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.

Ok, we've seen the new IOS 7, so, actually, it's just a great os for iPad, iPhone...
So, Air Drop is now integrated in OS7.
And we'll wait for the next Mac OSX 9 formally named Maverick (around next september for customers, and right now for developers)!
Everything is about software and except new macbook Air (999$) without Retina display.

So, Last but not least! the most important announcement for musicians is:The new Mac Pro... ...coming later this year... (grrrrrr!)

Processors:
The new Mac Pro is muscle through and through, starting with the new-generation Intel Xeon E5 chipset. With configurations offering up to 12 cores of processing power, up to 40GB/s of PCI Express gen 3 bandwidth, and 256-bit-wide floating-point instructions, you'll never be at a loss for speed.
Graphics:
Engineered around workstation graphics with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage, high-performance Thunderbolt 2, new-generation Xeon processors, ultrafast memory, and support for 4K video, the new Mac Pro delivers state-of-the-art performance across the board.
Memory:
Every component in the new Mac Pro is optimized for performance. That includes a four-channel DDR3 memory controller running at 1866MHz. It delivers up to 60GB/s of memory bandwidth, which means you can fly through even the most compute-intensive tasks in no time. And since it's ECC memory, your render job, video export, or simulation won't be stopped by transient memory errors.
About the storage:
There's flash storage, and then there's next-generation PCI Express flash storage. We're talking storage that's up to 2.5 times faster than the fastest SATA-based solid-state drive and up to 10 times faster than a 7200-rpm SATA hard drive. Most flash storage systems connect via SATA buses designed for slower spinning hard drives. But we designed the new Mac Pro around new PCI Express-based flash controller technology to deliver the fastest solid-state drives available standard in a desktop computer. So booting up, launching apps, even opening massive files happens in, well, a flash.

Ext connection:
Thunderbolt is the fastest, most versatile I/O technology there is. And with Mac Pro, we're jumping even further ahead. Thunderbolt 2 delivers twice the throughput, providing up to 20Gb/s of bandwidth to each external device. So you're more than ready for the next generation of high-performance peripherals. You can connect massive amounts of storage, add a PCI expansion chassis, and work with the latest external displays — including 4K desktop displays and peripheral devices capable of broadcast monitoring in 4K. And since each Thunderbolt 2 port allows you to daisy-chain up to six peripherals, you can go all out by plugging in up to 36 external devices via Thunderbolt alone.

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.