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WHAT'S NEW

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

Roland SP-555

Roland (www.rolandus.com) announces the newest model in its SP line of samplers. The loop-musician-oriented SP-555 ($595) offers real-time audio-loop capture and will function as a USB audio interface for your computer. Its 30 MB internal memory can record and stream up to 22 minutes of lo-fi, mono audio (11 minutes for standard-mode mono), or you can insert a CompactFlash (CF) card with up to 2 GB of memory for more than 26 hours of real-time lo-fi streaming. The unit comes bundled with Cakewalk Sonar LE (Win) for digital audio sequencing and Wave Converter (Win) software for importing AIFF and WAV files to a CF card (you'll need a CF reader for your computer).

The 4-pound desktop unit has 16 Velocity-sensitive pads for triggering samples, 3 knobs, and Roland's D-Beam 3D controller. Built-in effects range from standard fare to specialties like SuperFilter and DJFX Looper. In addition to audio recording, you get an 8,000-note pattern sequencer organized in banks of 16 patterns (2 banks in internal memory and 8 additional banks in CF memory). You can even sync the SP-555 to V-Link-compatible video equipment. A 9 VAC adapter powers the SP-555, which has a full complement of I/O connectors, including a phantom-powered XLR mic input.

Roger Linn Designs AdrenaLinn III

Roger Linn Designs (www.rogerlinndesigns.com) has announced a major upgrade to its AdrenaLinn guitar processor. The AdrenaLinn III ($375) expands the selection of amp models to 40 and increases memory to 200 user presets and 200 user drumbeats. The unit comes filled with factory presets and drumbeats, of which you'll find a complete listing at the company's Web site. AdrenaLinn II users can buy an upgrade kit for $99. Cross-platform editor software is available for $39.95 from SoundTower (www.soundtower.com).

The AdrenaLinn III's enhancements include adjustable stereo width for modulation and delay effects, adjustable envelope attack and decay times for random filter and tremolo effects, simple guitar-amp distortion for drumbeats, and better drum sounds. You can now trigger the internal drum sounds with MIDI. You get four new modulation effects — Auto Pan, Wah Pedal, Fixed Filter, and Sci Fi — along with reverb, compression, and a built-in tuner. The upgrade lets you assign the right footswitch on a per-preset basis to enable any effect or combination, and you can reassign both footswitches. MIDI pedalboard implementation supports ten MIDI footswitches along with two MIDI expression pedals, and you can use those to control virtually any internal setting. Of course, you still get all the signature beat-synced modulation effects and filter, tremolo, and arpeggio sequences.

JazzMutant Dexter

JazzMutant (www.jazzmutant.com) is shipping the second in its line of graphics-tablet control surfaces. Dexter (Mac/Win, $3,299 [MSRP]) is designed with your digital audio sequencer in mind, if that happens to be Apple Logic Pro, Steinberg Cubase or Nuendo, or Cakewalk Sonar. It gives you instant, graphical access to all aspects of mixing and insert-effects parameters. Its 800 × 600-pixel color display uses proprietary Multitouch Display Technology, so you can simultaneously manipulate multiple faders with your fingers. You can even zoom the fader ranges for more-precise editing. All faders have built-in level meters that are continuously updated from your DAW.

Dexter groups tracks in banks of eight and automatically retrieves track names from your DAW. Paging through banks and creating your own bank groups is quick and easy, and you can limit the display to muted, soloed, or armed tracks, and then toggle their status with a single tap. Four track-edit views — Mixer, Equalizer, Insert, and Surround — let you home in on specific mixing parameters, and a fifth, called Channel Edit view, puts smaller versions of all four views on a single screen. In most edit views, you get a huge fader with zoomable resolution to control level, pan, or send amounts.

Apogee Electronics Duet

Apogee Electronics (www.apogeedigital.com) has just released the smallest in its Ensemble line of audio interfaces. The Duet (Mac, $495 [MSRP]) is a 2-in/2-out, 24-bit, 96 kHz, bus-powered FireWire 400 device requiring Mac OS X 10.4.10 and Core Audio. A breakout cable attaches to the back of the Duet and features two unbalanced ¼-inch TS high-impedance instrument inputs and two 48V phantom-powered balanced XLR inputs. You can configure the XLRs as mic inputs with 75 dB of gain or as line inputs accepting a maximum input level of +20 dBu. The interface also has two ¼-inch TS monitor outputs for powered speakers. A ¼-inch stereo headphone output on the front panel makes it ideal for portable music making.

Native Instruments Kontakt 3

Native Instruments (www.native-instruments.com) has released a major upgrade to its flagship sampler. Kontakt 3 (Mac/Win, $449 [MSRP], $149 upgrade) offers a passel of new features along with a huge (33 GB) library upgrade. The library is spread across six collections: Band, Orchestral, Synth, Urban Beats, Vintage, and World. Urban Beats contains 50 drum-loop production kits with single-instrument loops for maximum flexibility. All in all, you get 1,000 instruments, each with its own customized control panel (called Performance View) for easy access to relevant parameters.

