Remix Fight is an online community that has bi-monthly remix competitions. Download a track in the form of a bunch of loops, remix it and submit your remix for judging by the community.

This is a great source of new tracks to practise your mixing skillz on. For best results, don’t listen to anybody else’s mix or ideas until you’ve finished your own. Then listen to all the other entries and think about how they approached their mix.

From the website:

How do I enter a competition?

To enter, visit the upcoming fights page (http://www.remixfight.org/mt-archive/cat_loops.shtml) and download the loops provided there, make a remix using whatever means you have at your disposal (see remixing resources if you have none), and then e-mail an mp3 of it to entries@remixfight.org with your artist name, artist website (if you’ve got one), mix title, and a short blurb about your mix.

Pocket Lint gave quite a positive review to the StikAx. However, this was mostly because they liked the TrakAx software that comes with it — they thought the controller itself didn’t really add much to the package.

They write: “As it goes, this is a nicely bundled package and an interesting stance on editing. The capture of existing images and the editing isn’t reliant on the device- it’s merely the catalyst for making the process more exciting, tactile and accessible. With 450 samples of a broad range of dance music, licensed software and a plug and play device, this is well priced at 89.99, if this sort of thing tickles your fancy. Remember though, Grandmaster Flash started on old, home made kit and there are many Rebirth style edit suites available out there in freeware land. If you are thinking of mixing images, you probably got something as competent thrown in with your camcorder. All the same, it made my Sunday more ‘urban’. Needs more time to get to grips with, but I wouldn’t say no to another go.”

They give the list price as 90 UK pounds, but I believe the actual retail price is 50.

“Mixing decent tunes with this is about as easy as mixing cement with a toothpick.”

T3 Magazine has reviewed the Ministry of Sound StikAx. Many people like the StikAx for its innovative styling and emphasis on simplicity. But not T3. They basically think it’s a piece of junk. They don’t like the hardware quality, the design, the software or even the samples, which they think are 15 years out of date. The end of the review sums it up: “It all adds up to a very disappointing experience.”

The Ministry of Sound StikAx is a handheld controller for live mixing of music and video. The concept is similar to the music mixing games available for various game consoles, except that it looks like a retro sci-fi ray gun. It’s obviously not a serious musician’s tool, but would be fun to have lying around. It might even be useful for musical brainstorming

The publicity on the StikAx web site says: “The Ministry of Sound StikAx is a fun, easy-to-use, real-time music mixer that you hold in your hand.

With the StikAx, you can take any music or video content, simply assign it to buttons on the StikAx and mix your music and video on the fly; be it a remix of the latest hit or your own unique creation, allowing you the freedom to experiment and also the freedom to use your intuition as to how it should sound or look. All your creations are recorded event by event, so if you create something great, it’s saved for you. You can then re-edit the piece using professional effects and settings – it’s all provided. Now you’re ready to share your creations with your friends, family or even impress a record boss! – it’s a studio in your hands.

The software can support multiple StikAxs; friends can mix together; Dad can create the home movie while Jimmy creates the accompanying soundtrack; or two burgeoning DJs can create remixes together without arguing whose turn it is next on the computer keyboard. Music and video should be entertaining, creative and interactive – with the StikAx it finally is.

The StikAx is an USB plug-and-play device, simply hook it up to your PC and you are mixing. It bypasses the need for expensive and complicated midi hardware and software and the associated learning curve that goes with the midi protocol.

At its basic level, the StikAx is a fun, easy-to-use, interactive multimedia experience. As the user progresses with the StikAx, they are able to create unique music and video content and interact with that content in real-time for an increasingly intense experience in entertainment and creativity. It is not limited to any audio-visual genre and is equally appealing to fans of dance to jazz, from classical to hip hop. With virtually unlimited sources of audio and video input, the StikAx is the most affordable and comprehensive real-time multimedia production offering available.

