Garritan has announced Marching Band, a new Kontakt Player 2 based Marching, Wind and Concert Band Collection. Marching Band features Trumpets, Trombones, Marching winds, Euphoniums, Baritones, Saxophones, Sousaphones, Tenor Horns, Mellophones, Marching percussion (including drumline sounds from Virtual Drumline 2 by Tapspace), and more... with expressive control, Tongue/Slur Articulations, Intonation, Vibrato, etc. enabling you to create realistic-sounding Marching Band, Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, Brass Band, Drum Corp and other Band Arrangements quickly and easily. You can even build your own bands with Ensemble Building.

Marching Band includes Native Instruments' Kontakt 2 Sample Player and will thus be available for Windows and Mac OS X (Universal Binary) in VST, AU, DX, RTAS and stand-alone formats. Marching Band is expected to be released during January 2007 with an MSRP of $239.

Eliosound has announced their next plug-in, ELS Vocoder, which aims to faithfully reproduce the analog vocoder sounds that have been used by many artists in the electronic music history whilst also offering a wide range of new and innovative features.

Features:

* 22-band Vocoder.
* Input Gate.
* Pitch Extractor with retune on notes option.
* Voiced/Unvoiced detector.
* 2 VCOs (Oscillators).
* Noise generator.
* 2 LFOs.
* Frequency Shifter with source selector and advanced stereo settings.
* Slew/Freeze adjust.
* Level Slider and VuMeter for each band.
* Analysis to Synthesis matrix.
* Output Mixer.
* Advanced setting panels for each module.
* Keyboard with key hold.
* Presets & Banks with sorting options.

The ELS Vocoder will be available in early 2007 ...

Applied Acoustics Systems has released new versions of Lounge Lizard EP-3, Ultra Analog VA-1, String Studio VS-1, Lounge Lizard Session and Ultra Analog Session as part of a Windows and Mac OS X "Technology Update" which brings support for the new Intel-based Mac systems, includes brand new Pro Tools RTAS plug-ins for both Windows and Mac OS X, a handful of new features and several bug fixes.

Included in the Technology Update:

* Intel-based Mac systems support—Universal Binary.
* New RTAS plug-ins for both Windows and Mac OS X.
* New total recall of 128-program bank in any host sequencer.
* Full MIDI Program Change support.
* MIDI Pitch Bend and Channel Pressure (mono aftertouch) messages support in MIDI Links.
* Redesigned Edit MIDI Links dialog.
* Omni MIDI channel.
...

NUSofting has released version 2.0 of Peti, their virtual instrument which uses hybrid FM synthesis technology to emulate the sounds of the Harmonium.

New features in 2.0:

* Universal Binary on Mac OS X (AU and VST).
* Adjustable Aftertouch response.
* New key click noise generator (old Peti presets would be slightly adjusted for this new key click).

ReFX has released a demo version of Nexus for Mac OS X (the download also contains Windows version). The full version has just been updated to v1.0.9 too.

Demo limitations:

* After 5 minutes volume fades out / in.
* After 15 minutes Nexus quits (you have to restart it).
* You cannot save patches.
* You cannot render audio.
* Settings are not saved with your song.
* Reduced library (a good mixture between file size and quality).
* No skin import / expansion import.