Over the last week we've covered lots of compatibility issues and feature updates with OS X Panther; now here's your exclusive music-centric guide to upgrading, all in one place. The good: better audio, lots of updated software from MOTU, Tascam, Edirol, BIAS, and others, including new features and new functionality from MOTU enabled by the OS the day of the release! The bad: FireWire 800 drive problems, roadblocks with compatibility. The ugly: Digidesign users are advised to stick with Jaguar for the near future.

Steinberg announced at AES Convention in New York the latest Nuendo 2.1 version which now includes all functionality from Steinberg's Cubase SX music production software. Cubase SX has now reached version 2.01, with a free update now available for download.

These two upgrades are available for Nuendo 2 (on Mac OS X 10.2.5) and Cubase SX 2.0 (on mac os 10.2.3) users.

Whoa: 16-in, 12-out, 24-bit 96KHz audio plus MIDI over FireWire for PC and Mac, US$599? At least on paper, Hercules' new interface, due to ship in December, is impressive to say the least. The new interface also features 2 mic/instrument pre-amps, no latency monitoring, and OS X drivers, plus bundled copies of special editions of Storm and Live. If the hardware name is familiar, Hercules is best known as the major "high-resolution" graphics board for the PC in 1982 -- anyone remember selecting Hercules drivers on your IBM XT? This is the company's first entry into the Mac audio market; it'll be interesting to see what the reception is to the new interface. At that price, people are likely to at least look -- and from the screenshot, the interface looks quite portable, too!

USB Virtual Instruments' Plugsound plug-ins, including Plugsound Free, are now in beta on OS X at version 1.87, the first OS X release of this previously OS 9 and Windows-only sample playback synth. MAS, VST, RTAS, and AU are supported on OS X. The software is a Keyboard Key Buy recipient so quite welcome on OS X (and the only software I've seen to advertise the Keyboard award in the interface!).

IK Multimedia says it has started shipping pre-orders for SampleTank 2 this week, its highly anticipated sample playback workstation for RTAS, VST (OS 9, X), MAS (OS 9) and AU (OS X) as well as Windows RTAS, VST, DXi. Upgrades are available for SampleTank 1 users starting at USD/EUR 249. With 8 CDs, SampleTank is shipping with some 4.5GB of samples and the technology was even featured in the Matrix Videogame score by Chris Vrenna. Now the wait for version 2 is finally over, it appears.