7 great news from Native Instruments.

MOTU announced its virtual sampler MachFive. A powerfull plug-in available for mac first. MachFive is called by MOTU a "universal sampler" as it supports most of the standards either in plug-in, sample, audio:

- Plug-ins: MAS, AudioUnits, VST, RTAS, HTDM, and DXi
- Sample banks: Akai S1/3000, Akai S5/6000, Akai MPC2000 and 3000, Roland S7xx, EMU III/ESI/EOS, GigaSampler/GigaStudio, Emagic EXS24, Digidesign SampleCell, Creamware Pulsar STS, and Steinberg HALion.
- Import: Kurzweil K2xxx, Akai MPC.snd, WAV/ACID, AIFF, SDII, and REX
- 16 parts per instance (multiple instances possible), polyphony limited only by the CPU power available.
- 4 effects per part
- Surround ready
- One window only throughout
- A MOTU sample library to be released…
- 32 bit internal engine, up to 24bit/192kHz resolution.
- Stereo and surround real time waveform editor
- drag and drop import (samples, banks, audio)
...

Yummy!

Available in March-April at 395$

The UAD-1 Software turns 3.0 and is a free download for registered UAD-1 users. The multicard support on Macs will be included in the next upgrade for OS X (ahhhhh!) during Q2.

It's a new 4 channels preamp from Focusrite, with an optionnal 8 channels 24 bit / 192 kHz A/D converters card, allowing to chain 2 units for a total of 8 preamp channels with digital outputs.

M-audio FireWire 410 is an announced 4-in/10-out configuration. The ten outputs allow your computer-based recording system to behave like a traditional analog recorder or sampler, where signals are bussed to multiple channels of an analog mixer or to multi-channel monitoring systems. Software-controlled DSP handles all internal routing and mixing. FireWire bus-powered architecture means that you have the flexibility of mobile operation.

- 2 analog input channels each featuring: mic/line inputs (balanced XLR and unbalanced 1/4") and preamp with level control, signal/clip LEDs and a gain of 66dB, 48V phantom power (globally switched), 20 dB pad.
- 8 line outputs with signal/clip LEDs (unbalanced 1/4" @ -10dBV)
- stereo monitor level control.
- 2-channel S/PDIF digital I/O (coaxial and ...