PC and Music News

Elysia has announced the release of niveau filter, a new plug-in that provides the niveau filter section from elysia's mpressor plug-in as a separate, free, plug-in.

Add punch to muffled snares, reduce the harshness from active pickups, create some wonderful Dub and LoFi sounds... there are so many ways to benefit from this little tool.

This filter is a specialist in changing the overall sonic character of a signal with ease. It features two comprehensive controllers and is capable of producing convincing results in no time at all. Whenever a classic shelving filter would be too limited and a fully parametric filter would be too much, the niveau filter is the perfect tool.

Its main function is to change the proportions between high and low frequencies. The principle is quite simil ...

Toontrack announces the Music City USA SDX for Superior Drummer 2.0. Here's what they say about it :

"Like it, love it or leave it, Nashville Tennessee is Music City USA. With more labels, publishers, writers, producers, musicians and artists per capita than any other city in North America, Nashville knows a thing or two about great music, and more importantly - great sounding music.

With the city's history & culture so steeped in the art of making and recording music, the team could think of no better place on earth to record a library of drums that would be at home in music ranging from rock to reggae, metal to gospel or punk to polka. Oh yeah... they're good for country & rock too!

Introducing the Music City USA SDX , the newest library of drum samples and MIDI grooves for our award winning, industry standard drum production platform, Superior Drummer® 2.0.

Much like its sibling, the Nashville EZX®, the Music City USA SDX found us working with Harry Stinson and Chuck Ainlay, two of the best, most experienced players and producers in the business."

The Music City USA SDX will be available May 2010 at a price of £119.00 / €139.00.

XILS-lab announces that a dongle free demo version of their polyKB virtual synth is now available.

The polyKB is a recreation of a very rare, very powerful polyphonic synthesizer released in the 80's by a french company. It is a polyphonic substractive synthesizer based on two waveform morphing, aliasing free oscillators and a self oscilating 4 poles low pass filter.

One of its features, never heard on other analog synthesizers, was the continuously modulated waveform, sort of a modulated waveform morphing. Recreating this feature in the digital domain, without aliasing was a very big challenge.

Features :

• two aliasing-free morphing oscillators: from triangle to pulse, through saw.
• one 4 poles low pass self oscillating filter
• two envelope generators ...

Full Metal Racket R by 9 Soundware is a set of patches for the NN-XT sampler within Propellerhead Reason. The theme of the sound set is distortions. Its origins are in five previously released 9 Soundware titles. The instruments are based on select samples from the Thrash, 666, Discord, and Error EXS24 sound sets, and the Mixer Feedback WAV collection.

Thrash (Instruments of face melting aggression.)
The theme behind Thrash is HEADROOM DECIMATING AUDIO. Extreme waveforms were created with one goal and one goal only: To see how gut-wrenchingly jarring and intense sound could be. These eardrum-bashing anomalies are not metalhead-friendly sounds. They are not even sound system-friendly sounds. The 30 instruments in this category are based on 75 samples. The source sounds for the samples include performed noise, synthesis, mixer feedback, screaming, and a drum machine.

Slate Digital is pleased to announce that their new advanced drum replacer Trigger Platinum is now available for purchase. Trigger is a multi channel, phase accurate drum replacer with 6 channels of multi velocity sample layers. This means that you can trigger a close mic, stereo overhead pair, and room mic pair all from one instance of the plug-in.

Trigger Platinum ($299) comes with the entire Steven Slate Drums library, including a sneak peak at some of the upcoming Deluxe series drums. Available for both Mac and PC in VST, AU and RTAS formats.

If you are a Steven Slate Drums 3.0 customer or above, or a Drumagog 4.0 or above user, you are entitled to a limited time, special promotion for Trigger Platinum. Visit this link to get 50% off of Trigger Platinum. You will need either the last four digits of your Slate Drums serial number, OR, your registered Drumagog email address. This promo is only offered for 30 days.

FabFilter has released a new Electro sound set by Ouroboros for FabFilter Twin 2, its powerful software synthesizer. Here's what they say about it :

"The Electro sound set includes over 140 new and exciting presets that will add an edge to your music, with immediate application to electro house, electro clash, and experimental electronica. Featuring simple, nasty leads, basses that grind your teeth and pads soft enough to fall into, sound designer Ouroboros (Erin Hamilton) offers a bank with futuristic electronic sounds that will inspire you with new ideas.

When he discovered traveling with a laptop was easier than checking his piano as carry-on, Erin Hamilton was hooked on making music with computers. Designing sounds for software synthesizers has opened up vast new frontiers of sound to explore, and his boorish nickname hints at the playful fun he has doing it. You can expect twisted, unique and engaging sounds with moments of softness and wonder all wrapped in Fabfilter Twin 2's beautiful filters and eminently playable modulations."

The Electro sound set for FabFilter Twin 2 is now available in FabFilter's online shop for €19, $28 or £17. It can be used on both Windows and Mac OS X in any of the available plug-in formats.