The sound of the Kantele is unique and useful in many music genres, both for strumming and arpeggio style playing and melodies.

The Finnish Concert Kantele is a 36 stringed (A#0 to A#5) concert Kantele recorded in stereo in 4 velocity layers and 4 round robin layers per velocity layer. We recorded 3 types of articulations/picking styles: Sustained (4 velocity layers, 4 round robin layers) Damped (4 velocity layers, 4 round robin layers) Sticks (1 velocity layer, 2 round robin layers).

The tonal range of the programs is B0-C6 All samples were recorded at 24 bits, and 44.1 Sample Rate. The SampleSet contains 1160 stereo WAV samples mapped in 9 programs for HALion 1.11 and above, 12 programs for Kontakt 2 and above, 1 scripted program for Kontakt 3 and above, and 13 programs for EXS24. The total size of the library uncompressed is 2.56GB.

Quite a lot of rumours circulate on Web about New products for the next winter NAMM...

- New software? (DAW, Virtual Instruments etc.)
- New Hardware synth? (Roland Fantom AS, korg little Kronos, Yamaha new expressive synth/keyboard, Nord new keyboard, Kurzweil's back...)
- New Audio Interface? (Thunderbolt, 16/16...)
Many forums talk about these rumours... And you? What do you think about new products?

Strobe is an AudioUnit effect plugin for rhythmic audio gating.

Its core is a sequencer that runs in perfectly precise sync with your DAW and lets you mute individual notes and sounds in a looped fashion. Thanks to variable timing, swing and gate shape Strobe can easily match the feel of any melodic or rhythmic part. It's a simple yet versatile effect that is essential in all styles of music - and it has an incredibly fun-to-use interface.

The oscillators, filters and envelopes closely model components found in some of the great monophonic and polyphonic synthesizers of yesteryear.

Modules can be mixed and matched so you can build hybrids, but what sets DIVA apart is the sheer authenticity of the analogue sound. This comes at the cost of quite a high CPU-hit, but we think it was worth it: Diva is the first native software synth that applies methods from industrial circuit simulators (e.g. PSpice) in realtime. The behaviour of zero-delay-feedback filters when pushed to the limit clearly demonstrates the advantages of this groundbreaking approach.

Steinberg has released a maintenance update for all three versions of WaveLab 7. Thanks to the valuable feedback that we received from our users, the 7.2.1 update addresses some crash bugs and other issues.

WaveLab 7.2.1 is now available free of charge from the Steinberg website. For detailed information on all fixes, please check the release notes on the download page.