Clavia announced today the availibility in june of the G2, which stands for Nord Modular G2 (the 2nd generation without Piccard ;). It is a dsp driven synth, like the "old" Nord Modulars, with features long awaited by the NM followers:
- Bigger keyboard (3 octaves instead of 2)
- pitch stick like other Nords (yeepeee!)
- backlit LCDs and LED rotary encoders (perfect for gig)
- assignable buttons (8 physical buttons X 10 pages = 80 virtual buttons)
- 8 morph groups per patch for quick and heavy external mods to patches
- or a rack 1U version (no panel editing, but the power within)
- 24 bit 96 KHz AD/DA
- 4 analog audio Ins with one on XLR with an amp.
- 4 analog audio outs.
- On-DSP RAM so longer delays than the NM G1, reverbs?
- Add Granular synthesis and physical modeling to t ...

Dave Malham, from the Computer Music Center of Switzerland brings to the public use (with a GNU licence) the last version of its "Bpan - Ambisonic encoder vst".

Doggiebox is a versatile drum machine application for Mac OS X that empowers you to create and manipulate percussion-based songs. With Doggiebox, you can create drum tracks in minutes, ranging from the realism of a human drummer on a full kit to imaginitively bizarre experimental pieces.

With this Free Art Licence, you've got the right to copy, broadcast and arrange songs in full respect of the author's copyrights.

Far from ignoring copyrights, this Licence acknowledges and protect them. It re-formulates the principle in allowing people to use works of art with creativity.

When the regular way of using the copyright is restrictive, only a few got access to the work, the Free Art Licence encourages access to all the people.

The aim is to make songs accessible to everyone and to authorize use of the resources' work by a majority. To have the right to use it in order to increase pleasures, to build new conditions of creating and magnify possibilities of creation. Of course, all in respect of the authors with acknowledge and preservation of their moral right.

You'll find the last artistic news of this Licence and its artists in a short article in Liberation (in french...)
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=90295

The forthcoming Digidesign french site organise a Story competition about ProTool LE for all people who use the Mbox. Send your unusual stories and amazing photos about your way to use the Mbox to :

sophie_taieb@digidesign.com (expiry date april 1st).

A free ProTool LE 6.0 OS X update for the winner and other surprises...