The Akai MPC samplers, the reigning kings of hip-hop drum machines, now have a massive new product line of sound libraries available via a newly expanded MPCsounds.com website.

The new MPCsounds website offers several new product lines and features, including:
- New downloadable products for the MPC1000, MPC2000/XL, MPC3000/LE, and MPC4000. (Both Mac and PC supported)
- New sound libraries for the MPC1000 available on CD-ROM, Compact Flash, or as Downloadable sets.
- New massive MPC CD-ROM product line, now all MPC Zip disk products are available on CD-ROM.
- New MPC manuals section offering free downloadable MPC manuals for all MPC models.
-New downloadable free sounds for all MPC models.
- New "VIP Archive" offering more free sounds and loops for repeat customers.
- New MPC acc ...

M-Audio and Propellerheads have announced a new educational pack entitled "Teaching Music with Reason." The toolkit for teacher contains 21 lessons and exercises, complete with worksheets, detailed plans, songs and PDFs, and teacher evaluation materials, 10 instruction manuals, Reason Adapted CD (the light version) and full Reason 2.5 CD with instruction manual. The lessons focus on composition and form, exploring sound and improvisation, and synthesis and sound design. The software is shipping now; a sample lesson is available on the Propellerheads website. For pricing, schools should contact their distributor.

Schools have been wary of using Reason because it is perceived as being a "dance music" tool, but this package could change that. The materials look very solid, and can be used even by teachers who lack computer music experience. If you're an educator out there, hit comments and let us know what you think of it.

Clouvel and Ptilou contributed to this report.

Speedster is an AU plugin for real-time pitch shift and time stretching. The latest release now improves CPU usage and adds latency compensation and automatic bug correction.

Speedster has been available in a free beta release since April.

Spain's Minister for Arts, Carmen Calvo, has announced an upcoming drop down of the "TVA" tax on commercial CDs from 16% to 4%. In addition to the tax, Spain will launch a program to fund musical production, with both measures intended to support artistic culture in the country. No more excuses for the French government, no?

Ed: While Americans complain about the prohibitive cost of CDs, they may be surprised when visitors from Europe stock up on enormous stacks of music from our record stores: CD purchase prices are dramatically higher overseas. But, to our colleagues abroad, one thing you shouldn't envy: our public funding for the arts is meager at best, and getting worse. -PK

We talked about Zebra in October but now shipping is imminent: a near-final release was presented at the Musik Messe conference and the commercial release should be available in the next days.

Zebra is a virtual synthetizer plugin that combines subtractive/additive synthesis with a powerful modulation engine. Version 1.5 features infinite variations of synthesizer circuits, four oscillators, four multimode filters, a noise generator, mixing units, delay effects and waveshapers.

A beta version is already available. The AU version for OS X will be listed at US$199 for new users; the update will be free for registered users.