The rumors have been running for more than a year regarding Digidesign's release of a comprehensive remote surface for Protools. Now, the it's official! Digidesign announces its new system, ICON (including the new D-Control console, the X-Mon monitoring interface and Protools HD Accell).

D-Control features:

Each channel includes 2 x 32 segments, VU meters, and 6 rotary encoders assignable (per track) to the aux sends, pans, i/o selections, plug-in selections, plug-in parameters... Each encoder is surrounded by LEDs with the ability to change their colors according to what they are displaying (e.g., Green = Volume, Orange = VU Meter, Red = Peak Hold). Under each encoder, there is a fluorescent display showing the function assigned to the encoder, and two switches assigned to pre/post ...

Apple sent a mail announcing Apple Expo 2004:

Dates and location:
- Tuesday August 31 to Saturday September 4, 2004
- Opening hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
- Paris expo, Porte de Versailles, Hall 1
- the Keynote of our dear Steve Jobs will take place at the Palais des Congrès on August 31 at 10 a.m.

This year, to speed up the registration process, the badges will be sent by E-mail.

Pierre Couprie created an emulation of the famous EMS AKS Synth for OS X and he just finished the Beta version. He would thus need testers for this version of the soft.

If you want to beta test this software, just drop him an email!

Native Instruments Traktor Final Scratch was updated to version 1.5.1 and it is now fully compatible with Mac OS 10.3 Panther. Aside from the new highly optimized ScratchAmp drivers, version 1.5.1 also adds the following features:

· High-quality key correction (preserves pitch when changing tempo)
· Record Lead-In graphics in wave display
· Stripe Preview in browser deck
· Customize "Needle Display Position" in wave display
· Shading of played track portion in stripe view
· Flashing stripe in track end warning zone
· Fully resizable interface
· 4 font sizes
· Larger sound stripes

This update is available via download (49 euros) or as an update CD (69 euros).

We announced it in january on MacMusic, it is now available ! The Mayhem VST plug-in suite by Audiodamage is a collection of four different effects designed to provide new tools for aggressive contemporary musical styles. Included in this package are Filterpod (a low-pass filter with LFO), Crush (the World's Most Dangerous Compressor...), MasterDestrukto (a plug-in featuring four different distortion algorithms for massive audio manipulation), and TimeFnk (a rhythmic delay).

Mayhem pack is available for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and costs 149 euros.