Ableton announced the upcoming release of Live 2.1, a new upgrade of their sequencing instrument for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. The software is now available for public beta testing from their web site. It is scheduled for release as a free download for registered Live 2 users by the end of July.

This first update of CUBE from Virsyn, VSTi additive synthesis, fixes several minor problems but mostly adds new powerful functions like the ability to watch the sound travelling through the 2D ellipsoid into the four harmonics sources, in real-time, thanks to an animation.

The same type of visualization is also introduced in this version for the morphing of the filters. thoses new options should greatly facilitates the understanding of the CUBE patches.

New features:
- real time animation of the mophing 2D envelop (ellipsoid)
- real time animation of the mophing filters
- monophonic mode "last Key" for releasing the sustained notes

Corrected bugs:
- slight progressive delay in the envelop in sync mode
- denormalisation of P4 related to the "low frequency equalizer"
- tempo of the arpegiator does not change anymore when loading sample frequencies
- sustain pedal now work correctly

The CS cabinets offer a 360-degree sound diffusion. As opposed to the classic speaker cabinets, that diffuse sound in a "non natural way" (direct sound diffusion - angle dependent frequency response), the CS columns offer a constant stereo propagation, independently of the listener's position in the room. In fact two columns suffice to reproduce sound in a 3-dimensional space. The listener has a very natural perception of the sound reproduced, independent of the position in the room, its acoustic properties. The overall frequency response is very harmonious and the effect of echo is almost non-existent. In a concert situation, there is no need for the fold back monitors for the musicians. The listening experience is very comfortable.

FFTea is a real time high resolution spectrum analyser for MacOS X. It was born as a debugging tool for a sound driver, then it degenerated into something that eats enough CPU, memory and graphic card power to be worthy of release to the unsuspecting world.
It is a surprisingly interesting way to "look" at music, you can see the tempo, melody, bass lines, various instruments (and their harmonics) and balance just at a glance. In fact with little training you can read very interesting things in there. It's also an invaluable tool to pick out stray frequencies, noise sources, clicks and artefacts from a mix.

Prosoniq announces the immediate availability of the new MPEX2 library from their MPEX technology web. Version 2.2 dramatically improves performance for some quality levels, fixes compatibility problems that were reported with 96kHz files and enhances accuracy when processing very long files. The documentation was rewritten to be more comprehensive and a full-featured Mac test project has now been included with the library.