No, we're not talking about 15,000 years in existence, nor the $15,000 the webmaster has stashed in his pockets with Active Member dues, but the fact that MacMusic membership has reached 15,000 people! This represents great news, demonstrating our ability to entice more and more people to join the best Mac and Music lovers' community.

For those of you that don't realize just how significant this milestone is, we shall provide a few comparisons:
- 15,000 is equal to the global population of Indian elephants, or the number of homeless people in San Diego. (sad, no?)
- 15,000 is equal to the number of miles it would take to travel between L.A. and San Francisco 40 times (or L.A. and New York 5 and a half times).
- Altogether, we have 112 miles of cables.
- We could have formed 3,00 ...

LinPlug Virtual Instruments announce the upcoming release of the RM IV VSTi Drum Machine. The RM IV is a fully professional, highly flexible, easy-to-use, Macintosh VST drum machine that combines analog-style percussion synthesis with a fully-featured percussion sampler.

Built using LinPlug's enhanced high-quality audio engine, the RM IV features 18 velocity-sensitive Drum Pads that can be used to trigger any of 11 different Audio Generator Modules. The instrument features a modular design that currently includes 10 percussion synthesis algorithms, as well as a fully-featured percussion sampler. The Sampler module provides single-sample, multi-sample, velocity-layer and velocity-crossfade support, at up to 32-bit resolution.

The instrument also includes an AHDSR-controlled multi-mod ...

BEST Software Design has released PolyPhontics 1.5, a new version of its popular SoundFont and DLS authoring tool for Mac OS X and 9. PolyPhontics 1.5 sports an improved interface and new features. With PolyPhontics, you can create, edit, and preview SoundFont and DLS sound banks for use with MIDI files and live performance.

New features in PolyPhontics 1.5 include a graphical loop editor, support for multiple sample rates, reverb, dramatic build and preview speed improvements, and much more.

PolyPhontics is available for US$59.99. It is a free upgrade for previous users of PolyPhontics. A fully functional demo version is also available for download.

ANWIDA Soft announces VST plug-ins : CX1V, L1V, GEQ15V and GEQ31V for Mac OS X. Now all ANWIDA Soft's VST plug-ins are available for the Mac platform with a special introductory price through July 13, 2003.

Steinberg's Xphraze is now shipping. Xphraze has been developed by Wizoo and offers musicians completely new ways of bringing rhythmically phrased sounds into projects quickly and intuitively. Xphraze is the first virtual synthesizer in a long time that has the potential to revolutionize music making for many.