Spectrasonics Stylus RMX has been updated — Stylus RMX 1.5 is now available. It’s the same price as previous versions, or free to registered users of the previous version. Major new features include a completely redesigned and expanded patch library, support for many more hardware controllers, and a Chaos Designer “Buzz” feature. The “Buzz” allows many interesting effects including “unusual tonal buzzing noises” to add that little bit of glitchy fun to your next laptop gig. (more…)

Purity, from Korean outfit Luxonix (”for Youth, Ambition, and Love of Music”), is an all-in-one music workstation in software. It runs as a standalone synth, or as a VST or AU plug-in. It’s a 16-part multi-instrument with 24 built-in effects, and an integrated mixer and sequencer. There’s also a patch editor and preset browser, Luxonix are the makers of the Ravity software ROMpler, so if you liked that then Purity looks to be worth considering. (more…)

CHRONOStream is a timestretching and pitch correction application from Japanese software house PSoft. Its interface allows you to independently vary the pitch and tempo of a track while it is playing. You can also shift the formant of a vocal track to change the character of a voice — for example, male to female. (more…)

Keyboard magazine reviews the String Studio VST instrument from Applied Acoustics Systems. This is a physical modelling (or modeling, if you prefer) synth that lets you customize and tweak sounds to a great level of detail. They say it’s a bit on the esoteric side, and not exactly cheap, but on the other had it can take you to the “land of magical weirdness” so it’s got to be worth investigating. (more…)

Manytone Music, makers of the ManyStation sample-based VST instrument, are shortly going to release ManyGuitar. A good guitar synth is a wonderful thing, so it will be good to hear ManyGuitar when it comes out. There are no details yet on the Manytone website, but an unofficial press release was posted on the busy KVR forums. Here are the details — ManyGuitar is due out next month, so that could mean tomorrow. (more…)

SampleRobot is a sampler designed to automatically sample MIDI instruments. It effectively lets you copy your hardware instruments onto your computer, which will save space if nothing else. Computer Music magazine reviews this program and says, “SampleRobot is like the second engineer you always wished you had. We’ve seen other programs that work along similar lines, but none of them are as complete as this one.” They like its ease of use — you connect everything up, select parameters for which notes and patches you want to sample, then “a tap of the record button sets the app to work. It tells your outboard gear which patches and notes to sound and records the results.” (more…)

Sibelius 4, the latest version of the industry-standard scoring application, is heavily praised in the latest Computer Music magazine. They give it their Editor’s Choice award and say good things about its power and ease of use: “For composers and arrangers, Sibelius works beautifully as a musical word processor. … There’s a shortcut for almost anything you might want to do, and it’s in this area that Sibelius scores (ahem) over its rivals.” (more…)

Camel Audio have released version 1.6 of Cameleon 5000, their additive synthesizer which specialises in pads and evolving textures. The update adds an improved noise generator with key tracking for brighter, crisper sounds, an improved reverb, key tracking on the filter, improved editing abilities as well as other feature enhancements and bug fixes. (more…)

Computer Music magazine reviews the Synful Orchestra plugin. They give it full credit for its new approach to orchestral synthesis, and say the sounds you can get from it are very good — “You can come up with realistic results in Orchestra within mninutes of firing it up.” The user interface is simple and the various parameters are preset appropriately, so “it really is very easy to use.” (more…)

Steinberg’s Virtual Bassist VST instrument gets a review in Computer Music magazine, who give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. First impressions count for a lot, and they call the Virtual Bassist user interface well-designed and clearly laid out; “The controls all hang together well, and allow you to sculpt an impressively broad range of tones.” (more…)