News Archive for May 2000

27-5-00
Thanks to Chef for our, and his/her, first bank for the Pro-Five, you can grab it HERE

25-5-00
r.u.sirius has sent us two more banks, one for the Neon and one for the VB-1

Also, we've decided to run a survey to find out which Audio/Sound cards are most efficient for VSTi's. All we want to know is what Audio Card you are using and the Latency you can achieve so we can compile a useful list to help people decide what to buy!

Click HERE to take part!

20-5-00
Two more cheap and nasty kits from r.u.sirius for the LM-4

• Memory Rhythm SR-88
• Sonor Mini Mammut

13-5-00
We've added a forum for VSTi discussion, I know there are a few Cubase forums already and maybe there isn't room for another one but we'll see how the experiment goes over the next few weeks to see if its worth keeping!

Please only use it for Pro Audio discussion, preferably only about VSTi's and other Soft Synths. If people start trading warez or links to warez I'll have to close it down.

OK, lecture over, go discuss something!
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LinPlug have sent us a cool bank of sounds for their superb free GakStoar Alpha synth

We've got 3 very unusual kits for the LM-4 from r.u.sirius (Possibly not his real name )

• Nanoloop is a weird Lo-Fi kit created from the Nintendo GameBoy sequencer of the same name
• Vermona DRM is an old (1987) drum machine from the former German Democratic Republic
• Wurlitzer Sideman is from 1959!!
  A beat box based on tube technology....... :)

Staying with the LM-4 Christian Riesenmey from Steinberg has sent us some drum maps for the kits included on the LM-4 CD

• Standard Kits [PC]
• Wizoo Kits [PC]
• Standard Kits [Mac]

A technical hitch has prevented us from bringing you the Wizoo [Mac] drum maps (We've lost them ) we'll bring them to you as soon as we can!

10-5-00
OK, we've removed the VSTi survey for now as the results were pretty consistent. Check out the final results HERE.

It suggests that the great :Wizoo kits that are on the LM-4 CD, or the excellent 512 pre-sets included with the Pro-Five just aren't enough for a lot of you as they were the biggest requests by a long shot. We'll endeavour to bring you sounds for these and other VSTi's in the near future, with a little help from anyone out there who owns either of them:

Attention LM-4 & Pro-Five owners please send us any Banks, Patches, Kits, etc. that you have created so we can share them with the rest of the community

I'll echo this request to anyone creating their own patches for other VSTi's, please send them in.

31-5-00
Any Yamaha DX-7 users out there? Gabriel Landini has contacted us as he is building a DX-7 like softsynth in SynC Modular and he needs some feedback form DX-7 owners to improve it. The module (DX-G) can be downloaded from HERE (a copy of SynC Modular is necessary, the demo version should work OK)

There are also a few other SynC modules for download

30-5-00
Virtual Sampler v2.0 has reached final release status, they've redesigned their website too so go check it out

Waldorf have updated the PPG Wave 2.V for PC to v1.09 - get it HERE

• MIDI Program Change messages are evaluated properly during "Export Audio"
• Volume and Cutoff parameter smoothed
• Does not cause Wavelab 3.0 to quit anymore

Arturia have updated Storm to v1.1

• 5 extra modules
• MP3 encoding now supported
• Quantization
• Better performance - The sound synthesis algorithms are faster and the performance of the graphical display is improved
• Multilingual support (French, English and German)

27-5-00
Ces has released the PC version of cesSynth5 Drum Synth, as we said before before this is a drum synth not just a sample playback module and is well worth checking out. Ces also announced cesSynth6 "a highly optimised drawbar organ"

Also BitHeadz have opened their Patch Post for users to exchange Retro AS-1 patches!

The LM-4 kit editor Kreator has recently been updated to Beta 2

They've also redone their website with lots more info on the soon to be released Electron, and, sadly, the Atom is no longer available for download although you can still email them for a copy

Native Instruments have updated Reaktor to v2.3.2 [PC only]

20-5-00
Here's something to get you all making patches, Cubase.net have 3 copies of the new PPG Wave 2.V to give away in a new promotion. All you have to do is submit your best patches for either Neon/VB-1, Model-E, or Pro-Five.

What are you waiting for?

19-5-00
FXpansion have released a public beta of DR-005 for the Mac. It isn't mentioned on their site but you can grab it HERE [Mac]

16-5-00
News of a new VSTi today, Rainbow is a comprehensive 4 Oscillator virtual FM synth, it looks great and sounds as good as it looks. Its only in beta at the moment but is due for release hopefully in June. Check out a screenshot HERE [PC]

11-5-00
cesSynth5 updated to v1.0 [Mac]

• Distortion control for the tuned oscillators
• Note velocity can affect the filter frequency and note volume
• 'Solo' switch which restricts the polyphony for a channel using the program to a single note
• A sample accurate version is available to buy for $20

Virtual Sampler 2 has been updated to Public Release Candidate 3

10-5-00
Bram's released a Mac beta of OnePingOnly so all you Mac users can now go and check out his weirdness :)

9-5-00
SynC Modular updated to v1.74 [PC]

• Improved MIDI timing in DirectX output mode (down to 1ms)
• New sampling rates available
• Controller value shown in ctrl-click info
• Bug fixes

8-5-00
FXpansion released DR-005 Drum Sampler today [PC] (For spec see news 5-5-00)

7-5-00
LinPlug have updated both GakStoar Alpha & Delta to v1.15 [PC]

• MIDI Program Change added
• The depth of the filter envelope can now be modified using a new parameter in the filter section

cesSynth4 (Bass Guitar) announced and cesSynth5 (Drum Synth) beta v0.1 [Mac] released - NOTE: This is a drum synth not just a sample playback module, Mac only at the moment

5-5-00
SynC Modular has been updated to v1.72 [PC]

FXpansion have announced DR-002's commercial big brother - DR-005 [PC]

• 16 drum channels
• 32 voice poly
• 4 stereo outs w/ panning
• Pitch (+/- 1 oct.), Pitch decay and Amplitude decay controls
• Layering up to 4 samples
• Incredibly low CPU consumption
• Better-than-24-bit internal mixing and processing
• Two choke groups for hi-hats etc.
• Loads ANY *.wav file, from the front panel
• Full settings export including samples

Check out a screenshot HERE

2-5-00
Kreator Beta 1 LM-4 Drum Kit editor has been released, this looks very promising and is freeware [PC]