Violence is the latest release from Vir2 Instruments. It's a collection of instruments focusing on extremely unusual textures, manglings, distortions, and perspectives on the solo violin.

Violence features a variety of controls which are custom-designed for each of its 82 instruments. The instruments are subdivided into four major category folders:

• Drum Kits
• Melodic
• Pads and SFX
• Tempo Synced

Depending on the instrument loaded, appropriate knobs for tweaking the instrument appear in the interface, such as:

• Quantization
• Envelope controls (attack and release)
• Stereo spread
• Lopass and hipass filters
• Layer blend controls
• Effects (reverb, delay, drive, flanger, vibrato, rotator, wobble, and others)
• Autopan control
• Repeater

Powered by the Kontakt engine, Violence is compatible with VST, AudioUnit, and RTAS (Pro Tools 7 & 8) plug-in formats and is priced at $99.95.

BPM 1.5 is out ! This update adds many new features, plus 4 GB of additional sounds for over 19 GB of included kits, patterns, loops, and samples.

Beat Box Anthology
TR 808…LinnDrum…SP1200… Iconic rhythm machines from decades past that brought us legendary sounds that still drive today's beats. BPM delivers the sounds of 80 such classic machines from the 1970's, 80's and 90's — a massive 4 GB collection of legacy rhythm sounds, combined with BPM's updated 1.5 library, for an unprecedented 19 GB, by far the most extensive rhythm sound library available.

More musical styles
Updated soundbanks deliver kits, patterns and sounds for many additional musical styles, including big beat, dancehall, dub, electro, jungle, hard trance, house, jungle-drum bass, minimal, progressive, vinylized and others. With BPM's FlexLoop technology, you control every loop element, from individual samples to FX parameters. Combine kits and patterns from each style to quickly create unique hybrid beats.

Hip Hop Evolution by Samplecraze is another 'Inspired By' sample pack and the artiste of today is the legendary and notable Pete Rock.

396 drum samples broken into drum specific categories and comprising: 116 deep ass kicks, 116 magical snares, 116 chunky and fizzing hi hats and 48 assorted percussive samples to help add flavour and fill your beat productions.

Treated and processed by some of the best dynamics from the Samplecraze studio these drum samples will flap the cones and cut through any club PA.

Pricing : £11.99/$23.99

Limited time only! Purchase a qualifying POD Studio USB audio interface between August 1 and 31, 2010, and receive up to $40 back instantly!

The discount amount depends on which POD Studio you buy; you will save $20 on the POD Studio GX, $30 on the POD Studio UX1, and $40 on the POD Studio UX2.

For details, please visit :

Sample Logic has announced the release of Metalix for Ableton Live.

Metallix is a toolkit of morphed metallic instruments, percussives, atmospheric soundscapes, pads, and tempo-synced audio loops for cinematic music production. Based on recorded metallic instruments and sounds, the instruments (presets) and clips (loops) are seamlessly integrated into Ableton Live, which makes for a smooth workflow with easy to use intuitive user controls. Each instrument uses Live's Rack format, with the 8 Macro Controls meticulously mapped to provide powerful top-level control for immediate tweakability. This also means that all of the instruments and loops are ready to be mapped to a hardware controller or automated directly in Live.

Effects and parameters include: Attack & Release, Reverb, Filter Delay, Arpegiator, Filter Cuttoff & Resonance, and much more.

Metallix works exclusively with Suite 8, Live 8 or Live Intro on Mac and PC. It is available only as a direct download at a price of $99.99.