Native Instruments unveils that Guitar Combos will be available in strores on May 9th. The Guitar Combos series consists of the Twang Combo, the AC Box Combo and the Plexi Combo. The Twang Combo is modelled after the Fender Twin Reverb and delivers a wide range of clean and crunch tones suitable for Pop, Jazz, Blues and Country styles. The AC Box Combo is modelled after the Vox AC-30 and delivers a wide range of clean and crunch sounds that lend itself to Pop, Rock, and Alternative styles. The Plexi Combo is modelled after the Marshall JMP50 and delivers a wide range of crunch and overdrive sounds, which makes it the first choice for various flavors of Rock, Metal and Psychedelic.

Guitar Combos will be available for $79 for each combo. Furthermore, a bundle version with all three combos will be available for $199.

Apple unveiled a most powerful Power Mac G5 line, featuring dual 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors running up to 2.7 GHz and including Mac OS X version 10.4 "Tiger". The new range comes now with :

- G5 1,8 GHz (512 Mb Ram, 160 GB Serial ATA, 8x SuperDrive) at $1,449.
- Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 (512 Mb Ram, 160GB Serial ATA, 16x SuperDrive double layer) at $1,999.
- Dual 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 (512 Mr Ram, 250 GB Serial ATA, 16x SuperDrive double layer) at $2,499
- Dual 2.7GHz PowerPC G5 (512 Mb Ram, 250 Gb Serial ATA, 16x SuperDrive double layer and ATI Radeon 9650 with 256Mb memory) at $2,999.

We also note that Apple reduces the price of the 20-inch cinema display model to $799 and the 23-inch model to just $1,499.

I had a chance to fastly test the latest Mac OSX 10.4 aka Tiger. Apple introduced some really cool features that was emerging in panther and seems now mature in Tiger. One of these features is MIDI networking! On previous OSX versions, we could view a basic network device in AudioMidiSetup. But does it ever really worked? On tiger, there is a full network configuration window allowing to create Network sessions, connecting multiple computers together to build a shared MIDI network.

I did not got a chance to test is yet, because the bad news is that it seems that my beloved StealthPort (a nice serial-port adapter from GeeThree allowing to use serial MIDI interfaces) is no longer available in Tiger. The current installer refuse to install the driver. Geethree, any plans for Tiger? Please keep us informed.

Back to Midi Network... Here is what the AppleHelp page says about sending MIDI device information over a network:

VirSyn Software announces Cube 2, the successor of the spectral morphing resynthesizer Cube. In Cube 2, every sound can be decomposed in a sine spectrum representing the harmonic and inharmonic partials and a residual noise spectrum for the noise components. The spatial character of a sound can be represented by a pan spectrum. The temporal evolution of these three spectra is a very convenient way to describe every sound. Cube 2 now features :

- Improved Spectral analyzer with selectable algorithms optimized for different sound types
- 600 ready to use presets
- Graphical editor for direct manipulation of the spectral and spatial structure of the sound.
- Improved morphing algorithm
- Residual noise generator
- Volume envelope now independent from the Morph envelopes
- Switch off morph envelopes for manual morph control
- Modulation range for morph modulation added
- New modulation sources "Breath" and "Expression"
- Editor for MIDI assignment of user interface controllers
- Legato mode for monophonic sounds
- Reset function for source edits and resynth sources.

Cube 2 for Mac OS X costs 279 euros.

McDSP launches LE versions of three plugins : FilterBank, CompressorBank, and Chrome Tone will be available as RTAS and Audiosuite formats, and will work in the same way of the full versions. FilterBank, CompressorBank, and Chrome Le versions will be available on May 9th.

These plugins will cost $195 each.