Kontakt 3 has an integrated sample editor, obviating the need to switch applications for destructive sample editing. The new Zone Envelopes feature enables you to draw modulation envelopes over the sample waveform of any zone. Among the loop-slicing improvements, you can drag-and-drop associated MIDI trigger files directly to a host sequencer. Automapping, which uses file names to determine a zone's Velocity and key range, lets you create your own mapping rules for decoding enigmatic sample names.

You get several new effects, including an amp/cabinet simulator. In addition, the Browser has been improved with automatic updating and an instrument navigator to select the instrument displayed in the rack for editing.

Neyrinck Mix 51

Neyrinck (www.neyrinck.com) has good news for Pro Tools LE and M-Powered users who want to start mixing in surround 5.1. Mix 51 (Mac/Win, $189) brings full-featured surround mixing to anyone who has an audio interface with at least six outputs, such as the Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro, 002, or 003 or the M-Audio Delta 1010 or FireWire 410. The package consists of three RTAS plug-ins — Surround Mixer, Surround Panner, and LFE Send — and supports sampling rates from 44.1 to 192 kHz. The plug-ins give you three independent 5.1 buses and three independent quad effects-send buses. Each bus has automatable volume, panning, mute, and solo with the same volume and panning tapers as Pro Tools HD, so you can transparently migrate projects directly to high-end Pro Tools rigs.

To use the Mix 51 system, you insert the Surround Panner plug-in on any track to route its output to any of the 5.1 buses as well as to any of the quad send buses, pre- or postfader. You then insert the Surround Mixer plug-in on at least one track, and it provides all 30 outputs of the mix and send buses as auxiliary output stems. Those outputs show up as inputs on other aux tracks for routing back into the Pro Tools mixer. Mix 51 requires an iLok Smart Key.

Apple Logic Studio

The big news from Apple (www.apple.com) is that Logic Pro has gotten a major and very user-friendly overhaul. Logic Studio (Mac, $499 [MSRP]) is a software suite that contains the upgraded Logic Pro 8 and is half the price of Logic Pro 7 alone. It comes with a bundle of other pro-level applications and 40 GB of content. Among the bundled applications, MainStage turns your MacBook or MacBook Pro into a stageworthy live-performance rig. Soundtrack Pro 2 combines multitrack audio editing with a slew of postproduction tools including video integration. Waveburner is a complete CD-mastering solution, and Compressor 3 is a full-featured surround encoding utility. In addition to Logic's Studio Instruments and Studio Effects collections, you get the Studio Sound Library with over 18,000 Apple Loops and more than 6,000 instrument and effects presets, including 1,300 multisampled EXS24 instruments.

The most dramatic part of Logic Pro 8's redesign is the new Arrange window, which has collapsible panes to consolidate 15 edit and browser areas into a unified work space (multiwindow screen sets are still available when you want them). Multiple recorded takes are now managed in expandable take folders, and Quick Swipe Comping provides a new way to create comps by just swiping over the best take segments. And finally, the XSkey dongle is gone, freeing up a USB port.

Download of the Month

ROLLOSONIC (WIN)

If you have a PC and you like to make noise, RolloSonic ($29.95) is for you. This sparsely documented and enigmatic modular synth's main claim to fame is that you control its sound by moving the mouse. There are lots of other ways to get sound out of it — MIDI control, internal note sequencer, and so on — but using the mouse is the most unusual and the most creative. It's also the most unpredictable; if you need to be in control of your sonic environment, look elsewhere (see Web Clip 1).

RolloSonic is a cordless modular synth; all inputs and outputs are selected from drop-down menus. The sound modules are rudimentary. You get an oscillator with several ways to control its waveform and noise mix as well as the Ding-Dong module, which generates notes with an FM-like sound. You can also process external audio. Audio processors include filters, distortion, delay, and a pitch-shifter. You can have multiple modules of each kind, and aside from a few mysteriously named parameters, hooking them up is straightforward. The secret is in controlling them.

As mentioned, you can use MIDI or the sequencer, but the intended (and more interesting) approach is to use some aspect of mouse motion. Options are variants of position, speed, direction, and inertia. You assign these options to sound-module control inputs to affect the sound. Things get even more interesting when you use Control Source and Effect modules. The purpose of some of these, like Control Offset and Control Echo, is obvious, but with others, like Control Neuron and Polyphonicator, it's anyone's guess. You can also use any audio signal as a control source, and because you can push the control-data rate into the audio range, you can use control sources in the audio signal path. Experimentation is the name of the game, and the absence of documentation makes RolloSonic a challenge, but 22 factory presets help point the way. Buy it or check out the fully functional demo at www.rollosonic.com.

BONUS MATERIAL
Web Clips: Listen to an audio clip of RolloSonic using the Oscillator and Ding-Dong modules