And another symphonic plugin ! Motu unveis its Symphonic Instrument plugin that gives users access to an 8 GB library of orchestra sounds for composing, sequencing and rendering realistic orchestral performances. Instrument highlights include strings, brass, woodwinds, orchestral percussion, tutti (complete orchestra), choirs, pipe organ, piano and "historical instruments" (strange name for harpsichords and viole).

Symphonic Instrument will ship in first quarter 2005 at $295.

Tascam announces its new digital console DM-3200, which adds more busses, effects, auxes ans USB compatibility. Up to 6.1 surround panning is available and the DM-3200 features 48-channel digital mixing at resolutions of up to 96kHz / 24-bit, 32 channel inputs and 16 return inputs, 16 busses and 8 aux busses, 4-band full-parametric EQ and dynamics on each of the 32 channel, 4 stereo effects or two surround effects (8-in/8-out), 17 touch sensitive 100mm motorized faders, USB 1.1 connection to computer for data backup, companion software for Mac OS X, 16 XLR balanced mic/line inputs with phantom power, 2 XLR AES/EBU and 2 S/PDIF digital I/O.

MOTU has unveiled Version 2.0 for its instrument plug-ins MachFive, which now features : stand-alone operation, unlimited parts, full-screen preset browser, enhanced Giga and EXS24 library support, expanded envelope editor, expanded sample editor, built-in mixer, new LoopLab function and real-time time stretching.

MachFive 2.0 is of course not available now, but will ship in second quarter 2005 and should cost $395.

Alesis announces the IO|2 USB, a 2 channel portable 24-bit-96k USB interface with mic-pres, phantom power. Channel inserts are provided for outboard processing. The unit even has 2 XLR plus 2 1/4" balanced line inputs, MIDI input/output and S/PDIF I/O, and is USB bus powered.

The IO|2 USB will be available first quarter of 2005.

You all know (who doesn't in this world ?) our famous software section. This true Alladdin's cave for MacMacmusicians contains thousands of treasures, updates, freewares, sharewares where you can navigate, thanks to the famous tracker. And yet in a cave, as it is the case in any house, the paintwork has to be redone at times. It's done! From now on, the software section allows you to find the history of all the versions of a software, to have access to a complete list of software by the same manufacturer, to read all the news linked with this manufacturer, or else for plugins you'll be able to move from VST version to Audio Units version for example, in absolute comfort.

In the part of Aladdin, it's our friend June Bug who proposes these improvements and whose daily and titanic work allows us all, MacMusiciens, to have this softwares database : unique and essential.