Last year Avid decided to combine all of their brands (including Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius) into one unified Avid brand. During the past year Avid have been working hard to transition Digidesign to the Avid name. Below is an 'Open Letter' to all Digidesign customers to share information, answer questions, and explain how the changes will affect them.

"New website launching April 12th
Many of you told us that we needed to improve the navigation, organization, and the overall user experience of digidesign.com. In order to make these improvements, a major overhaul was necessary. On April 12th, we're going to launch a brand new avid.com website that will include all of the digidesign.com pages—plus a number of enhancements to make navigation faster and easier. At first, the website will be US-only, but over the next few months, we'll work on moving the international Digidesign websites as well. To help you get acclimated, we'll be posting an interim page at digidesign.com offering links straight to the pages that are most important to you.

Why move the website to Avid.com?

MellowMuse has announced the release of the CP2V Vintage Compressor plug-in.

The vintage styled CP2V is a track and program compressor that captures the smoothness and harmonic richness of analogue circuits, in an easy to use package. Turning the Compression control gradually increases the compression ratio while lowering the threshold. The Drive level is then used to adjust for the drop in output and to add saturation to the compressed signal.

With ease of use being a primary goal, the preset attack and release times mean there's no searching for the sweet spot. All compression and saturation algorithms are 4x oversampled using 64-bit internal processing for increased clarity and resolution.

Priced at $79, the CP2V is available for Windows and Mac OS X in VST, AU and RTAS effect plug-in formats.

ESI unveils the KeyControl 25 XT and the KeyControl 49 XT Controller Keyboard. Here is what they say about it :

"KeyControl 25 XT and KeyControl 49 XT have an exceptionally stylish aluminum cabinet and white solid glossy plastic side panels. They provide four fully programmable endless encoders, function buttons as well as a pitch bend and modulation slider. The keyboards work without the installation of any drivers under Windows XP, Window Vista and Windows 7 as well as Mac OS X.

KeyControl 25 XT and KeyControl 49 XT are bundled with Cubase LE 5 from Steinberg, the amazingly powerful multitrack audio & MIDI software for Mac and PC."

Thermionic Culture has presented the Freebird, a 3 Channel valve EQ.

Company director Nick Terry explains : "We've introduced a new product that can be considered as part of a modular system, in our own unique style of course. The Freebird has 3 channels of broad but versatile valve EQ. The unit is a half rack design but can be put together in a 19 inch rack case with another unit to give 6 channels of EQ.

There will be other products in this format to follow, so

Avid has announced the release of the Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack, featuring all five Digidesign's virtual instruments - Structure, Strike, Velvet, Transfuser and Hybrid.

This pack is available now and carries a USMSRP of $499. Upgrade options for existing customers are also available.