BIAS Inc. releases Peak 3.1, a new version of their digital audio editing application. This upgrade adds support for QuickTime 6, encoding audio with Dolby's AAC, and several other feature enhancements. Based upon the recently released Peak 3, Peak 3.1 is native for Mac OS X and will also run under Mac OS 8.6 - 9.x. The upgrade will be available free of charge for owners of Peak 3.

Korg is introducing the KP-2, with even more effects, a powerful sampling function, and a host of other enhancements. Like its predecessor, the KP-2 allows real-time control over digital effects processing for any audio source (records/CDs/samplers/keyboards/voice).

Mackie Designs Inc. announces the arrival of Baby HUI into its growing family of touch-sensitive control surfaces. Baby HUI (US $799 MSRP) is the first affordable control surface that supports the HUI/MIDI-mapping protocol-allowing it to work right out of the box with any HUI-supported digital audio workstation (DAW) on PC or Macintosh platforms. The growing family of HUI-supported DAWs currently includes Mackie Broadcast Professional Soundscape 32, Mackie Mixtreme, Digidesign ProTools and Digi 001, MOTU Digital Performer, Steinberg Nuendo, Emagic MicroLogic and many others.

Word is that Apple could soon propose a "family license" for Mac OS 10.2 that would cover installation on up to 5 computers (200$) while license for one computer is 129$.

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS has announced the availability of a crossgrade to its sampling program KONTAKT for all registered HALion, EXS and Gigastudio users.

In addition to standard sample playback and manipulation abilities, KONTAKT features realtime time-stretching and resynthesis, graphical breakpoint envelopes, an integrated loop editor, analog-modelled filters and visually displayed modulation. It also includes a sample library containing more than three gigabytes of sounds in various styles and categories.

The KONTAKT 1.1 Mac release and PC update also introduces some exciting additions to the current functionality, such as EXS, HALion, and SDII file import, a greatly improved auto-search function and other enhancements. Additionally, NATIVE INSTRUMENTS is developing EMU (EIII, ESI ...