PC and Music News

Launchkey Mini is an exciting new compact mini-key instrument/controller featuring 16 velocity sensitive, three colour illuminated launch pads - use them to launch loops, sounds, effects, transport controls, and more.

Launchkey Mini also features a 25-note keyboard, eight assignable rotary controls, seven function buttons, and a further two performance buttons. Compact and portable, Launchkey Mini is great for producing and performing at home or on stage.

Launchkey Mini works immediately with the new free-to-download Novation Launchpad and Launchkey iPad apps, and gives you hands-on control of major Mac and Windows based music software including Ableton Live, FL Studio, Pro Tools, Cubase, Reason, and Logic.

EASTWEST continues to support tomorrow's professional composers with academic discounts on Virtual Instruments for students and qualifying institutions. Starting today, until September 4th, 2013, students with a valid student ID can purchase the Complete Composers Collection 2 on a "plug n play" external hard drive with a minimum of 7 award-winning EASTWEST/QUANTUM LEAP Virtual Instruments and save an additional 50% off the bundle price that is already 70% off the list prices of the items chosen.

The Complete Composers Collection 2 is perfect for music, film, TV, and game composers: a choice of 21 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.

Newsreel Noises presents a collection of unwanted Noises, Rumbles, Hums & Crackles that were collected when digging through copies of newsreels from the 40ies and 50ies of the last century. Whenever such a newsreel starts or ends a lot of sidenoises occur and each one plays another pattern of mysterious sounds.
"Newsreel Noises" contains more than 150 samples that are arranged in 10 categories.
Cadenced, Crackle, Hum, Impulse, Noise, Pulsed, Rattle, Rhythmical, Shuttle, Tonal


Specifications:
- Ableton Live Pack, compatible with Live 8/9
- Universal Formats (WAV files with loop points)
- 150 MB Sample content (586 samples)
- 9.00 Euro each (download).

Commercial Pop from Ueberschall focuses on band based pop productions. Live recorded guitar, bass, keyboard and drum loops lay the foundation for catchy pop songs and Ad Music. The comprehensive material is suitable for any application, whether for music production, corporate films, jingles or the scoring of commercials and TV scenes. Commercial Pop always delivers authentic results.

Content
Commercial Pop contains eight extensive construction kits with a total of 876 loops and 3.4 GB of sound material. The loops usually have a length of eight bars, some loops are even up to sixteen bars long. The instruments include guitar licks, basses, electric pianos, organs and drum loops as well as pads, strings and synth sounds. All instruments were played and recorded by professionals with high end equipment.
The library allows a professional and fast workflow, perfect for productions with time pressure.

Macworld Expo's "Best of Show" Boom software is now $3.99 until Sept 15. Boom is a simple one-click, "load and forget" volume and sound booster application that greatly boosts the volume output of the entire Mac system. This give the user better audio while listening to music or playing music through a Mac system. It also features a first-of-a-kind simplified equalizer with custom presets to further tweak the audio experience at the system level.

Available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese.

The flexible signal flow in Reason comes with a cost: It still has no full automatic delay compensation. This is of course especially problematic with the new parallel channels feature of Reason 7. When you use plugins that induce delay to "fatten up" your tracks you get phasing.

Now there is a plugin for Reason that attempts to solve this problem in a unique way. It allows you to measure the latency of a signal flow using its test signal output and measuring input. This is only really possible in Reason where you can plug a test signal into any devices audio input. Then you can use the device to induce the same delay into your other channels or a bus, just like the other DAWs do it.

From the manual:

"The VMG-01 is a sample-accurate delay and delay measuring device. It can be used to induce delays as short as one sample and as long as 99,999 samples to any stereo signal flow while operating in true stereo. It also features a test signal output and a measuring input to test devices for their inherent latency.

Using these features you can use it to effectively compensate for latencies in your signal flow while mixing. The sample accurate delay is also very useful for precise comb filtering and haas effect type stereo imaging effects."