A great deal of virtual chatting has been flowing, and government official announcements about VAT have been fusing, all this since the iTunes Music Store was launched in France. The record industry is still and always complaining, but the iTunes Music Store is gaining speed and approaching a cruising altitude. Apple claims that ITMS has sold over 800.000 songs during it's first week in the English-French-German zone, of which almost 450.000 sales in the UK alone.

Steinberg has today announced that the latest version 3.0 of its sampler HALion is
now being delivered to resellers and dealers worldwide. This new version features a new file browser, a new Insert and Send Effects section, support for more file formats and a new intuitive user interface.

The update price from earlier HALion versions to HALion 3 is €99.00, and the full version is €399.

Since beginning of March and until June 30th 2004, Digidesign proposed an exchange offer for the Pro Tools|24 and Pro Tools|24 MIX registered users. The saving cost will be of 2000 $ (for migrating to Pro Tools|HD 2 Accel et Pro Tools|HD 3) or 1500 $ (for migrating to Pro Tools|HD 1) compared to the normal list prices.

After July 1st the prices will be back on their original values.

Bad Cable is an AudioUnit plugin made by Sound Consulting which attempts to simulate a bad audio cable. The result is a form of waveform distortion. This minor update 1.2 features primarily performance enhancements. Sound Consulting advices users to remove Bad CableUnit 1.0 because version 1.2 will install new BadCable component.

Bad Cable is available as a free download.

The Thermal Pack 1.0 by Levelground Media bundles three AudioUnit plugins : CrunchEQ 1.0 (10 band graphic equalizer & 5 band parametric equalizer), Fattenizer 2.0 (which "fattens" audio signals and enhances audio tracks) and Vintasion 2.0 (which adds vintage style character to your individual tracks or mixes).

Thermal Pack bundle costs 52.85 euros (intro pricing until 7/5/04).