The buttons and LED light beam on the StikAx are used as triggering devices to mix any combination of music, video and special effects that the user selects. The StikAx in combination with the TrakAx software provides real-time interaction, that is captured by the software and presented in the Mixing Palate for saving, editing or remixing.”

HALion Player is a new software sampler from Steinberg. It’s a cut-down and simplified version of their HALion 3 engine — more like a ROM-based sampler than a flexible software sampler. But it’s much cheaper than the full HALion 3.

The website has more details: Tailored to newcomers to virtual sampling, HALion Player puts many of the next-generation technologies available on the HALion sampling platform behind a sleek, no-frills interface. HALion Player is the perfect choice for any User searching for a stable, easy to use and affordable sample content playback module for VST, DXi2, AU and any Rewire environment. It provides a low-cost yet high-quality way of playing any of the hundreds of commercially available HALion libraries as well as Wav / Aif / Rex / Rex2 / Zgr and LM4 instrument files.

HALion Player includes the full HALion 3 sound library, consisting of a broad selection of highest quality instrument and drum sounds, and utilizes the award-winning, surround-capable HALion 3 playback engine. HALion Player also offers the outstanding Waldorf filters and disk-streaming power that have helped establish HALion 3 as one of the top virtual samplers available today in terms of both sound quality and performance.

The unique Q-Control concept introduced in the new HALion 3.1 version provides HALion Player with an adaptable set of sound-shaping controls. All HALion libraries include predefined Q-Controls which have been assigned to a certain set of parameters by the content creator and are chosen to ideally suit shaping and forming sound for that program. This allows a high degree of flexibility in altering and shaping sounds with HALion Player, while keeping functional clutter to a minimum.

The advanced HALion Player program loading facilities unify finding, selecting and loading a sound for quick, no-hassle access to even the largest HALion sample libraries. HALion Player also offers 256-voice polyphony delivering pristine 32-bit audio to up to 256 audio outputs into the mixer of the host application.

Features

• Award-winning HALion 3 technology at a very affordable price
• Ultra easy user interface, clean, handy and easy to understand even for beginners, simply can’t misused
• Includes the full HALion 3 sound library, consisting of a broad selection of highest quality instrument and drum sounds
• Loads and plays back any HALion HSB, fxp and fxb Content
• Allows import and keyboard mapping of Wav / Aif / Rex / Rex2 / ZGR and LM4 files
• Q-Controls – 8 Content pre-defined Sound shaping parameters per program allows instant fun while tweaking without the need to understand the complex architecture creating the Sound. Remote controllable with the all new set & forget MIDI learn mode.
• Sound Category System support, no difference between finding, selecting and loading a Sound
• 256 Voices polyphony and a maximum of 256 audio outputs, 16 sounds on 16 MIDI channels simultaneously per instance
• Connects to everything: VST, DXi2, AU, Rewire and standalone

Studio Reviews give Waves IR-1 Convolution Reverb a very good review. They found the reverb to be “smooth, very clean and detailed. The vocals or instruments being used with the Wave impulses sound like they were recorded in the venues. With synthesized reverb units, a lot of times it sounds like you’re adding a reverb on top of the signal. But with the Waves impulses (as well as many third-party impulses) you get the impression that the signal was recorded in the room you chose.” Of course, this puts demands on the host computer: they recommend a Pentium IV or G5 with a minimum of 1 gig of ram to run it smoothly.

They also like the interface; they “found the IR-1 to be very straight forward and easy to use. The screen display is very neat and organized and pleasant to the eyes. ” This makes it easy to take advantage of the plugin’s flexibility: “Being able to adjust early reflections, tails, size, damping, changing the EQ and other features makes it very flexible. If you alter the controls modestly, you can get different character and size while still retaining the great sound.”

They like the included impulse responses, which contain “some very amazing impulses.”: “The software comes with two CD-ROMs with over 60 room types from auditoriums, theaters, small rooms, medium halls, churches, recording studios, outdoors, opera houses, amphitheaters, clubs, stairwells, car interiors, and stadiums. Plus there are 60 different hardware device presets as well.” So you can get that genuine “car interior” sound without having to drag your equipment down to the garage.

