Manytone Music's ManyBass

This is a plug-in that I've been wanting to mention for a LONG time. A few months ago Manytone Music released the latest plugin to their collection entitled ManyBass. This plug-in is an incredible powerhouse delivering the most flexibility out of any bass plug-in I've seen. Along with the ability to custom map key switching among the collection of Bass libraries (different collections and price ranges are available), the plug-in also does a stellar job amp, fx and mastering emulation. I've played their demos to countless clients and colleagues and none of them can get over the fact that what they're hearing is in fact a plug-in. Definitely worth checking out!

Kore Player - True Strike Tension

Native Instruments today announced the release of their latest Kore Player Soundpack. Developed in conjunction with Project Sam, True Strike Tension is a vast collection of percussive elements perfectly suited for film and television scoring. Included in the 750MB collection are 30 kits of percussive instruments spanning the globe.

Apogee Announces Symphony 64

Apogee today announced the newest addition to their acclaimed Symphony series. The new Symphony 64 features dual 32 channel connectors on each card allowing each to have 64 channels of audio at up to 192 kHz.

Additional new features in software include the new SBus which allows you to directly link multiple computers with symphony cards for additional processing power and the VBus which allows you to route any application's audio to another through maestro.

Some quick notes on important specs with the new MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro's for musicians.

Last Tuesday Apple came out with a refresh of their laptop line. Nearly every machine with the exception of the 17" MacBook Pro was either replaced or upgraded. The following are what I feel are the most important bits of info for deciding which laptop might be right for you.

Pros:

- The MacBook and MacBook Air now feature an onboard Graphics GPU with its own memory. Aside from improved Graphics quality, this also means that a portion of the onboard RAM is not having to be allocated and therefore will give you a little more memory access from within your sequencer/ sampler.

- The 13" MacBook is now expandable to 4 GB of RAM! This will come in to play as more and more 64-bit apps continue to come out for large sample libraries.

- Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro now use faster DDR3 Memory.

- The 13" MacBook now supports Gigabit Ethernet.

- The MacBook and MacBook Pro both come with 5400RPM drives which are expandable to 320 and a 7200RPM version for the MacBook Pro. No more 4200 RPM drives in these machines. The MacBook Air still comes with a 4200 RPM drive which is now at 120GB.

- All machines offer a 128GB Solid-State Drive which has been a topic of discussion since while it is theoretically faster has shown slower write speeds in real world tests. Read speeds however have been very strong.

- The MacBook Pro is now available in speeds up to a 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo.

- Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro use CPUs that now have 3MB of L2 cache that runs at the same speed as the processor.

- All of the new machines have dropped DVI or mini DVI for the up and coming Mini Display Port interface. Display Port is expected to take over DVI as the interface of choice in the long run. Adapters should be available for DVI and VGA.

Cons:

- MacBook has eliminated the FireWire 400 port. If you plan on using something such as the Apogee Duet or an interface from the Metric Halo you will need to purchase a MacBook Pro. Otherwise you will need to purchase a USB compatible interface as well as a USB hard drive. This is a big issue and will be most likely a deal breaker for musicians looking to buy the standard MacBook.

- MacBook Pro has kept it's FireWire 800 port but lost the 400. You can still connect to FW400 interfaces using an adapter cable.

Wishlist:

- Faster CPU's breaking the 3.0 Ghz barrier.

- Quad Core Core 2 Duos. These are supposedly in development and would be an incredible jump in performance.

- Larger RAM Capacity. When it comes to live performance, the more that can be squeezed in RAM, the better. 4GB capacity has been out for a while and it would be nice to see the jump to 8 GB.

ProTools 8 Announced

Yesterday at AES Digidesign announced the upcoming release of ProTools 8. After speaking with their software developers earlier in the year I got a strong impression that they were working very hard to put as many user desired features into this update. Some of the new features include:
- Updated Look on the Interface
- A much larger instrument & plugin collection with nearly 8 GB of loops.
- Improved MIDI functionality.
- Higher Track Counts in the LE & M-Powered versions allowing users to go up to 128 tracks on LE systems.
- Built in Sibelius compatible scoring feature.
- New Comping tools similar to Logic & Cubase
- New Satelite Link System that allows you to control up to 5 HD systems as one.

Click Here to check out videos on these and other new features.

New Omnisphere Updates

Spectrasonics

has recently posted some updated tweaks to the Omnisphere library including the addition of over 1000 Classic Atmosphere sounds which are now easy to isolate in their own category as well as a "Best of Omnisphere" section.

The updates are available here

after providing your name and serial number.

TC Announces PowerCore 6000

T.C. Electronic

today also announced the new

PowerCore 6000

which allows you have many plugins from the famed System 6000 line in your DAW. PowerCore 6000 includes 8 Freescale DSP engines and a memory design that supports high performance reverbs and delays. Included plugins are the VSS3 Stereo Reverb, MD3 Mastering, Brick Wall Limiter, NonLin 2, DVR2 Vintage Reverb, UnWrap 5.1 processor and TapFactory.

