Lo-Res Recording & Distribution has announced Vintage Synth Rescue Kits for several popular models of synthesizers. Each Mac/PC-compatible CD contains thousands of patches in Sysex format as well as a massive SoundDiver file containing up to 10,000 different patches. You'll also find Sysex librarians, manuals in PDF format, as well as articles and other information that may prove handy when picking up a second-hand instrument from Ebay.

Synths currently available in version 1.1: Korg's Poly-800 family, DS-8/707, Korg M1 Family, Roland D-50 family, Yamaha DX7 family, and Kurzweil K2x00 family. US$9.99 for all but the 2-disc Kurzweil set. Compare $10 to $10-20 for manuals alone purchased from other sites! Plans for the future include supporting more universal Editor/Librarians like MidiQuest and Unisyn, and of course free updates are available via email to anyone who buys a disc, as long as your email account can handle attachments over 2MB.

Bitcarel Software has annonouced the availability of iRecordMusic 1.2. This utility was previously named RAW. It enables you to surf and record Internet audio streams to MP4-AAC and now AIFF. You can record multiple radio streams, Hollywood movie trailer soundtracks and news webcasts at the same time. Recorded files are iPod compatible and iRecordMusic now integrates with iCal.

iRecordMusic 1.2 costs US $20.00.

The following has been published on Waldorf site regarding the company's insolvency. it brings some hope at least.

Ergonis software has announced that it has released version 2.0 of its MIDI sequencer software Easy Beat. With this release, Easy Beat runs on (and requires) Mac OS X and features up to 16 song tracks plus a metronome track, 100+ instruments and drum kits with the software synthesizer, score printing, import and export of standard MIDI files and export of QuickTime movies and AIFF files.

Easy Beat 2.0 costs US$89 and a demo version is available.

Lawrence Fritts, Director of the Electronic Music Studios of the the University of Iowa has created a Musical Instrument Samples library. All instruments were recorded in the Anechoic Chamber in the Wendell Johnson Center and are posted on AIFF files. Sounds are available for free download with no restrictions on their use: only the friendly reminder that "the Iowa University music studio appreciates hearing about any research publications or works that utilize the database."

Ed: Ah, music samples with the spirit of free academic sharing -- great, right? This isn't really news, as the library has been around for a while, but worth a reminder if you haven't checked it out yet. -PK