The TimewARP 2600 is a digital software emulation of the classic ARP 2600 analog synthesizer. It’s sufficiently impressive that it is apparently the only ARP 2600 emulation product endorsed by the creator of the original ARP 2600, Alan R. Pearlman. The great thing about it is that the emulation runs very deep; you can “mistakenly” patch the wrong things to each other and the weird noises you’ll get are the same weird noises you’d get with the original hardware. There are some improvements over the original too — of course you can save your patches, and it has 8 voice polyphony compared to the original mono synth. (more…)

Apple Soundtrack Pro gets a good review in Mix magazine. Soundtrack Pro is Apple’s full-featured audio editor, a much more powerful version of their old Soundtrack software. Soundtrack Pro is available on its own, or as a part of the Final Cut Studio video editing software suite. This includes Final Cut Pro 5, DVD Studio Pro 4 and Motion 2, and these three programs work together with Soundtrack Pro. The review talks about his integration, calling it “seamless”, and also has some very good things to say about Final Cut Pro towards the end. However, most of the piece describes Soundtrack Pro’s features and how well they work in normal conditions. (more…)

The Australian newspaper’s IT section doesn’t often review music software, but they’ve just published a look at Sony’s Acid Pro 5. It’s a pretty bright and breezy review — hey start by comparing Acid to the obvious competition, Apple’s Garageband. Among Acid Pro 5’s many features, they mention the Groove Mapper quantisation tool as being ripe with possibilities. And even though the review is short, there is one simple nugget of wisdom that we should all keep in mind: “While no actual instrumental or vocal ability is required, you need your wits about you and a modicum of taste to aid in the development of the music.” (more…)

Remix magazine reviews Pro Tools M-Powered by Digidesign and M-Audio. They note that this version makes Pro Tools quite affordable, and even the cut-down version included in Pro Tools M-Powered is still a powerful music production system. “In light of the new level of accessibility that Pro Tools M-Powered offers, those who may have overlooked Pro Tools in the past should consider giving it another look, especially if you already own an approved M-Audio interface. Even if you don’t make Pro Tools your primary sequencer, learning the software and having the application available make working on other people’s projects and remixes that much easier.” (more…)

AVOX is a new “vocal toolkit” from Antares that enables you to radically transform vocal tracks. Apart from the expected choir effect, de-esser and so on, this package lets you actually remodel a singer’s vocal path, from lungs to lips. The amount of control you have is almost grotesque: “THROAT’s graphical Throat Shaping display allows you to individually adjust the position and width of five points in the vocal tract model, from the vocal cords, through the throat, mouth and out to the lips.” You can be Dr Frankenstein in the privacy of your own laptop studio. (more…)

Music Tech magazine reviews Candy, Yellow Tools’ saxophone ROMpler. Yellow Tools have built their own sample playback engine, and in this case they use it to deliver 9GB of saxophone samples covering the spectrum of sax and reed types. (more…)

NINJAM (Novel Intervallic Network Jamming Architecture for Music) is another way of making music collaboratively (a fancy word for “in a group”) over the Internet. This looks to run as a separate application — route audio through it, and it collects the other participants’ audio and allows you to mix it in real time. I like the way it handles network latency — instead of trying to minimise it, NINJAM automatically increases the delay to the nearest whole measure. So, as the website says, “when you play through an interval, you’re playing along with the previous interval of everybody else, and they’re playing along with your previous interval. If this sounds pretty bizarre, it sort of is, until you get used to it, then it becomes pretty natural. In many ways, it can be more forgiving than a normal jam, because mistakes propagate differently.” (more…)

Remix magazine has reviewed Ableton Live 5 and say it’s the best version yet. The Track Freeze feature is an “absolute miracle,” and Clip handling also receives top marks for simplicity and usefulness. Even the included effects get a glowing description: “For all of you tweakers out there, Live 5 ships chock-full of fresh new audio effects: Beat Repeat, Auto Pan, Phaser, Flanger, Saturator, Arpeggiator (a MIDI effect) and an updated Simpler. To describe Beat Repeat, Ableton’s product information used the word addictive, and I couldn’t agree more.” (more…)

The Didj’tizer from Virtuasonic is a VST plugin that emulates the sound of a didgeridoo. Very neat, and sounds pretty good too. It takes me back a few years to the Aphex Twin’s fantastic track Didgeridoo, which consisted of a drum machine and a didg sound generated by a homemade sound box. Now you can do it yourself in software, though it won’t be as good because you’re not the Aphex Twin. (more…)

E-MU have updated the software bundle that comes with their audio production hardware. Their Production Tools Software Bundle is an impressive collection of software, including versions of Ableton Live, Cubase, and Wavelab amongst others. It’s also available separately to existing owners of E-MU audio production systems. They say: “The new Production Tools Software Bundle is now shipping with all of E-MU’s Digital Audio Systems, as well as Proteus X and Emulator X Studio. This powerful software bundle includes a comprehensive collection of software — everything you need to create, record, edit, master and burn your music.” (more…)