And it’s not just the included impulses, it’s what you can do with them: “if you want more control and flexibility, I easily can recommend the Waves IR-1. On the Waves web site, there are additional impulses you can download as well giving you more venues to choose from. However you cannot download any of the Waves impulses unless you have an IR-1. It should be noted that not all impulses are done with great care and skill that Waves has taken. Many just use the balloon method, which can reflect in reverbs that don’t have the same intimate detailed sound that Waves offers with their impulses.”

IR-1 is available in a full and a light version. The light version, called IR-L, has the same sound and uses all the same impulses, but has limited controls compared to the full version. It’s also cheaper.

The reviewer was initially skeptical about IR-1, but the quality won him over: “Before I reviewed the IR-1, my feeling was most of us just need one of the cheaper plug-ins above, with convolution impulses available online. However after comparing the IR-1 to the other packages, I feel the additional flexibility justifies the higher price. … So if you want high end impulses and great flexibility, I recommend looking closely at the Waves IR-1. I had no choice but to buy this amazing reverb.”

Atmogen 1.02, the visual additive synthesizer from the intriguingly-named Sonorous Codes, has been reviewed by Electronic Musician magazine: “The program gives you enormous sound-design potential, allowing you to use tools that are more closely associated with image editing in order to generate and process sound files.” You’ll need a fast computer with a lot of hard disk space, but they said they had no stability problems at all during their testing.

They offer a recap of Atmogen’s sound design interface. The sound is represented as a bitmap image on the screen: “Atmogen uses the brightness of each pixel to control amplitude, color to control pan position (green is left, yellow is center, and red is right), and the vertical position of the pixel for frequency. The resolution of the sound rendering is completely user adjustable. For example, an image can be “quantized” to produce just a few sine waves, or it can control up to 1,024 complex waveforms simultaneously.”

A number of the tools in Atmogen are described — the graphical editing tools, and the Markers and Layers to help organize your sound/image — and there are also a number of effects available, as you might expect. They work well, but aren’t that easy to use: “Though the number and range of the Effects is impressive, most are not well documented, and no usage tips are given as a rule. But with a little trial and error, you can figure out their functions and how they might be useful.”

As with other similar programs, Atmogen looks like a tool for the more experimental musician or sound designer: “Atmogen is a deep program, with layers and layers of controls. It’s hugely adaptable to experimentation and can provide endless raw material for your sonic explorations.” However, perhaps because of its experimental nature, they feel the documentation is a bit lacking.

In the end, Atmogen gets a rating of 4.5 out of 5: “for anyone on the PC who is interested in exploring a wholly new approach to working with sound, atmogen is a great resource. There are a few other image-to-sound programs available (Rasmus Ekman’s Coagula comes to mind), but atmogen has far more power. The program is so ripe for interactive experimentation that you just might want to put away the manual and spend a few hours (make that, a few days!) uncovering atmogen’s many treasures.”

Computer Music’s review of Reason 3 runs through the features of this program, starting off by noting that Reason is a complex but closed solution, which can be a blessing and a curse — no third-party plug-ins can be used, and in this new version, no new generators (instruments) are included.

Having said that, the review enthusiastically goes through the things that are included. The new Compressor and EQ get top marks: “The MClass EQ is perfect for making tonal corrections with surgical precision and silky smoothness.” But what they really love is the vastly expanded support for MIDI control surfaces: “The improved support provides an incredible level if integration that has to be seen to be believed.”

The big new feature is, of course, the Combinator, which allows multiple instruments and effects to be combined into a single entity. They say “A high level of routing flexibility has always been a big and useful part of the Reason experience — with the addition of combinator, the whole concept has been taken a significant step further. It’s simply brilliant.”

