Hartmann, the small German company behind one of the rare breakthrough in synth design these last years, is in great difficulties. Some may already know their software NeuronVS went sold at low price on some German stores. It was in fact a nervous move from the company which builds their hardware during some negotiations. It ended up to screw the distribution, annoy shops, not to talk about customers. In the end, Hartmann is facing financial difficulties as it is in a niche market and money has always been tight for them even with the help of Hans Zimmer who helped them a lot. They are fighting right now to keep up their production and save the day, and continue the development of their technology.

In difficult times for synth manufacturers, it's a shame some erratic moves from another company can endanger innovative breakthrough. I still hope the best for the Hartmann, which works on a solution hard, so they can come thru all this mix up fast. The Neuron synths deserve this.

Mawzer will ship their MIDI controlers in January '06 for early customers, press and exhibitions. They also will open their web shop in first quarter of 2006. Mazwer is a new modular MIDI controller allowing an infinite customizable combination of controls. You can cange the configuration in seconds to adapt your studio project or live situation, day afer day, just by pluging Mawzer Modules in the Backplane, assign midi controls in your favorite software, and you're ready to play !

The very new synth Blue by Rob Papen has been updated to version 1.1. This release includes new HipHop and RnB banks, updates the dynamic oscillator screen, and fixes several minor bugs. Blue features FM Synthesis, Phase Distortion Synthesis, Wave Shaping Synthesis and Subtractive Synthesis, and contains six oscillators, two analogue style modelled stereo filters, ten LFOs, 32 step mono sequencer, nine envelopes AHDSFR type, and 16-voice polyphony.

Moog Music informed MacMusic that Cyril Lance is the new head of Moog Music products development. it seems that Cyril Lance was personally selected by Bob Moog before he passed away in August. Cyril Lance works in music and engineering for over 20 years. He also worked in developing optical electronics used for upper-atmospheric experiments, and on US military project HARP (Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) which was jointly funded by US Air Force, Navy, and University of Alaska.

Cyril Lance is also a musician, songwriter and producer. He also works on building custom instruments for academic and consumer applications.

New JazzMutant web site has just been launched! In addition to its really slick design and global revamping, the main new feature of that web site is certainly its Workshop section. Workshop : You will find in that new section a collection of essential tutorials and examples to get the feel of your new Lemur in a couple of hours while using your favorite software. Already available tutorials: "Surround Panning Strategies" with Cubase SX ; "Exploring Granular Synthesis" with Max/MSP and a Lemur project template destinated to control the most popular loop-based sequencer: Ableton Live 5.