Best Service has announced the availability of Artist Complete. This stunning new bundle includes three Plug-Ins in one package: Artist Drums, Artist Grooves and Artist Rhythm. Plus Artist Drums 5.1 Surround Edition and Real Giga Drums Multi- channel Drumkits. It also includes two interfaces from Native Instruments, Kompakt which is sample based and Intakt which is specifically designed for rhythmic loop playback, manipulation, and mayhem.

Artist Complete is available as VST, RTAS, Audio Units, Core Audio, RTAS for $299,00.

Digital Performer 5 is now available. This major upgrade includes six new virtual instrument plug-ins, track folders, a flexible Meter Bridge feature, new audio editing tools, a multitude of new film scoring features, new input monitoring modes, clip-based volume automation and many other feature additions and enhancements. DP5 includes six new, easy to use, CPU-efficient virtual instrument plug-ins (BassLine, PolySynth, Modulo, Nanosynth, Model 12, and Proton). In all windows that display tracks, such as the Sequence Editor, users can now organize their lengthy track lists into folders and sub-folders, much like the list view in the Mac OS X Finder. The Meter Bridge is a new window that is dedicated to monitoring all signal paths in the Digital Performer mixing environment. The tool bar now contains four new audio editing tools: Trim, Slip, Slide and Roll.

Digital Performer ships for $795. Existing registered DP users can upgrade for $195.

Sweetwater just announced that it has been named the newest authorized dealer for Solid State Logic products, including the rackmount XLogic SuperAnalogue Channel, XLogic E Signature Channel, and XLogic G Series Compressor, as well as the XRack line of preamp, dynamics, and EQ modules. Sweetwater will also be carrying the new Duende FireWire-based DSP plug-ins. According to Sweetwater President and Founder, Chuck Surack, "Solid State Logic will need no introduction to our customers — the company has developed an international reputation as the manufacturer of the finest mixing consoles in the world. Our clients have been requesting SSL rack products from us, and we're thrilled to be able to fulfill their requests with the XLogic and XRack lines of mic preamps, equalizers, and dynamics processors."

Solid State Logic products are in stock at Sweetwater, and available for immediate shipping.

Pro Tools LE 7.1cs6 update for Mac OS X is today available for download from the Digidesign Pro Tools updates page. This update fixes item 72677 : Could Not Always Copy Time Code Values from Region Start/End/Length Fields. Copying from these fields was not possible if there was a time selection on a playlist or the timeline. This could also potentially affect some third party post applications that required the use of these fields.

Pro Tools LE 7.1cs6 is the first CS release for Pro Tools LE 7.1 (there were no cs1 through cs5 releases for version 7.1). If you are on Pro Tools LE 7.0, the same fixes are in Pro Tools LE 7.0cs6.

After the announcement of Windows XP Boot Camp, Apple has just released firmware updates for both new Intel-based Mac mini, iMac and MacBook Pro. These firmware updates must be installed before using Boot Camp, and are available as download on the Apple web site.

Windows runs now on a Mac ! So I am very proud to present for the first time in my news section a picture of Bill Gates, from an old (1984) Apple brochure...