What else? They love the improved responsiveness; they love the higher quality audio export (audio can be dithered from 32 bits to 24 or 16). The thing nobody loves about Reason is its sequencer, and this review is no exception. They say the Sequencer is “beginning to look quite primitive and dated these days, and as a result, many of our pet hates relating to it remain.”

The conclusion in a nutshell is that you shouldn’t expect to be blown away, but this is a very high quality product nonetheless: “this revision represents a significant and positive step forward, but it’s perhaps not quite as earth-shattering as some would have hoped. … [but] rest assured that it’ll take some considerable time for even the most dedicated and imaginative fan to discover what this new and improved version is really capable of.”

The Atmogen visual additive synth by Sonorous Codes brings visual sound design to the PC. Mac users have had MetaSynth for years; now Windowsers will be able to join this strange and wonderful party. Atmogen uses up to 1024 oscillators, which are combined to form its sound output. The neat thing is that the oscillators are each displayed as a multicoloured line — the lines are stacked on top of each other to form a 2-dimensional picture that you can edit directly to create your sound. Like MetaSynth, you can edit the picture in any ordinary graphics program before bringing it back to Atmogen to hear it.

Sonourous Codes say it well on their website: “It is your very own decision whether you use atmogen sounds for the purpose of post production, video games, web applications or anything similar or simply feed your sampler with it to use it in your music. Basically, every imaginable sound can be produced with atmogen. The concept of atmogen is versatile to the extent that really everything is possible. atmogen can prove its quality best when the user demands a fresh and innovative sound.”

Here is a summary of some of the most important features.

Export audio files
Import audio files
Import and export image files
Graphical user interface — atmogen’s user interface provides anything you need to create and to modify images. Consequently, the user interface may remind you of an image processing software although the concept of atmogen does not intend to create cute graphics. The only goal is to achieve applicable sound results. Thus, you will work more efficiently with the native tools of atmogen than with any other software being designed only for a graphical purpose.
Up to 1024 oscillators
Flexible graphical envelope
Layer objects — You can use those little images like paper shreds on a layout pad. Thus, the use of layer objects is extremely intuitive. While creating such a layer object the contents area of the background will be moved into the object. Afterwards you can move, rotate freely, resize, duplicate and erase it again.
Tempo/Grid
Markers
Effects — Various image effects change either the whole image or a single layer object abruptly. Beside those well known pedants such like a luxurious blur filter or a simple edge detection from various image processing software this section offers a variety of specialized actions. Those will animate you to experiment with and are developed only to produce valuable and sensible sound results. A real highlight among the effect filters is definitely the graphical EQ. With its 100 bands you can mesh with the frequency spectrum of a project extremely precisely.

Electronic Musician review Steinberg WaveLab 5.01a and emphasise its multimedia capabilities: “Among the most important new features are tools for DVD-Audio (DVD-A) authoring and production, an integrated video track, and track-based effects and level controls. Combined with the large number of professional-quality VST mastering and effects plug-ins, WaveLab 5 is a powerful media production environment.”

They are pleased that WaveLab 5 finally allows control of individual track levels, and also track-based effects. They give a lot of space to the new DVD-A authoring capabilities, as well as the new surround-sound functions.

I have always thought that support is very important for any complex program, and the review says that Steinberg have this covered. “WaveLab’s support is excellent — the comprehensive printed manual is more than 700 pages. … There is online support through the Help menu option in addition to context-sensitive help for many of the program’s features. There is also an active users forum, which is moderated by WaveLab’s principal developer, Philippe Goutier.”

Their final numerical rating across their categories is 17.5 out of a possible 20. If you are current user wondering whether to upgrade, they say you’ll make your decision based on whether you need the new DVD-A and multimedia features. For everyone else, “if you’re looking to move into a multitrack audio editor that supports many of the hottest new-media technologies available today, has a friendly interface, and can help manage not only your audio assets but also all of the files on your system, WaveLab is an excellent choice.”