There is a new affordable way to capture vocal and acoustic instrument performances. Dedicated to newbies, nomad laptopers or heavy podcasters, the new Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser Mic is a studio mic with a simple USB interface. It can be plugged into any computer Mac or PC with no in/out boxes, no expensive computer pre-amps… It features a 19mm internal shock mounted diaphragm with a cardioid pick up pattern.

Features : 16-bit sample resolution; Supports 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 44.1 kHz, and 48 kHz sampling rates; USB low-power device from 130 mW to 1.5 mW in suspend mode; Flat Frequency response within 1 dB from 22 Hz to 22 kHz

The BOME MIDI translator is a wonderful PC utility, installed in-between two midi programs or devices, it analyses incoming midi data (system exclusive or normal short messages) and translates them using your definitions. It is possible to simulate keystrokes in response to incoming MIDI messages. This allows unlimited control over any Windows program by using a MIDI device, like control surfaces.

In response to a question I posted, Florian (the developer) has opened a "donations" for a MAC port of the utility (he needs a mac to do this). Donators will have their licence price reduced accordingly. Lets help him. This utility is REALLY GREAT. For an example of the use, go here. The donations page

Apple has just updated WaveBurner, their professionnal audio CD burning application. This update addresses several reliability and performance issues that may be encountered with WaveBurner 1.1. It also improves compatibility with Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger).

Furthermore, the update corrects the following issues:

Some may have had the email from Spectrasonics this morning : Spectrasonics release an exclusive mini collection of Grooves in pure New Orleans style, 50 grooves in SAGE stylus RMX, WAV, AIFF, Apple Loops formats. The grooves use the likes of Alex Acuña, Abe Laboriel Jr, Greg Bissonette, etc. So there's definitely worse around ;) All the grooves are new stuff and you don't need Stylus RMX to beneficiate of the given the formats but to use the Groove Control Technology, you'll need the SAGE file and Stylus. Now the main point of this mini collection is that 100% of the funds (Yep: 100%) are directed to http://www.habitat.org helping the Katrina victims.

The collection is available online only (hence the maximum benefit going to charities) for $25, and you'll need a fast internet connection as the files weight a total of 100MB. According to Super Prince of the Space, our member who told us all about it, they are serious stuff and it's for a good cause!

Do you remember the days when recording with your old sampler , and the immediate pleasure you had from jamming the records ? Here it is back, forget all the pain of waveform editors ! OneShot Recorder is a VST plug-in that allows you to to record, normalize, reorder, detect audio levels and MIDI note and save your audio automatically. Instead of recording in your DAW or sound editor and have hard and boring time in cut/export , OneShot Recorder will do everything automatically!