CME has announced that the Neosynth24 expansion board for their keyboards (UF and VX series) is now shipping. It provides high quality audio instruments and effects and adds great sonic possibilities to CME keyboards.

NeoSynth24 features a built in sound bank (64 MBytes/256 Mbits) that can be updated at your convenience. All instruments can thus be updated in order to create completely new sounds from the same keyboard. Various sound banks are available (General MIDI standard instruments set, Grand Piano style, Hip Hop style, Techno/House style, R&B style and much more …), these multiple sound banks are available on SD Cards that can be ordered separately. These SD Cards are then used to upgrade the on board instruments, once upgraded the SD Card can be removed from its slot. All available sound banks are high quality sampled instruments, from 16 to 24 bits resolution, up to 96 kHz sampling frequency. NeoSynth24 on board powerful DSP allows up to 124 voices of polyphony.

Features :

- MIDI / USB expander
- Up to 124 voices of polyphony
- Built-in FX engines
- Up to 64 MB sound bank
- Updatable sound banks from SD Card
- Various music styles available
- USB MIDI class compliant (no driver)
- 24 bits / 48 kHz audio paths
- Main stereo audio output (24bits D/A)
- Auxiliary stereo audio output (24bits D/A)
- Headphones output
- Analog stereo audio input (24bits A/D)
- S/PDIF stereo audio input/output
- Available for both UF & VX keyboards
- Large MIDI implementation

Blue Cat Audio has announced a massive update of all its commercial EQ plugins. The new versions are now available for Mac in VST and Audio Unit formats, and also bring multiple improvements to the existing Windows plug-ins. The Liny EQ series have been completely redesigned for this new release.

The Blue Cat Audio EQ plug-ins include the Liny EQ series (linear phase graphic equalizers), Parametr'EQ series (digital and analog parametric EQs) and the Triple EQ plug-ins (semi-parametric visual EQs). They all come in three flavors, offering a wide variety of capabilities. In particular, the Widening versions propose mid/side processing for frequency selective stereo narrowing or widening.

New for all plugins :

- Mac Audio Unit support.
- Mac VST Support.
- New Windows installer (you should uninstall any previous version before installing this new one).
- New documentation.

New for the Liny EQ series :

- New user interface design.
- The plug-in now offers two types of EQ curves.
- EQ range is now customizable.
- Undo/Redo support.
- Preset import/export in a host independent format.
- Window opacity control for plugin transparency.

The plug-ins are available in several bundles or separately, with a temporary special offer on bundles. Existing customers can update most plug-ins for free, except the Liny EQ series for which a special upgrade price is available.

Pricing :

- Blue Cat's Liny EQ Pack (3 Plug-ins) : €99.96 (instead of €119) or $133.56 (instead of $159)
- Blue Cat's Parametr'EQ Pack (3 Plug-ins) : €99.96 (instead of €119) or $133.56 (instead of $159)
- Blue Cat's Triple EQ Pack (2 Plug-ins) : €42.14 (instead of €49) or $59.34 (instead of $69)

The pre-release phase of the Detunized.com site has begun.

Detunized.com offers extensions for Ableton Live, Propellerhead Reason, FL Studio and their respective devices - Simpler, NN-XT, Directwave. Sample-based libraries will contain patches and sounds that cover an extensive variety of ready-to-use, but fully customizable presets, ranging from discreet timbres up to droones and soundscapes of detailed complexity. Releases will be purchasable via Paypal-Subscription or Paypal-Instant-Buy, based on a monthly release cadence.

Until the final starting date - 1st of April 2009 – the puplic is kindly invited to download freebie „dtn000 - Grandpa's Piano" and to subscribe to their newsletter.

Overloud has updated its Essential Guitar Effects Suite to version 1.1.

New Features :

- Two amplifiers: Overloud Custom and BassFace '59 (US) amps - 4 new channels and 10 operating modes;
- Amplifier adds a VariFire panel and control: a Gain-Character control for expanded distortion color control;
- Three Rack Delay Effects: Comb Delay, Spatial Delay, Pattern Delay;
- Mixer Pro with control on Phase, Stereo Width, Sample Delay and Mono/Stereo output switch;
- Splitter with Balance/Switch capabilities and with two Crossover modes (HPF/LPF and BPF/BRF) and frequency/width controls;
- Dual IR Cabinet module allows users to load commercial or their own cabinet Impulse Responses with balance, phase and micro-delay control with HPF and LPF;
- Dual IR Cabinet comes preloaded with Recabinet Demo (Recabinet - Album quality guitar tone, direct.) and the Experimental Cabinet collection from Wild Hades (Alu);
- Eight new Stomp Boxes: Noise Gate / Expander, Mild Flanger, Rich Flanger, Analog Flanger, D-Reverb, D-Delay, 7-Band Graphic EQ and 5-Band Amp EQ;
- Host, Internal and Variation-based BPM for maximum flexibility when it comes to BPM syncing.

Fixes :

- Better Noise Gate implementation in Master Section;
- You can use left and right arrow keys in the Browser panel to scroll through Variations;
- Dedicated button to open the Smart Connections window;
- Fixes for Digidesign Pro Tools 8 and Cakewalk Sonar 8 64-bit;
- Various automation fixes;
- Master parameters get saved with song/session and when quitting the standalone version;
- Mant more smaller fixes.

Available now, TH1 v.1.1 is a free update for registered users.

Muse Research has announced that the Receptor 2 is now shipping.

The Receptor 2 uses a single-core processor and a 250GB SATA 2 hard drive and provides significantly more performance than the previous generation. Additionally, it has a sleek, new look with a deep blue front panel, LCD, and blue power LED. The single core AMD processor and high speed DDR-2 RAM of this new second generation of Receptor provide performance that is similar to the previous generation's top-of-the line with a MAP price of $1999. Note thatthe unit also includes $700 worth of sounds in the form of the Univers Sons Plugsound BOX pre-installed and ready to use.