Our friends from Macplus.net (article in French) analyzed that Avid was under stress. Since the announcement of the coming Pro Tools compatibility with the Mac Pro, the sales of non optimized versions have fallen. "But the fall has been way more serious than foreseen and the catch up by the universal version since its release has not compensated the losses. With sales comprising usually 33% of the sales turnover, the audio branch of Avid has sent the company in a turmoil the stock market has sanctioned. The shares have dropped yesterday of 14% that is a loss of $6.28 to $37.59."

Today Apple released an update for Logic Pro to address issues encountered by Mac Pro and G5 Quad users. The update works from a 7.2.1 or 7.2.2 version only and is recommended for all Mac Pro and G5 Quad on OS X 10.4.3 or later…

CharterOak Acoustic Devices a subsidiary of Connecticut based CharterOak Entertainment Group will announce at San Francisco AES, their intention to expand the time limit on free ADAPT modifications on SA538 and SA538B models, up to one year after the purchase date.

In the one year that has passed since CharterOak initiated ADAPT , the create-your-own-classic-modification program for the SA538 and SA538B vacuum tube condenser microphones, CharterOak has learned many engineers and producers buying microphones don't do sessions every day. As a result, 30 days is too short a period of time to live with the microphone in session, and come up with substantive feedback on how a user might want to alter the timbre of their microphone. "The program was originally designed based on my recording schedule which averages about 300 days a year, and it has come to our attention that this might not be the typical situation for a lot of our end users," remarked Michael Deming, producer, engineer, and president of CharterOak.

Creamware will release in the next weeks the Klangbox series, a bunch of 1 U rack of DSPs using the ASB engine. Playable thru MIDI or USB, the available units will be the MINIMAX, PRO-12, PRODYSSEY and B4000. The units work also as dedicated expansions for the ASB units Creamware released earlier, which in turn can be used to control the racks. The sound edition can be made by MIDI controllers or from a computer based graphical interface on Mac and PC too. All the Klangboxes share the same characteristics: 1U rack, MIDI I/O/T, MIDI thru USB, 12 voices (save the B4000, wich is fully polyphonic), stereo I/O, stereo effects (Delay, Chorus, Flanger).

Shipping soon for about 450 euros each.

The Rob Papen BLUE goes RTAS with the release of the 1.6 update. It is a free update with a native RTAS version for Mac. But also new features are added like a "free-running" option for each oscillator, an 8x Oversampling option, a "bypass" function inside the Arpeggiator, Sequencer and the FX section. It all comes together with 6 new preset banks for various styles of music productions.

Blue 1.6 is of course IntelMac compatible.