The famous Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard has died last monday in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Hubbard, who had suffered a heart attack on Nov. 26, was 70.

Born in Indianapolis, He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post bop styles from the early 60s and on. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives for modern jazz and bebop. During his career he has played with legends such as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, McCoy Tyner, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.

Radikal Technologies unveils Spectralis II, the successor to Radikal's original hybrid synth.

With up to 2 GB sample memory and tons of new features Radikal raises the bar again for our competition. Never stop the sequencer engine again with the fully redesigned sequencer engine that allows for on the fly realtime sequencing, recording of MIDI controllers and overdubbing.

Quick Sound Selection for every part - your most favorite sounds are just one fingertip away. Transpose your patterns and step sequences with the attached keyboard and control the Spectralis parameters via MIDI from your computer.

The only thing left untouched in the new design is the sound engine, which is "still the warmest and richest sound out there with the power of a modular synthesizer in a box", according to Radikal.

Spectralis II is sheduled for February 2009 and will cost € 1998 incl. VAT.

Arturia has released a new version 1.0.6 of the ORIGIN firmware.

What's new :

- Increased stability in Multi Mode
- Increased stability while editing programs
- MIDI event management improvement :

· When sending a bank change or a program change to Origin
· When flooding Origin with MIDI messages

- Fixes some issues while using the footswitch pedal in Multi Mode
- Fixes occasional crashes on preset 1000
- Fixes issue with preset loaded at start-up
- Improved graphical performance

Version 1.0.6 is a free update for all registered owners and is available at :

DiscoDSP has released the Mac OS X version of Discovery Pro, a virtual analogue synthesizer featuring 12 oscillators (8 Virtual Analog + 4 Wave) with extensive sound design capabilities.

Features :

- 128 Patch Memories per bank
- Parameter Morphing using Modulation Wheel or MIDI velocity
- 2x oversampling
- 2x oversampled distortions
- Bank browser (by clicking arrows in display led and bank name)
- More than 300 presets in 3 banks (including a percussion one)
- Nord Lead 2 and 2X patch import
- 4 Layers per Patch, each with :

* 2 Oscillators (Sine, Saw, Triangle, PWM, Square, Parabolic, White and Pink Noise) with Ring modulation, Sync and Frequency Modulation
* 1 Wave Oscillator. Can load WAV files using high quality interpolation. User banks are easily added
* Re ...

Well 2009 Winter NAMM is coming so it's time for some rumors... Here's the first one : Kurzweil is about to unveil a 61-keyboard version of the Kurzweil PC3. According to a Kurzweil rep, the PC361 would arrive in coming january.

Wait and see...