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

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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.