WHAT'S NEW

Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Len Sasso

Dave Smith Instruments Prophet '08

To everyone's (or perhaps no one's) surprise, Dave Smith Instruments (http://davesmithinstruments.com) announces the return of the Prophet. The 8-voice Prophet '08 ($2,199) is firmly rooted in the present, although its completely analog signal path — two oscillators, resonant lowpass 2- or 4-pole filter, and VCA — uses new Curtis ICs, similar to those found in the original Prophet-5, -10, -600, and -T8 synths, to reproduce the famous Prophet sound. Each program has two layers, which you can split or stack and route to the same or separate outputs. The instrument has a 5-octave, semiweighted, Velocity-sensitive keyboard with Aftertouch, and pitch and mod wheels. The hand-signed Special Edition ($2,699) includes a patch editor-librarian (Mac/Win, $49.99).

The Prophet '08 really steps away from the past in the modulation department. Poly-Mod is superseded by a full-featured modulation matrix. You can route the synth's 4 LFOs, 3 envelope generators, 4 note-gated 16-step sequencers, and a variety of MIDI messages to 43 destinations. You also get a latching arpeggiator that you can sync to an incoming MIDI Clock. When 8 voices are not enough, you can daisy-chain 2 Prophet '08s together to play as a single 16-voice synth.

Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer Edition

Sonar 7 Producer Edition (Win, $619) brings a bevy of new features to Cakewalk's (www.cakewalk.com) flagship digital audio sequencer. On the MIDI side, the most exciting advance is a new step sequencer with 16-steps-per-beat resolution and 64-beat patterns. The sequencer supports odd time signatures, Velocity offset and scaling, and flexible drum mapping and MIDI routing. Multiple controller lanes in its Piano Roll View editor and new user-configurable Smart MIDI Tools sets round out the MIDI upgrade.

The most requested advance on the audio side is internal sidechaining for the Sonitus:fx Compressor, Sonitus:fx Gate, VC-64 Vintage Channel, and sidechain-compliant VSTi plug-ins. Other audio enhancements include integration with external hardware, featuring automatic plug-in delay compensation; Dim Solo to lower unsoloed tracks by 6, 12, or 18 dB; and support for new file formats (Sony Wave-64, AIFF, CAF, FLAC, and SDII). The 64-bit linear-phase mastering plug-ins LP-64 Multiband (a compressor/limiter) and LP-64 EQ add the final touch to your mixes. Version 1.5 of the Roland V-Vocal VariPhrase processor adds pitch-to-MIDI conversion. Z3TA+, Rapture LE, Dimension LE, and DropZone beef up Sonar's complement of virtual instruments. You also get integrated CD ripping and burning as well as Cakewalk Publisher 2.0 to create customized streaming music players for your Web site.

Propellerhead Software Reason 4

Propellerhead Software (www.propellerheads.se) is now shipping the highly anticipated Reason 4 (Mac/Win, $499). The flashiest new item is the semimodular synth, Thor. It starts with six types of oscillators and four types of filters that you allocate among three oscillator and three filter slots. You can modulate anything with anything using Thor's modulation matrix, and the built-in step sequencer has a note lane and two controller lanes. A large bank of patches from pro sound designers helps get you started.

The RPG-8 arpeggiator module complements Reason's Matrix step sequencer with features such as selective note muting and Single Note Repeat toggle. The multichannel ReGroove Mixer lets you dial in timing and accent grooves for real-time manipulation of note sequences.

Reason's built-in sequencer gets a welcome redesign. Sequencer tracks now have separate lanes for notes, automation, and performance data. All data is organized in clips that you can move, copy, split, and merge. You select tools from a floating tool palette that also provides access to editing functions such as quantization and transposition. Programming enhancements for the Combinator (predevice transpose and data filter) and NN-XT (multisample edit and chromatic automap) round out Reason 4's new feature set.

BackLine Engineering RiffBox

BackLine Engineering (www.backline-eng.com) announces firmware update 5.0 for its RiffBox audio-looping stompbox ($399). The update adds five much-requested features: abort recording by footswitch, autostart for manual recording, toggling between record and playback, loop length from MIDI note count, and MIDI-triggered layer erase. As always, the free update is a MIDI SysEx file that is downloadable from the company's Web site.

The RiffBox's claim to fame is its ability to detect individual note transients as well as rhythm and pitch patterns, and then to start loop playback with perfect timing based on those patterns without the user having to stomp at the exact moment. In rhythm-detection mode, it looks for a repeating pattern of attack transients, whereas in pitch-detection mode, it looks for a repeating pattern of pitches or for a note whose pitch matches the first note's. In all, you get 77 operating modes, including standard stompbox, delay and doubling effects, layering, half-speed, reverse, and stop or fade after a certain loop count. You can sync to an external drum machine, and you can change loop length in real time. The RiffBox records in 16-bit, 48 kHz stereo or mono, yielding 40 or 80 seconds of recording time. Audio memory is volatile, but the RiffBox remembers 100 presets, capturing all settings.

