Muse Reseach unveils a low-cost portable virtual instrument player called The MuseBOX in booth 6729 at the Winter NAMM show. The MuseBOX is based on the same MuseMachine software technology that powers the company's RECEPTOR 2 line of virtual instrument players and features a solid state drive for storing both the OS and many plug-ins, a CF card slot for removable storage of additional plug-ins or smaller "ROMPLER" libraries, and an option for installing an internal hard drive for storing large sample libraries.

The hardware I/O features 1/4-inch stereo line outputs, a 1/4 inch input, stereo S/PDIF output, front panel headphone outputs, a VGA monitor output, MIDI input, and a 2-line LCD display and rotary encoder similar to its bigger brother, the RECEPTOR 2. Like the RECEPTOR 2 line of music instruments, The MuseBOX is both a highly efficient and ultra-stable way to run virtual instruments and effects.

The MuseBOX will retail well below $1000 US, and is expected to ship in late Q2 or early Q3 of this year.

Steinberg announces Cubase 5 and Cubase Studio 5. They both offer a host of new capabilities including new beat creation tools, an integrated vocal pitch editing toolset, extended composing features, a convolution reverb as well as many other workflow and technological enhancements, including full support for Windows Vista 64-bit Editions.


Pricing :

- Cubase 5 : €599 (Update from Cubase 4 or Cubase SX3 : €199).
- Cubase Studio 5 : €399 (Update from Cubase Studio 4 or Cubase SL3 : €129).

Cubase 5 and Cubase Studio 5 will be shipping in February 2009. For more information, please visit the link below :

Steinberg Cubase 5

Ableton unveils Live 8 and Suite 8 which enhance their vision of creative, real-time digital music with a wealth of new techniques, effects and most-wanted workflow improvements.

New in Ableton Live 8 :
• New groove engine: new groove library, extract grooves from audio or MIDI, real time groove quantize
• New warping engine: warp audio events by adjusting the events on the timeline, updated Beats Warp Mode, new Complex Warp Mode, slice audio files to MIDI tracks based on transients
• Looper: classic sound-on-sound looping without the limitations of a hardware device. Record, overdub, undo and more without touching the computer. "First loop sync," simple loop management
• New effects: Vocoder, Multiband Dynamics, Overdrive, Limiter and Frequency Shifter
• ...

Just over a year has passed since the introduction of Speakerphone, Audio Ease's end-all speaker simulator that comes with ambience sounds, reverbs, and many dsp modules to tweak the most lifelike sounding scenarios that involve speakers.

Speakerphone has quickly become a standard in many thousands of post production and music studios. Upstairs tv sets while cooking in the kitchen is going on, street megaphones with helicopters and sirens approaching, rockabilly guitar at the stage of a prom, a call from the K2 summit to base camp with wind crushing the microphone, all from a single plug-in.

Speakerphone version 2, previewed at NAMM, features many newly sampled guitar amp cabinets, antique phones, toys, answering machines and megaphones. Added is a microphone simulation module that hosts microphones ranging from Royers to toy mics.

Among the new modules in Speakerphone 2 is one that's called 'coverup'. Coverup can place any sound inside tin cans, cardboard boxes, under blankets or in the closed trunk of a car. Come listen and be amazed in the Audio Ease booth 6508.

Release date and pricing are yet to be announced.

SPL expands its "Analog Code" plug-in line with the release of TwinTube. All Analog Code plug-ins are modeled after analog hardware processors, and in this case the TwinTube processor of SPL's RackPack modular system has been the paragon.

Employing two separate, independent tube stages, the TwinTube combines the two main tube artifacts: harmonics and saturation effects. TwinTube's harmonic processing can be applied to four different fundamental tone frequency bands to improve presence and clarity without raising signal levels significantly. The saturation control can be compared to the sound effects of tape saturation to add warmth and achieve more density with virtually any kind of sound source.

"Our programmers did a great job in creating a very good sounding tube simulation", says SPL's CEO Hermann Gier. "The special qualities of the analog TwinTube are in enhancing in fact nearly any signal with the classic analog sound attributes. Now we can fully transfer those amazing results to the digital domain. And where could the warm, transparent and smooth sound of analog tube and coil filtering make more sense than in DAW productions?"

The TwinTube is available as native and TDM version. The native version supports RTAS, VST and AU formats, the TDM license also includes all native formats.