Echo Audio announces two new FireWire audio interfaces AudioFire 8 and AudioFire 12. AudioFire 8 (24 bit 96KHz) has 2 universal inputs with mic preamps, phantom power, channel inserts, and trim knobs. It also comes with 6 balanced analog inputs (TRS), 8 balanced analog outputs (TRS), a stereo headphone output, 2 FireWire ports, S/PDIF I/O, MIDI I/O, word clock synchronization, and 10 channels of full duplex 24 bit 96kHz recording and playback. The AudioFire 12 has 12 balanced analog inputs and outputs (TRS), 2 FireWire ports, MIDI I/O, word clock synchronization, and 12 channels of full duplex 24 bit 192KHz recording and playback.

They will be available on March '05.

We have recently received several reports about fraud attemps in the ads section. The crooks usually proceed as follows : You write an ad in the MacMusic ads section to sell a software, a Mac or musical material. You then get an email from a potential buyer who is actually interested in your ad. But this person does not live in your own country and proposes to send you a $4,000 check through a third party. When you get it, you keep the sum that corresponds to the price of the item that you're selling (for example a $500 G4). You are then supposed to send the difference (that is 4,000 - 500 = $3,500) to another person in your country, to whom your buyer owes some money. Of course all this is utter fraud ! Indeed for a few days the check appears as creditor on your bank account but as soon as you check, the operation will be cancelled by your bank. In the meantime you will have sent the check that your bank will debit : your $3,500 and your G4 will be lost.

DON'T FOLLOW UP THIS KIND OF PROPOSITIONS.

Shadow Hills Industries has shown at NAMM its surround controller, a huge black thing with magic eyes all around. If you need surround mixing to impress your customers as the cleaning lady, here's the 1940's war room design look alike that'll win the deal. Specs and price tba.

Many thanks to Barry Wood of NAMM Oddities for the info and the picture.

Synthrestore, a dedicated repair facility in the UK has announced the introduction in march of the Aurora synth. This analogue keyboard will add a real instrument to the line of specific spares the shop sell besides the repair business. Aurora is a 3 VCO (not identical, beside common specs, one has pulse, the others have square and sub), 1 LFO (can go way out into the audio range ;), ADSR, 12dB VCF (Oberheim/early Odyssey caracter) high pass or low pass. No MIDI in sight! (me I like CV/gate) and a 37 note keyboard.

The instrument is announced at 499£ (tbc) and will be built to order only, expect a 2 weeks wait after the deposit. Now it's not a plastic box with 2 ridiculous chips inside sold for as much as this one, the casing seem to be here to last and smells the matched transistors.

Tritone Digital has just released V1.0 of its HydraTone EQ plug-in. Base on multi-staged convolution, it allows to blend both valve based and solid state equalization derived from historic circuits. You can mix them in your EQ profile, say one kind for bass, the other for medium and treble, save here we're talking of a 5 band EQ with fixed Bass and Treble, and fully parametric lo-mid, mid and hi-mid bands.

Now HydraTone doesn't stop there, you get also 2 filters, one on bass and one on treble to adjust the curves further. You have also a Phase control, a unique Fire parameter with his own valve coloration algorithm on the main output, with Blast to compress things till it's carbonized… you select too the way the main output stage is modeled. Last but not least, to save CPU usage, Channel turns only the channel you need on not CPU savvy software platforms if the signal is mono.

HydraTone run on OS X 10.2 or higher, G4 IGHz recommended, up to 32 bits/96 kHz, VST, RTAS and AU support through Pluggo. Pluggo users should run the free Pluggo 3.5 update. Before spending $149 you can try the "beeeping" demo. And you can buy HydraTone in bundle with ValveTone for $199 ;)