Allen & Heath has launched the XD-53 professional monitoring headphones. The XD-53's incorporate a circumaural isolation design, providing high level isolation from ambient noise, making them the ideal product for DJ's requiring immersive listening in loud environments. Comprising 53mm diameter drivers - the largest drivers currently available - with high power neodymium magnet design, 1500 mW of power handling, and high SPL capacity, these headphones deliver excellent sound reproduction. They also have rotating earpieces for easy one-ear monitoring, a coiled cable with convenient one-side exit, and a folding design for compact portability.

The XD-53 headphones will be available from May 2007. For more information, please visit their web site.

Sugar Bytes has just released Unique, a synthesizer specialized in vowel sounds and "mighty analog" keyboard sounds. Featuring an advanced vowel filter mode and internal multi-effects with two chained FX devices, Unique comes with over 160 presets and offers features like LFOs with internal envelopes for fading rate and intensity, polyphonic panning, a powerful internal controllers section and more.

Unique costs €139 and is available in VST and AU formats Mac OS X (UB). For more information, please visit their web site.

ChocolateAudio has released the Bonzo drum kit which is a sampled rendition of a Ludwig VistaLite drum kit with Paiste cymbals. The kit configuration is similar to one of the drum setups used by John Bonham of Led Zeppelin during the '70s.

Bonzo kit drum list :

- Ludwig Vistalite Kit (26" BD, 14", 16" and 18" Tom Toms)
- Ludwig 14"x6.5" Supraphonic Snare drum
- Paiste 15" HH signature
- Paiste 20" Ride signature
- Paiste Splashes 8" and 10"
- Paiste Crashes 14", 16" and 18"
- Paiste China 18"
- 2 LP Cowbells

These drums make up for 711 unique stereo samples of which up to 32 samples are dedicated to each drum technique with 223 samples allocated to snare techniques, 172 to the hi-hat, 64 to the ride cymbals, 32 to the bass drum and 96 to the Toms. ...

Prosoniq has released version 2 of TimeFactory, their stand alone time and pitch manipulation software. TimeFactory 2 comes as native Universal Binary optimized for both PowerPC and Intel Mac models (MacOS X 10.4.9 or better). It supports multiple file formats and sample rates up to 384kHz and contains Prosoniq's legacy TimeFactory I MPEX2 time stretching, as well as the newer MPEX3, ClearScale and DIRAC algorithms which are used in all major high-end audio editing programs on the market.

For more information, please visit their web site.

Percussa unveils AudioCubes, a new musical interface for controlling music/audio software and MIDI gear.

The AudioCubes are a collection of cubes capable of detecting each other's position and orientation, and of displaying full RGB colours (4096 combinations!). They generate two types of information: triggers and continuous controllers, which can be sent to any MIDI compatible software or device. The location and orientation of a cube generates different trigger info (for example, cube on the left = drums, cube on the right = synth bass, etc). On top of that, you can use your hand with a cube (or 2 cubes) and send distance to any MIDI controller, for adjusting filter cutoff, etc. MIDI Controllers can also be sent to the cubes to display colour patterns synchronized to your music. For ...