The Virtual Orchestra is a multimedia library of the contemporary orchestra. It includes sample banks with more than 15,000 instrumental sounds, pictures and the software sampler Osiris. The Virtual Orchestra is a system developed by Thomas Hummel at SWR Experimental Studio in Germany.

Virtual Orchestra goes now to Mac OS X and is available from Forum IRCAM.

Ed: You have to join Forum IRCAM to acquire this software, but what an impressive collection -- good reason to join! English readers, look for the flag in the upper right corner on the link below. -PK)

The 25th-anniversary festival and competition Ars Electronica will take place in Linz, Austria, from 2 to 7 september '04. The Prize Ars Electronica is devoted to new media artists, and a total of EUR 130,000 in prize money will be awarded in the following six categories in 2004: Digital Communities, Net Vision, Interactive Art, Computer Animation/Visual Effects, Digital Musics and u19 freestyle computing.

There's an open call in the "Digital Musics" category, as well as for works combining sound and media, computer compositions ranging from electro-acoustic to experimental music, and sound installations.

The international cyberarts competition kicks off on January 12, 2004 with online registration.

GT unveiled at NAMM beside the Groovy Comp some means to get sound In and Out, in tubes, as you can imagine…

- For the guitarist: the Power Pick, a Pick with a patented lever, to bring more power and harmonics than standard picks. $12.95 (hey, no tubes!)
- The PDI: Passive Direct Input, well it's a passive DI Line/instrument level to balanced low impedance level… $39.99 (hey! no tubes either!)
- The SFX Spacestation, that's the out ;) It's a compact powered stereo monitor with SXF (Stereo Field Expansion) 300-degree stereo sound field technology. Two models are available for guitarists $695 and for keyboards/voice $795. the units are build to stand going out so it'll spark tubes everywhere. (ahhhh!)
- Groove tubes announced also the availability of new "build to match the original standard" 12AX7M and 6CA7GE. (tubes everywhere!)

IR-1 is a convolution reverb which has flexible classic controls of the key reverb parameters and comes with an extensive library of samples and presets that recreate the sonic environment of over 60 carefully sampled real acoustic spaces and over 60 samples and presets created by classic hardware devices. IR-1 introduces the first Convolution based reverb that allows classic parameters to actually affect the convolution, not just "filter the result" in order to produce parameter changes.
Supported on selected hosts via RTAS - HTDM - VST - MAS - Audio Units.
Requirements: G4 867mHz or faster, OS-X 10.2.2 or later, 512MB RAM, 800x600 minimum display.

Matt Ingalls, well known for his CSound work, has announced the Soundflower utility, developed with Cycling '74. SoundFlower is a virtual audio driver for OSX. It provides an easy and simple way for any application to send audio to another application.

SoundFlower is available as a free download on Cycling '74 web site. Ed: this is great news -- think Inter-Application Communication in OMS, but for audio. -PK