Pinknoise Studio's Soundbank has unveiled a new Reason Refill for the NN-XT sampler featuring sampled analog modular synths. I was skeptical of this approach at first, fearing sampled Moog's or something horrendous like that. Instead, the bright folks at Pinknoise have created a Refill with basic analog components (sine waves and the like) so you can take advantage of the advanced modular features of the NN-XT to replicate the creative synthesis possibilities of a full-featured analog synth. Demos are available, and the full version is just US$19 for a download. With Reason's excellent pattern sequencers, this could be a lot of fun -- stay tuned for a review.

IRCAM, the famous french institute for musical research and Eowave associated last year to develop the eobody. Eobody is a CV to MIDI interface we already talked about in the MM news. It is on demo on AE2003 with its MAX/msp developed editor and the available sensors (light, pressure, piezo pads, ground captors, distance, acceleration etc.) and under developement sensors (ribbon and capacitive keyboards) to trigger sounds (I develop everywhere ;), notes or video events in real time. (see the pics)

Now you can really play your tunes by scratching your head or square dancing!

Lucky you! During all the AE2003 an iSight streams the teamers sleeping nude… uh… working hard on the MM Booth (F14, Hall 4 ;). Expect also pics and news from the novelties at the exhibit in the following days

The Apple booth has uncovered rows of new powerbook G4, we have the pics of the beasts.

I've had a chance now to give Live 3 a test-drive. So far, the new release looks very solid, and even in beta runs fine. An interesting detail: the new plugins ship as VST plugins, as opposed to proprietary Live plugins, so you can use them with other software. The previous plugins remain proprietary. Despite the fit-and-finish on this new release, however, you will want to wait for the final software to ship. Unlike the Live 2 beta, the beta software warns that files saves with the beta may be incompatible with the final release version. I'll have more on Live 3 later this week; in the meantime feel free to email me your impressions.