So far it's nothing more than a picture on a MySpace page, but this is the new thing from M-Audio. Concensus of opinion seems to think it's a dedicated controller for Ableton Live - with what looks like 10 clip launch buttons (maybe in four banks?) and it would make sense, as M-Audio own Ableton (and they're both part of the Avid empire, along with Digidesign/Pro Tools and Sibelius). Presumably we'll know everything on January 18th, when NAMM opens.

Wave Arts has announced the Master Restoration Suite, a comprehensive set of restoration plug-ins for cleaning up tape, vinyl, and acoustic recordings.

The MR Suite consists of 5 plug-ins :

- Master Restoration - all-in-one plug-in
- MR Hum - hum removal, buzz removal, and brickwall filters
- MR Click - click/pop removal and crackle removal
- MR Noise - broadband noise reduction
- MR Gate - noise gate

Main Features :

- All sections can be monitored to hear signal that is removed.
- Comprehensive displays for all processors.
- Onset detector in crackle processor keeps onsets bright and crisp.
- Extremely low latency (under 20 msec) noise reduction can be used in live situations.
- Fast noise floor learning time (down to 50 msec).
- Auto dynamics mode in nois ...

Novation has announced that the XioSynth 49 is now shipping. So the XioSynth now has a big brother for anyone wanting the awesome sound and unrivalled feature set but with more freedom for hands to roam. The 49-key XioSynth provides Novation-class synthesis with seamless audio interfacing and MIDI controlling capabilities to boot.

For more information, visit their web.

Shuriken has released CopyShop which is a very simple but effective buffer chopping / FSU effect plug-in - it chops up the audio buffers and plays them back; you can choose the length of the piece of audio played back and when to apply it.

CopyShop is available for Mac OS X (Universal Binary) as a VST effect plug-in and it is Donationware.

Harmonic Sense has released ChordMate, a chord finder for guitarist with advanced features such as a powerful rule editor in order to fine-tune your search, or a chord symbol lookup tool. ChordMate displays the results of your search as a collection of beautiful diagrams which are customized based on the type of guitar: classical, acoustic, jazz, or electric.

ChordMate is available for Mac OSX (PowerPC or Intel processor). Note that a demo version is also available.