Next april 15th, Mackie will release the "big Knob" following their announcement at the last Namm. Big Knob is a mixing controler with 3 monitoring outputs, a talkback microphone, 2 headphone outputs (with independant level), 3 audio stereo inputs, 1 digital audio input and 4 analog audio stereo outputs and... a big Knob... Approximative price : 420 euros

Wonder Warp Software Group has announced the release of SimpleChord 1.7.1, which fixes and refines many aspects of SimpleChord. This includes the way accidentals are displayed, and adds the option to have tooltips for the keys to display the note name (good for beginners).

SimpleChord is a quick, handy reference to chords for musicians. It can aid in learning new chords, building progressions, transcribing, and other tasks. It displays the notes in a chord, their positions on the keyboard, and can even play the chord aloud in any General MIDI instrument.

SamplingSounds.com announces the release of its Mega Sampler, Sampling Library CD. This CD offers over 500 individual samples from five of their most popular sampling libraries on one CD in both WAV and SoundFont Format. This CD is available for $34.95 at www.samplingsounds.com and contains all of these individual sample libraries: Classic Keys, 70s Analog Synths, 80s Digital Synths, Vocoder Tracks and Synth FX.

The dual format CD is compatible with most samplers and sampling keyboards on the market today. SamplingSounds.com is a official SoundFont developer and offers all of its sampling libraries in the SoundFont format (as well as WAV) for easy import into Mac software samplers like: Steinberg's Halion, Emagics EXS24, Vsamp and many others.

Clavia now releases the V2.1 Software Upgrade for the Nord Electro 2 and Nord Electro. The V2.1 upgrade features 'Selectable Keyboard Velocity Sensitivity' for the piano sounds: you can now select between 10 different velocity sensitivity curves for the piano sounds. The V2.1 Software Upgrade also features some minor bug fixes.

This update is free of charge and needs a Mac with a MIDI interface, the latest version of OMS, and Mac OS 8.6 but not OS X.

Channel D announces the availability of an update to its Mac OS X native audio signal analyzer and signal generator suite, Mac the Scope. Mac the Scope 4X 4.2 includes a
versatile signal generator, vector FFT analyzer, sonogram and more.

The new version, compatible with Mac OS X 10.2.3 - 10.3.x, includes enhanced support for CoreAudio.