Cricket by Soundcrack is a live playback and theater sound design software for Mac OS X.2 or greater. Cricket comes with 4 separate track players and can handle 4 stereo files simultaneously. The software supports all common types of sound files with any bit depth.

This easy to use software costs 150 euros for the downloadable version.

The swedish music manufacturer Elektron announces his new keyboard, the Monomachine, wich comes in two models, the SFX-6 (keyboard) and the SFX-60 (desktop version). Monomachine comes with a 6 tracks sequencer (synthesis and effects) + 18 free LFO, 6 delays, an arpregiator and a multidirectional joystick on the SFX-6 version.

The keyboard version costs 1950 euros and the desktop version costs 1350 euros.

Cycling '74 has announced the newest update to Pluggo, bringing OSX Audio Units support.

Pluggo 3.1 is an extraordinary collection of more than one hundred audio plug-ins that work with Mac OS sequencers and audio applications that support Audio Units, Steinberg's VST plug-in format, and Digidesign's RTAS plug-in format.

The update to 3.1 is free for all registered 3.0 users and available to registered 2.0 users at a discounted price of $99. For new users, Pluggo can be purchased for $199.

A few more tidbits of interest . . .First, MacAlly is showing an alternative to Griffin Tech's iMic. It's their iVoiceII digital microphone and stereo ADC (analog to digital converter). See:

http://www.macally.com/new/new_ivoice2.html

for more info. Also, EJ Enterprises is demo'ing their digital turntable adapter for DJs. The MIDI turntable adapter requires modification to a traditional turntable, transforming it into a tactile controller with a traditional feel. See:

http://www.ejenterprises.tv/

I'll report more news as I find it...

So you want to run Garage Band with your other audio software, eh? Looks like just the solution for this -- and a lot of other audio routing -- has arrived. -PK

From the official press release: "Jack is a low-latency audio server, written originally for the GNU/Linux operating system. It connects any number of different applications to a single hardware audio device; it also allows applications to send and receive audio to and from each other. Jack is different from other audio server efforts in that it has been designed from the ground up to be suitable for professional audio work. It focuses on two key areas: synchronous execution of all clients, and low latency operation.