, these recordings are truly luminous.

Lumina's solo and guest instruments range from legato woodwinds, such as oboe and clarinet, to a beautifully sampled Celtic harp, tin whistle and a full bell tower! The library also pays homage to the playful world of cartoons with dedicated ensembles and phrases for careful tiptoeing and tongue-in-cheek suspense.

Zenhiser is back with the most infectious kick drums to date, designed for Progressive House & Main Room House these powerful kicks are ready to drag & drop and will deliver instant punch, clarity and drive to all your tracks.

Each kick drum has been custom engineered for absolute maximum penetration without delving into too much overdrive or bottom end failure. They are clean, crisp and ready to deliver with every kick designed exclusively in the Zenhiser studio you know this is going to be a huge sample pack.

From May 14-17, McDSP offers 50% off ML4000 Native and HD. ML4000 Native is available for just $115 and ML4000 HD is available for just $215.

The ML4000 is two plug-ins: the ML1 mastering limiter, and the ML4 - a multi-band Gate, Expander, and Compressor fed into the same limiter algorithm found in the ML1.

Blue Cat Audio has released an update for five of its most recent plug-ins: Blue Cat's DP Meter Pro (audio levels meter), FreqAnalyst Multi (multiple tracks spectrum analyzer), Oscilloscope Multi (multiple tracks waveform visualizer), StereoScope Multi (multiple tracks stereo field analyzer) and Blue Cat's Protector (zero latency brickwall limiter).

These updates mainly address an issue with the AAX version and Pro Tools 10.3.5 on Windows, and bring additional fixes and enhancements for each plug-in on both Mac and PC.

The update is free for existing customers and is available for download from the same locations as the previous versions of the plug-ins.