LinPlug announces the release of the Bigtone Ambient Signature Set for Albino 2. It takes Albino to a different soundscape. Over 520 professional patches from the mind of Nico Herz from Bigtone, well organized into categories : 32 Ambient Synth patches, 36 Arpegiator patches, 80 Bass patches, 89 Drum patches, 54 Fx patches, 13 Keys patches, 12 Oldschool Synth patches, 10 One Fingered Arps patches, 79 Pads patches, 25 Semi Real patches, 49 Sequence patches and 44 Trance-Techno Synth patches.

The Bigtone Ambient Signature Set is available for online purchase from the LinPlug website as $79.

NUSofting releases HarpTime and Microrock, in both Audio Units and VSTi formats for Mac OS X. HarpTime is a virtual reproduction of the Celtic harp and others, such as Japanese Koto, Paraguayan and African harps. Microrock is a monophonic synthesizer made for bass, lead and powerchord lines, designed to give aggressive and expressive sound for solos and riffs.

Harptime Pro costs $59.90, Harptime Fun is $29.90 and Microrock Pro $46.90.

Rax is a virtual rack for live Audio units hosting. Granted Software updated it to version 1.2.2, and it now features : mixer channel Mute is now remote controllable, setting mixer channel volume to zero eliminates instrument load on CPU, MIDI notes are no longer buffered when a rack is deactivated or a channel is muted, and external sync is now passing through tempo data to all AudioUnits.

Fraunhofer IIS, Thomson and Agere Systems have announced the launching of MP3 "surround". Its caracteristics are roughly the following : high resolution support, the final file size will weigh half as much as a file normally zipped in this norm, format compatible with all existing MP3 players and softwares.

The player/encoder for Mac OS X will be available on December 17th.

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