Alesis announces at summer NAMM its new line of powerful, portable, affordable USB mixers designed for a wide range of operating environments and applications. The MultiMix USB Series includes 3 different tabletop mixers : The MultiMix 8USB and 12USB have 4 high-gain mic/line. The MultiMix 16 USB has 8 high-gain mic/line (XLR and 1/4" balanced) inputs with phantom power, 2 stereo balanced 1/4" line inputs, aux send (can send to onboard or external effects), stereo aux return. All MultiMix USBs have 100 28-bit onboard preset effects including reverbs, delays, chorus, flanging, pitch and multi-effects, a 3-band EQ per channel with high/low shelving and mid band pass/reject. Additional features of the MultiMix USB series include separate 1/4" balanced main and monitor outs, headphone out, an integrated USB Port to transfer audio directly between the MultiMix USB mixer and your computer.

More info on Alesis web site.

At summer NAMM, Waves Ltd. announces its plugins bundle "Musicians Bundle II". The Musicians II bundle features two signature Waves processors found on countless hit releases; Renaissance Compressor and Renaissance EQ. Add to that, two great delay and ambience tools, SuperTap and Doubler, and you are ready to create sounds with unique sonic distinction.

Musicians Bundle II costs $200 and a 14-day demo is available on Waves web site.

2 weeks after the beta version, Live 4 is born !! The famous Ableton Software was introduced at summer NAMM today. In Live 4, you will find a complete and inspiring approach to MIDI sequencing, pattern recording, drag-and-drop sampling, virtual instruments and MIDI hardware support. Ableton has also made substantial extensions and enhancements to existing functionality, including such features as swing/groove for audio and MIDI clips, a powerful new channel-routing scheme, simplified recording, sample reverse, and several exciting new creative options for the Session View.

Live 4 (full version) costs 499 USD/Euros. Updates costs 119 USD/Euros (downloadable version) and 149 USD/Euros (Boxed version).

At NAMM, Alesis introduces the 25 key Photon X25. This little keyboard has as a four character LED display, an AirFX inspired X/Y dome to control Pitch Bend modulation and other parameters, pitch and mod wheels and high-resolution continuous knobs. Plus stereo 24-bit 48kHz audio balanced I/O and is bus powered. A light version , the Photon 25 has the MIDI features but has a joystick control in place of the dome and wheels and no audio interface.

Photon X25 costs $299 and Photon 25 costs $249.

At summer NAMM, Arturia announces the version 2.0 of its Moog Modular V. This faithful reproduction of the legendary Moog modular systems comes back with major improvements. Among the features added in the upgrade are:new ergonomics, improvements on the oscillators, new Unison mode, new Audio-In possibilities, soft-clipping emulation is now done on each mixer, new modules (ring modulator, formant Filter,...), 200 new presets and much more...

This upgrade is free to all registered users. Shipment is planned for the 2nd half of August 2004.