Soniccouture has released Balinese Gamelan for Kontakt in two new, smaller products. The original 24 GB set is now named Professional Edition, and is joined by Composers Edition and Compact Edition.

Composers Edition contains all the same instruments, the same number of velocity layers and alternate samples as the Professional Edition, but the samples are at 24bit 48KHz instead of 96Khz and are in Mono instead of Stereo. This reduces the size to 5.7GB of data, and comes on one DVD instead of 3. The full colour booklet is also included.

Compact Edition (Download Only) condenses the essential gamelan sound into 3 plug-and-play sets. This means that you get all the tuned instruments (reduced versions) - the big gongs, paired metallophones and the kettle gongs, combined and arranged across a chromatic keyboard, ready to play. This set still weighs in at 2 GB, and is ideal for anyone that wants the essence of gamelan without breaking the bank or the hard drive.

Until March 6th, all these sets are on special offer, with around 10% off each price.

Pricing :

- Professional Edition 24GB £199 / $279
- Composers Edition 6GB - £99 / $149
- Compact Edition 2GB - £49 / $79

Camel Audio has released a demo version of its virtual synth Alchemy.

This demo is completely fully functional for three weeks and comes with 40 presets and 100MB of samples to give you a taste of the 2GB of samples and over 300 presets in the full version. Alternatively, import your own WAV, AIFF or SFZ files into the additive, spectral and granular resynthesis engines. There are no annoying voices or silences, and presets and songs created with the demo can be loaded with the full version.

On top of that, Alchemy has been updated to version 1.08. This update includes many improvements and fixes including reduced CPU consumption, the ability to import files from external drives and improvements to the installer. The manual now includes a tips and tricks section, and is available to download as a PDF file so you can print it out or read it when you're offline. The Camel Audio forum has over 100 user presets to download and is a good place to get help as well as discuss improvements.

Available for both Mac (AU / VST) and PC (VST), Alchemy is priced at $249 / €199 / £179.

VirSyn has just announced the release of FDELAY - The Rhythmiser, a new delay plug-in.

The multi-band delay machine FDELAY is a new tool for sound design and loop manipulation in realtime. In contrast to the delay machines you're used to FDELAY splits the frequency spectrum of the input signal into 27 bands and applies a separate delay unit to each band. The delay times can be synchronized to the host tempo generating nearly infinite rhythmical and sonic variations of the input signal.

For each of the delay bands you can specify the delay time, the level and the feedback amount separately. These parameter changes can even be automized in realtime for glitch free rhythmical morphings.

A few high level parameters let you change the delay times and feedbacks of all delays with the turn of a single knob.

Features :

- 27 band realtime multiband delay.
- Frequency dependant level, delay time and feedback
- Linear phase precision filters for maximal transparency
- Tempo syncable delay times up to 6 seconds.
- Meta parameter for quick access to rhythm variations
- Minimized latency ( 12 ms )

FDELAY - The Rhythmiser is available now for both Mac and PC in VST, RTAS and AU formats at an introductory price of €99 instead of €169 till March 31st, 2009. Note that audio examples are available on VirSyn's website.

MHC Synthesizers and Effects reduce the prices on VST/AU plugins and sound libraries.

All their synthesizers and effect plugins now cost $129 (previously $199), Soundpacks cost $39 (previously $59), and Sample loop libraries cost $39 (previously $59).

They also offer a 25% discount on top of that, until the 28th of February, for those who sign up (it's free) to receive their newsletter.

McDSP is proud to announce that the all new Retro Pack Bundle is now shipping. The Retro Pack bundle includes the 4020 Retro EQ, the 4030 Retro Compressor and the 4040 Retro Limiter.

The 4020 Retro EQ is a four-band EQ and complimentary filter set. The HF and LF bands are shelving EQ, with two additional parametric EQs at the HMF and LMF bands.

The 4030 Retro Compressor is a new dynamic range control topology coupled with a wet/dry mix control to balance compressed and uncompressed signals. An active attack and release design allows aggressive compression settings with minimal artifact generation.

The 4040 Retro Limiter combines a look-ahead brick wall limiter function with several subjective treatments to make the limiting action subtle, and yet vintage.

The Retro Pack HD Bundle is available for $995 while the Native Bundle costs $495. The McDSP HD line supports TDM, RTAS and Audiosuite formats and the Native line supports RTAS and Audiosuite formats.