Prosoniq announces the latest version of their OrangeVocoder flagship VST Plugin to version 3.0. This new version will be revealed to the public at this year's Musik Messe in Frankfurt, Germany. This new version will add new features including advanced MIDI control for the built-in synth, support for loading sound files, virtually unlimited polyphony, mono-mode with glide for classic R'n'B talkbox imitations, freely assignable filter bands, and a realtime 24band analyzer control...and more.

Orange Vocoder 3.0 will be released in May 2004 for 249 Euros/USD. An upgrade for owners of the previous version 2 will be available for 99 Euros/USD.

The site is dedicated to the millions of musicians who don't have a forum or an audience and are looking to create one. The site already contains forums, music sharing, classifieds, and up to date news and information regarding products, services, and events in the music and mac industries. Upcoming events include several contests with both product prizes and cash prizes (in excess of $1000) These contest will be mostly geared towards the participation in the site as well as original compositions using Garageband and Soundtrack (and possibly others). The site is well funded, operates of a big pipe, and can handle tens of thousands of users. A dedicated team of editors and programmers will continually update the site with the latest features. An iTunes RADIO station is also planned to help support our users and get them air time for the hard work spent on their creations.

After months of doubt, it would seem that Creamware is set on continuing its support for the Mac platform. It's financial standing has been rectified by the contribution of new capital. The development under OS X however, demands resources in terms of competence, hence the call to those ready to code under OS X and Linux. Let us hope that it will be heard and will allow this innovative software to carry on.

For those interested, once on the Creamware site, go to "forums", "general", "creamware and linux", the links will lead you onto other useful forums....

Charismac Engineering Inc. announced Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) support across their product line. Charismac has updated and qualified their RAID software, disk utilities, SAN Management and CD/DVD mastering and duplication software applications to run with the latest version of Apple's operating system. Qualified products include: Anubis RAID, a powerful software-based striping and mirroring utility. Anubis RAID allows users to format, partition and benchmark both single hard disk drives as well as multi-disk arrays. Discribe, a universal CD/DVD mastering application. Discribe allows you to create your own data, audio and video CDs and DVDs with virtually any CD or DVD recorder on the market, past or present. FibreShare, an intuitive, reliable storage area networking (SAN) software package that easily allows multiple users to have instant access to shared fibre channel storage in a multi-user SAN environment.

Beta Monkey Music has announced the latest addition to its already versatile drum loop library. Groove Construction Kits: Acoustic Drum and Cymbal Samples features five sampled recording drum kits, with nearly 900 (595 MB) individual drum and cymbal hits, painstakingly recorded to capture all the beauty, character, and nuance only acoustic drums possess. Beta Monkey's Groove Construction Kits is a comprehensive collection of acoustic drum and cymbal samples created with some of the most-known and sought-after drum sets and cymbal lines. The recorded drum sets include drums from DW , Pearl , Tama , and Yamaha with cymbals from Sabian and Zildjan . The sample CD-ROM is well-suited and designed for groove construction across a wide variety of genres and styles including rock, pop, R&B, drum & ...