Sony Creative Software Upgrades

Sony Creative Software (www.sonycreativesoftware.com) has released major upgrades to its midlevel music and movie production tools. Acid Music Studio 7 (Win, $59.95) offers unlimited MIDI and audio tracks, simultaneous multitrack recording, in-line MIDI editing, multiple audio clips per track with automatic crossfading, and both MP3 and ATRAC AA3 encoding. More than 3,000 Acidized loops, 1,000 MIDI files, 90 DLS-compatible virtual instruments, and 25 DLS-based projects help get you started. The program also supports VST plug-in instruments and effects. Its full spate of mixing, MIDI editing, and CD-burning tools takes you well beyond entry-level desktop music making.

Vegas Movie Studio 8 Platinum (Win, $119.95) is to video what Acid Music Studio 7 is to audio. You can import and edit video on multiple tracks in almost any format, including high-definition HDV and Sony AVCHD. You get tools for compositing, color correction, audio time-stretching, and surround mixing. You can work in any aspect ratio with multiple file formats and frame rates, and you can send a full-screen preview to a secondary Windows display. The program comes with more than 1,000 sound effects and DVD Architect Studio 4.5 for DVD burning. Both programs are Windows Vista and multicore-processor compatible.

X2 Digital Wireless XDR95

X2 Digital Wireless (www.x2digitalwireless.com) has just released the XDR95 24-bit digital wireless system ($899). The system consists of the body-pack XDT4 transmitter and the rackmount XDR4 receiver. The incoming analog signal is converted to a proprietary 24-bit digital format, and then alternate samples are transmitted on two separate RF channels. That allows interpolation between adjacent samples to fill in any dropped samples caused by interference from spread-spectrum devices. Two internal and two external antennas feed the XDR4's four separate receivers. The receivers recognize only the digital data sent by the transmitter; all other RF sources are ignored. No compression or other digital processing is used, and the company claims 10 Hz to 20 kHz frequency response with 118 dB dynamic range and 0.03 percent distortion (THD). The typical range is 300 feet line-of-sight.

The compact XDT4 transmitter weighs in at 0.3 pounds. It relies on a 9V battery for power, and you get slightly longer battery life using single-frequency mode when spread-spectrum interference is not a problem. The input jack is a ⅛-inch TRS connector. The AC-powered XDR4 receiver comes with rackmount hardware and a front-mounted half-wave antenna kit. You can use its unbalanced ¼-inch TRS and balanced XLR outputs simultaneously.

ManyTone Music ManyBass

ManyTone Music (www.manytone.com) has released the latest in its series of multisample-based synths. ManyBass (Mac/Win, $139.95) makes it easy to play realistic bass parts with a keyboard controller, but maximum realism still requires some careful MIDI editing. The plug-ins are provided in VSTi and AU format. The accompanying sampled-bass library is 2.4 GB, which makes it a rather long download, but a DVD version is available ($15 extra). A bundle that includes three additional sampled-bass libraries costs $199.95.

ManyBass puts as much of the bass under your fingertips as possible by using the full MIDI note range with key and Velocity switching. You can keyswitch among up to four different multisampled layers, and most multisamples use Velocity switching to select different playing effects. A typical multisample arranges effects (slides, harmonics, mutes, and so on) across the bottom 30 notes, allocates 4 notes to keyswitching, and splits the remaining nearly 8 octaves between 2 articulations (sustained and staccato, for example). Besides the traditional synth modules, you get an amp/cabinet simulator and a multi-effects block.

Download of the Month

CHARLIE ROBERTS CONTROLAID AND MIDISTROKE

Software designer Charlie Roberts offers several free music and media utilities for Mac OS X on his Web site (www.charlie-roberts.com). MIDIstroke and ControlAid are two of my favorites.

MIDIstroke transforms incoming MIDI messages to computer-keyboard keystroke sequences to control concurrently running applications. Apple iTunes and Iced Audio AudioFinder are good examples; it takes just minutes to set up MIDIstroke to trigger these applications' keyboard shortcuts remotely. You can then sit back with your compact MIDI control surface and run the show. You can get more creative by combining a keyboard shortcut application such as Startly Technologies QuicKeys with MIDIstroke to trigger virtually any menu command in any application.

ControlAid performs another useful MIDI mapping task: it reroutes incoming MIDI Note and Control Change messages to the channel of your choice. That's useful when you want to remotely control more faders, knobs, or buttons than your control surface can manage.

For instance, with the 8 knobs and 1 slider on an M-Audio Oxygen8 and ControlAid, you can manage volume, pan, and aux sends on 16 mixer channels and have several knobs left over for other purposes. You assign one knob or slider to select the target channel, and you set up MIDI remote in the target application to control each mixer channel strip with the same MIDI Control Change messages on a different MIDI channel. Similarly, you can dedicate drum pads or an octave of your MIDI keyboard to triggering clips in an application such as Ableton Live, and then use the 16 MIDI channels to expand the number of clips you can trigger. Other ControlAid tricks include using the mouse as an x-y MIDI controller, creating multiple MIDI output messages for a single MIDI input message, and triggering notes from the computer keyboard.