Applied Acoustics Systems offers you the opportunity to evaluate their Tassman Sound Synthesis Studio, a modular sound design and instrument construction environment based on physical modeling. This special offer gives you unrestricted access to the Tassman's range of sounds for a full 30 days, and is exclusively available to users of MOTU's Digital Performer.

To coincide with the Tassman 30 day trail, MOTU users may purchase the Tassman from their online store until May 15th for $399, a savings of $100 dollars off the suggested retail price.

Tassman functions on both Mac OS 9.x and OS X, and as many of you are probably about to ask, will support AudioUnits in an upcoming release...

Millennia announces the TD-1 Twin Direct Recording System with Twin Topology - Millennia's innovative merging of vacuum tube and discrete solid-state circuit topologies. Much more than an ordinary "direct box", Twin Direct offers instrument input (1/4"), line input (XLR), Speaker Soak input (1/4"), and optional HV-3 mic preamplifier (XLR) in a single half-width, road-hardened, rack-mountable chassis.

Twin Direct offers vacuum tube and discrete solid-state DI buffer amplifiers (switch selectable), 2 full range parametric EQ (20 Hz - 25 kHz), three input impedance settings (470K, 2M, 10M), and up to 35 dB of standard gain. Combine this with Millennia's acclaimed HV-3 microphone preamplifier (65 dB gain, optional) and TD-1 begins to look less like a direct box, and more like a feature rich analog "channel strip", akin to the STT-1 Origin. TD-1 main signal path is entirely "discrete" from input to output.

If you want an additional proof that Apple is the platform for musicians: The Los Angeles Times make a citation in their 11 April edition concerning a persistent rumor that Apple and Vivendi Universal are heavily and frequently discussing about the selling of Universal Music to Apple for $6 billion. Universal Music stands for a quarter of the total CD sales worldwide!

The rumor details that Apple is planning to make his offer before the meeting of the Vivendi director board on 29th of April.

Native Instruments announces that VOKATOR is available worldwide in stores today. Vokator is a revolutionary vocoder that defines a new standard for transparency, detail, and smoothness. It is not only an exceptional vocoder, but also a sophisticated synthesizer, a granular sampler, and a virtual sound-fusion laboratory. Vokator's high-resolution FFT spectral engine is a milestone in vocoder development. Previous vocoders used eight, sixteen, twenty, or thirty-two frequency bands at the most, Vokator's advanced engine uses 1024 bands.

Vokator is now available at music retailers at recommended retail of $299 and 289 Euro.

The Jaguar update for OS 10.2.5 is now available. As usually, use the software update in your preference pannel's system. This update will be on the Apple website very soon.