Native Instruments announces special events this summer to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Starting out as a small software company in 1996, Native Instruments rapidly became a leading player in the software instruments market. Recent years have also seen Native Instruments causing a stir in the music hardware sector. By way of thanks to their loyal customers, NI announce the NI-VERSARY SUMMER from July 3rd to September 10th. Enjoy 10 weeks worth of special features: read the birthday wishes from a host of famous artists, win fantastic prizes in a series of raffles, profit from special jubilee offers and come revel with us at the grand NI-VERSARY party in Berlin on September 23rd.

Details on the Native Instruments web site.

Augustus Loop has been updated to version 1.6.2 in order to fix a graphical user interface issue with certain hosts and notably with Plogue Bidule on Intel-based Macs. Augustus Loop is an emulation of a tape-based delay effect, with some extra features to facilitate its use as a looping device : Really long maximum delay (3600 seconds - that's one hour), Tap tempo and Virtual tape. The delay simulates an old-style tape delay, meaning you can change the tape speed (i.e. pitch up and down), reverse the tape direction, smoothly change the delay time (as if you were changing the head gap on a tape delay).

Augustus Loop is available in the MacMusic Software Section.

Malcolm Haylock has released Universal Binary versions for VSamp in both Audio Units and VST formats. These new versions also feature : choice of outputs to save to disk, and additional items in Help menu. VSamp is a software sample player. It comprises a program for creating and playing virtual instruments and a plugin for playing VSamp instruments from within a sequencer.

This shareware is available in the Software section.

Cakewalk has released the Universal Binary (Audio Units) version of Rapture. Rapture is a wavetable synthesizer designed to produce pop, dance and electronic sounds. Rapture combines an advanced modulation system with an non-aliasing wavetable resampling engine. It features 40 Envelope Generators, LFOs, and Step Generators per patch, and comes with more than 500 programs including Basses, Leads, Pads, Arpeggios, Textures, Electronic Percussion and Sequences.

The UB update is free for registered users. Rapture Universal Binary in VST and RTAS versions will come soon.

Sagan has updated all versions of its Metro to prerelease version 6.3.5.6. These new version fix several bugs and include new features :

- New: Normalize Faders function in the special menu
- New: View plug-ins by manufacturer or category.
- New: Metro will interpret the enclosing folder name of any VST plug-ins as the manufacturer name.
- New: When "manufacturer" is the selected plug-in sort field Metro will sort plug-ins by name if the manufacturer names are equal.
- New: Menu item for inserting a random chord progression.
- New: The Mouse Wheel can now be used for incrementing and decrementing numeric fields.
- New: Metro now receives MIDI data from VST plug-ins that send it.
- New: The jukebox now uses a triangle to indicate the currently playing song.
- New: Humanize and Extract Data have been added to the LX version.

These new versions are of course available in the MacMusic Software section.