Wave announces new Silver Bunle

On the eve of AES 2008 in San Francisco, Waves today announced the release of a new low end Silver Bundle containing an excellent collection of plug-ins. Only available as a Native collection, it will retail for $900 although you will most likely be able to find it for much cheaper. The bundle includes:

True Verb, L1 Ultramaximizer, Q10, C1, IR-L, SuperTap, Doubler, DeEsser, S1, Renaissance Axx, Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance EQ, Maxx Bass, Mondo Mod, Enigma and PAZ.

Native Instrument Free Hard Drive Offer

Native Instruments today announced that they will include a free 120GB portable hard drive with purchases over $449 from today through Sunday the 28th. It would be great if Native took it a step further in the future and actually included pre-installed Libraries to these drives. This would dramatically reduce the hours long install time of collections such as their 60 GB Komplete 5 Bundle.

SSL Delta Link

About a year ago Solid State Logic starting distributing a line of products under their X-Logic line which dealt with MADI connectivity. Using technologies from a Belgium company called Sydec, the Delta Link MADI to Pro Tools HD interface was born. This has become one of the ultimate products to have if you are a composer that works in a sequencer based application but prints to ProTools. 

The easiest way to explain it is that the one rack space Delta Link emulates FOUR 192 Digital interfaces. With 2 MADI ports on the back you are able to transfer 64 tracks of audio at up to 96k over two fiber optic pairs. 

Waves Releases MV2 & MV360 Dynamics Processors

Waves today released the MV2 & MV360 Dynamics Processors with a simplified design that has separate sliders for High Level and Low Level Compression. The MV2 Plug-in has been bundled into the Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Mercury and Broadcast & Production Bundles while the MV360 which extends the functionality for surround applications has been added to the 360 Surround Tools and Mercury Bundles.

LCD Arm

So a client of mine wanted a screen setup at his keyboard and at first we were thinking I furniture. I eventually figured out that you could attach an Innovative LCD arm directly to the Quik Lock stand. The screen can now sit on the side or in front if the keys like a music stand.

Omnisphere Released

Omnisphere was released on Monday along with information for upgrading. If you are a previous owner of Atmosphere you can upgrade for $249. If you own all three plug-ins in their collection (Atmosphere, Stylus RMX, Trilogy), there is a special VIP upgrade for $149. This plug-in update has been a long time client and for many clients there's never been anything that comes close to Atmosphere. 

Nine Inch Nail's Video Rig

I got to take a peek at this wonder during its testing and programming at Center Staging. It was amazing to see for the couple of minutes I got to see it and that was with just a couple of seconds of video/rendering on a loop! Check out

Wired’s article

.

East West Play 2 for 1 Bundle

Just found this info on East West:

“Users visiting the EastWest website from now until October 31, 2008 will be able to purchase one PLAY product and receive a collection of equal to or lesser value for free. The offer is also available at participating domestic and international retailers using a mail in rebate. There is no limit to the amount of virtual instruments that can be purchased where a user receives one free (except the free product cannot be the same as the purchased product), and users have the entire line of PLAY-powered products to choose from. “

The interesting part here is that while you can’t purchase the SAME product, with the Symphonic Orchestra collection you CAN purchase an additional license. So if you know anyone who’s interested in getting this library, buy the main copy and an additional license and you’ll be getting if for half off! Just navigate through the site the first time saying that you’re buying it for the first time and the second time saying you want another license and you should see “This item is FREE for you!”

Reminder that Omnisphere is coming

Just a reminder that Spectrasonics is finally releasing the successor to Atmosphere on Monday, September 15th. Omnisphere will be 10 times larger that the previous Atmoshpere Library. It will include the original sounds along with some amazing new ones. And most importantly, it will FINALLY be Intel native. The only library element yet to be updated to Intel is their Trilogy bass module.

EWQLSO Direct to RAM

One area which has been difficult with the new Symphonic Orchestra PLAY engine has been with disk streaming. I’ve seen disk I/O getting easily smashed when this plugin is filled. One thing that helps I found out was that you can in fact completely load all the samples into RAM if you so choose. I couldn’t find anything on the forums so I wrote to Sounds Online directly and received this response from them:

“

Select the instrument you'd like to load into RAM from the instrument list in the top right of the player mode.

Now go to the Main Menu > Current Instrument > [uncheck] Stream from Disc. You can also bump up your engine level
from 3-5 since you have more than 4 gigs of RAM.”

Its a very interesting situation as in the past the problem has always been that the CPU’s weren’t fast enough. With the latest generation of CPU’s it seems like everything has changed and I/O is now becoming the new issue.

Acoustic Pictures

Auralex just released a product which it seems they’re directing towards home use called Sonic Print. Looks pretty slick. I saw a company at NAMM selling a similar product a few years back and I wouldn’t be surprised if Auralex bought the company. At the time I thought it would be very slick to see a studio laid out with these and not just panels. You can also order them with your own pictures printed on top.

Site Reboot

Welcome to my new site re-design. I decided that I’m going to udate this new site in more of a micro blog fashion. Anything I find of interest in regard to music technology will land here.