Nomad Factory has announced a new plugins bundle, the Essential Studio Suite, which contains 9 essential plug-ins : Multiband Compressor, Essential Channel, Essential Graphic EQ, Essential Compressor, Essential Gate Expander, Multiband Loudness Maximizer, Loudness Maximizer, Tube/Tape Warmer, and Retro-Vox.

This bundle will help you to "create professional projects from tracking to mixing to mastering", and costs $300.

EastWest has announced a new set of upgrades to all versions of Symphonic Orchestra.These updates will approximately double the size of the original editions Platinum, Gold and Silver. Upgrades will cost $2,995 for Platinium Pro, $995 for Gold Pro, and $295 for Sliver Pro.

The Pro Edition Upgrades will be available in March 2005.

Blue Mic débuts the Kickball, a new dynamic spherical mic designed for low frequency applications. It can be used on any instrument: kick drum, snare drum, tom toms, electric bass, bass and more. We note that the Kickball is the world's second phantom-powered dynamic microphone.

The Kickball is shipping at $149.

Waves Art has updated their Power Suite bundle for Mac OS X to version 4.0.9. All plug-ins of this bundle (FinalPlug, MultiDynamics, TrackPlug, MasterVerb and WaveSurround) now fix VST problem stealing keyboard events from host and MultiDynamics AU output meter problem in Apple's Logic 7.

At NAMM, Spectrasonics has announced the release of an update to version 1.2 for Stylus RMX, its realtime groove-based virtual instrument plug-in. This version adds new features including three new professional quality effect modules (Radio delay, PRO-Verb, Spring Verb), as well as enhanced compatibility with major host applications (multiple Outputs in Apple Logic 7, multiple Outputs in Pro Tools v6.7) and various additional enhancements and improved performance.

Thise update is now available as a free download for all registered users.