Beer, sausages, plugins and synthetizers ! All these products - that MacMusic is fond of - deal with Frankfurt. This 600,000-inhabitant charming town, in Hesse, is not only famous for Goethe's birthplace, its Cathedral and its lovely gothic houses, but it also welcomes the MusikMesse. This international trade fair for musical instruments, music software and computer hardware, sheet music and accessories starts tomorrow and closes on Saturday. Of course the whole MacMusic team is busy to get you informed about this major trade show in this "MusikMesse 2006 Special Report", and in the MacMusic Daily News Section.

Rob Papen just updates its Blue virtual synth to version 1.5 in Audio Units and VST formats. This 1.5 release adds MacIntel compatibility, a 32 step arpeggiator, and new effects (Gator, Speaker Simulator, Wah/Delay, Chorus/Delay and Waveshaper). This version also responds to midi program change and midi bank select and features new presets. Blue is a plug-in synthesizer featuring six Oscillators modules which include Analogue, Additive and Spectral type waveforms. Osc. A and B offer PWM modulation and symmetry control. Oscillators can be combined in several ways using 32 different modulation routings in the Algorithm screen. Oscillators can have FM modulation or Ring modulation and can be oscillator hard synced.

This free update is available in our software section.

Octopus has been updated to version 1.1 in order to fix Filter muting problem and slightly inaccurate timing. The Octopus by Linplug is a Dual-Matrix synthesizer containing one Matrix for Oscillator/Filter frequency modulation synthesis and another Matrix for general modulation. The instrument features 8 additive Oscillators, a Sampler and a unique and powerful approach to modulation.

CronoX has also been updated to version 3.0.5 in order to be 100% sound compatible with the new Sophistry plug-in.

Particular Sound and LinPlug announce the release of the Sophistry Ambient Synthesizer. Particular Sound created a wide variety of ambient presets : over 700 presets based on more than 5 Gb of samples which are bundled with the LinPlug CronoX3 engine, wrapped in a new colour scheme of the CronoX3 GUI.

Sophistry is a CronoX3 instrument with all features of the CronoX3 :

DontCrac[k] announced that Nomad Factory has chosen DontCrack.com to promote and sell it's audio software via download. All Nomad Factory products and bundles are available including the brand new "Analog Signature" series that include monster LM-662 - recreation of the classic Fairchild 670 limiter, EQP-4 - full range stereo channel unit, SC-226 - stereo channel recording plug-in and BlueVerb DRV-2080 - vintage-style world-class recording studio reverb. All Nomad Factory software are Available in RTAS, VST and Audio Unit formats, for Mac OS X.

DontCrack already distributes the following audio software manufacturers : 4Front Technologies - Acon digital media - Camel Audio - CDXtract - CodeOperator - Delaydots - Ergonis Software - NUSofting - PSP Audioware - Sagan Tech - Softplug - Swar Systems - Wusik