Pianoteq is pleased to announce that version 2 will be available on April 4. With this new version comes a brand new piano model, the Grand C2, which is developed in response to the many suggestions received from their customers and their beta team. By using a newly adapted soundboard model, the sound is vastly improved throughout all ranges of the keyboard.

New features :

- stand-alone version
- microtuning with scala support
- lid position (open, half-open, closed)
- stereo pan slider
- key release velocity
- smooth adjustment of parameters during play
- and more...

Pianoteq 2.0 will be available on April 4 as a free download to all customers of version 1. A trial version with a 45-day evaluation period will also be available. Note that audio demos are already on-line.

KResearch has updated their classic analogue-style phaser KR-Phaser to v1.2 which also sees the first Mac OS X (UB) release, available in VST and AU formats. Note that this plug-in is a freeware so... enjoy !

Sinevibes is happy to release Critical Mass, a sound library for Native Instruments MASSIVE software synthesizer, which has been developed taking advantage of it's earthshaking, flexible sound engine and elaborate modulation possibilities.

Critical Mass Is available as a download for only $29

Audio Ease, the company famous for their Altiverb is planning to release a little audio utility called Snapper which would become very quickly essential.

Snapper is fully compatible within the Mac OS finder and appears when an audio file is selected indepedently of its audio format mp3, aif, mono or stereo even the dolby 5.1. It includes a wave vizualisation as well as the playback of the files but it's only the tip of the iceberg because it allows you to edit the audio files like a selection and drag& drop. The mp3 conversion is also done in a simple click.

Best feature is that Snapper also works in the context of iTunes and let you export the files directly to Pro tools cursor....Just a dream !

No release date is annonced yet but in the mean time you can already watch a demo video showing all the possibilities of this nice utility.

SonicBirth, the Mac OS X Audio Unit / VST designing application that allows users to build their own Audio Unit / VST plugins, either by working with existing circuits or by creating circuits completely from scratch, has been updated to version v1.2.0 and released as freeware and open-source (GPL) (available on SourceForge).