The upcoming IEEE P1639 MIDI standard is coming!
Well? The IEEE Standard Association is preparing a general wrapping standard to unify by the end of the year MIDI transmition over Ethernet networks or IEEE 802.11 wireless devices. The standard is still base on the oldy but? goody? well? sort of? old MIDI standard BUT!

BUT, now the interfacing is no more linked to a peculiar hardware, so "Hasta la vista" the old 31,25 baud from the beginning of MIDI, look at 10 megabits of MIDI data per second. The number of MIDI devices makes a small jump from 16 to? 16 millions.

We can look forward to use all this ;-)
Under scrutiny also is a future little tiny bitsy thing to plug into old MIDI hardware to make it compatible. Nice touch.

Now how will this interact with mLAN over IEEE 1394 (FireWire) uh?

Roland VariOS is a 1U external machine. It allows to modify audio pitch and time stretching without changing the shape of the sound. It's a real time effect with a software dedicated to it.

The software now works with Mac OSX!

Also some software working with the CPU resources of the VariOS were developped for Max OS 9 and Windows
- a 303-like
- a juno 106-like

IRCAM (Research Institute of musical and acoustic coordination) just launched its new website entirely dedicated to his freewares.

You will now find J MAx, SDIF, Agnula and also a small surprise with Open Music becoming a freeware too. The J Max users and the developers will also find patch, technical rewiews and other short news.

Native Instruments is offering a deal to musicians and producers looking to use this summer to make the switch from hardware to software and expand their creative horizons. The complete software collection for 999 Euros (That's a savings of 65% off the total list value. ). Limited to 100 units and available immediately only in the NI Online Shop....

What's in the box: REAKTOR 4 - ABSYNTH - VOKATOR - KONTAKT - BATTERY - B4 - FM7 - PRO-53 - NI-SPEKTRAL DELAY - TRAKTOR DJ Studio 2.0 - ...

Have a nice music summer ;-)

The native OSX Audio Units and VST plug-ins are now available for Atmosphere, Trilogy and Stylus on the Updates page. This is another free upgrade from Spectrasonics.