Electrix has released Virtual Repeater Pro, a plug-in for live loop recording, sampling and overdubbing using your PC or Mac based upon its hardware big brother Repeater. Sync your loops to audio or MIDI and control them with your hands or feet. Record a loop and then speed it up or slow it down - without affecting the pitch. Other Effects and features include Time Stretching, Undo, Reverse, Slip, Overdub and Resample which allows you to bounce multiple tracks down to one.

Features :

- Easy to use intuitive GUI
- Classic Repeater and Modern control interface
- Pitch shift; +12/-24 semitones
- Time stretch; 1bpm to 150% of recorded rate
- Individual track transport; play, stop, reverse
- Up to 12 tracks per loop
- Seamless loop cue and engage
- Advanced real-time beat detection ...

Previously available for Pro Tools|HD only, Softube Studios has just announced that Vintage Amp Room is now available as VST/AU plug-ins for native platforms and PowerCore. Straightforward and simple, Vintage Amp Room emulates three carefully selected guitar amps in a complete studio set-up with speaker cabinets and fully flexible microphone positioning.

Main features :

- Three great-sounding vintage amp models that handle like real amps.
- Raw & authentic sound.
- Flexible & continuous click-and-drag mic positioning.
- Fully automatable parameters.
- 3-D rendered photo-realistic user interface.
- Compatible with all effects that work with real amps.

Vintage Amp Room is available in both Native and PowerCore VST and AU formats for Windows and Mac OS X (plus the existing TDM version) priced at :

- Native VST/AU: €349 / $429
- PowerCore VST/AU: €399 / $489

Note that a fully functional 10-day demo version is also available (iLok required).

Apogee has released updates to their Symphony PCI-E card driver and Maestro application. This dual update includes many new features, such as support for Apple's 8-Core Mac Pro and long sought after Maestro improvements, including the ability to assign software and hardware inputs and outputs to multiple hardware outputs.

The new installer, which updates the Symphony driver and Maestro application, is now available on :

FabFilter has just released Pro-C, a new compressor plug-in offering three compressor styles (Clean, Classic and Opto), flexible routing and side-chain options, and various program dependent compression styles with an innovative user interface and animated level display making compression easy to grasp for everyone.

Features :

- Three different compressor styles
- Program dependent attack and release curves
- Super-fast attack times
- Soft- and hard knee option
- Zero latency, click-free 64-bit internal processing
- Auto Gain option
- Auto Release option
- Large input, output, and gain change meters with different scale settings
- Animated compression level display with customizable curves
- Active transfer function display
- External side chain
- 48 dB/oct HP and LP side ...

Apple anounces the update of the SMC Firmware for Mac Pro running under Mac OS X 10.4.10. This update will install 1.7f10 version except for the 8 cores models where the 1.5f3 version will be installed. Before the update it is highly recommended to quit all running applications.

Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.1