This beginning of December is the perfect time to shed a few nostalgic tears over the career of a computer that musicians have really appreciated to its true value for four years : Powermac G4. How many recording sessions, music and editings have been realised with this computer ? How many outrages did it suffer from it being inserted in a rack to it being transported in some shaggy van for some gig ?

Announced in September 1999 with a sweet code name "Yikes", powermac G4 PCI-video and AGP-video were the first two machines of a larger family to become : Gigabit ethernet and the famous Cube in July 2000, G4 Digital-audio in January 2001 and the first Quicksilver series in July of the same year, followed by the second series in january 2002.

MacMusic announced on november 13th the future availability of Terra 2.0 by VirSyn, it's now done. TERA 2.0 is a modular software synthesizer based on different synthesis modules. This new version includes : Analog synthesis, Spectrum Synthesis, Formant, FM synthesis, Physical modeling, custom waveforms for all oscillators, and 16 modular synths (with up to  64 voices).

Tera 2 is compatible with Mac OS 9/OS X standalone / VST / AudioUnit and now ReWire 2 and RTAS. The price for TERA 2.0 is 299 EUR .Note that all registered users with the original TERA CD 1.1 and 1.2 can download this upgrade for free.

Beta Monkey Music releases Classic Backbeats Plus, a two-CD collection of over 1,200 original drum loops with a decidedly classic and retro sound for today's rock and pop music. With grooves, groove variations, fills, one shots, and single hit samples, this collection of acoustic grooves is designed for any production looking to add the pure and unadulterated tones of an acoustic drum kit that sounds right out of your favorite small to medium-sized club.

The loops are suitable for all variants of the rock and pop genres, but are particularly for use in recording situations where only live, vibrant, acoustic drums will do. The drum loops are organized by BPM and style, ranging from 55 BPM half-time ballad grooves to up-tempo rock and pop grooves at 150+ BPM. All drums are sonically-matched (being from the same recording session) and are free of excessive processing.

Five 12 announce the future availability of Numerology. This next version of Numerology 1.3 will offer several new features, including a new clock module for live groove quantizing, a Matrix Sequencer / Arpeggiator suitable for both drum and polyphonic melody programming (wich was a highly requested item by Numerology users) , MIDI input and more.

Numerology 1.3 is currently in beta testing,. The final release is due on or around December 15th, and all registered users are allowed access to the beta. There will be no charge for the upgrade from 1.2, so if you buy now, you get the upgrade for free.

Was SampleTank released too early ? Is IK Multimedia without beta-testers ?
It's a good question : SampleTank 2 was available on november 3d, the first update came on november 18th and at last the very new update "2.0.2.R2 " is available now, november 28th !!

This new version has no new functionnality but fixes bugs : improved SampleCell convertion, fixed Reverb fx 96KHz bug, fixed multiple instances on multi processor systems and fixed crash on some child preset load.