Avox Vocal Toolkit by Antares is an interesting new vocal processor. Antares has combined five vocal processing modules : THROAT Physical Modeling Vocal Designer, CHOIR Vocal Multiplier, PUNCH Vocal Impact Enhancer, DUO Vocal Modeling Auto-Doubler and SYBIL Variable Frequency De-Esser.

AVOX will be available in late August in RTAS, VST and Audio Units versions for $599,00.

Digidesign announces that the new Surround Panner option for ICON D-Control worksurface is now available. The Surround Panner brings powerful and convenient panning functionality to the centre section of the D-Control console. it includes an integrated 640x480 high-resolution colour LCD touchscreen, two touch-sensitive joysticks with associated Punch buttons, two touch-sensitive rotary encoders with 15-segment LED rings, six Mode buttons for each panner and more.

Information on Digidesign web site.

EchoBoy is now available as version 1.1.2 (RTAS, TDM). This update adds 96khz support, MIDI sync for Logic users, HTDM support and several important bug fixes. EchoBoy is a fully-featured, studio quality echo/delay for Pro Tools systems.

This update is free for registered users.

The MOTU Symphonic Instrument universal orchestral plug-in is now shipping with an 8GB sound library, 500 instrument presets, 200 multi-instrument ensembles, 26 built-in convolution reverbs and additional new features. The MOTU Symphonic Instrument provides 16-part multitimbral operation and flexible instrument programming in one window using ADSR amplitude envelope controls, an LFO, two filters, tone controls, pitch controls and velocity response.

MOTU Symphonic Instrument is now shipping for $295.

Cycling '74 announces the release of Jitter version 1.5. This new version is a major upgrade to this video, matrix and 3D graphics objects for the Max/MSP graphical programming environment. New features of Jitter 1.5 include new architecture for CPU hardware acceleration, real-time support for high definition video data and high dynamic range, flexible network communication, computational dispatching for faster performance with multi-processor and multi-core systems, and extensions to the Java and JavaScript languages.

Registered Jitter users can upgrade to Jitter 1.5 for $189. Jitter 1.5 is $395, and the Max/MSP/Jitter bundle is $850. Any customers who purchased Jitter after May 1, 2005 can receive the upgrade free of charge.