Waves Audio announces the formation of the Waves Live Division, a dedicated branch addressing the current and future needs of the live sound market sector. Throughout its history, Waves has brought to market a number of products that have become indispensable components of the live sound signal chain, and with the Waves Live Division, the company now formalizes its commitment to the live sound market, benefiting FOH, Monitor and Live Sound/Recording/Live Broadcast engineers.

As part of the Division's inaugural initiatives, Waves will unveil a new Live Division website, as well as release the D-Show Enabler, making over 50 Waves TDM plug-ins compatible for the live environment, using the new Waves D-Show Enabler. Waves TDM plug-in bundles like the SSL 4000 Collection, V-Series, The API Collection, MaxxVolume, and more are now available for use in live sound.

Roland is proud to introduce the Prelude home entertainment keyboard, featuring a fresh, contemporary sound set, an onboard 16-track sequencer, and a broad range of musical styles.

With 61 velocity-sensitive keys, and a lightweight, compact footprint, the Prelude is ideal for entry-level keyboardists and hobbyists who want a portable solution without skimping on sound. The Prelude includes a myriad of the most essential high-quality tones taken from Roland's deep sound library, all playable with 128-voice polyphony.

The Prelude features a wide variety of contemporary sounds and intelligent backing styles, including variations on the musical styles of South America and the southwest United States. Choose from four style variations for each song progression, and create a dynamic live performance with the included D-Beam and pitch and modulation controllers.

The Prelude includes a built-in speaker system designed to accurately reproduce the arranger's high-quality sounds. The USB Memory Player allows for direct playback of MP3, .WAV, AIFF, and SMF files, while the Center Cancel function lets players sing along with their favorite songs.

Ultimate Support introduces another unique line of customized accessories to match your inimitable style and sound! These new Custom Mic Stand Tops take their cue from their Custom Chrome Mic Stand Series launch—now offered as an affordable, stand-alone accessory, adaptable to work with any mic stand!

"Your mic stand is the centerpiece of your performance," offers CEO Mike Belitz. "Why settle for a boring black tube when you can make a statement with a custom look at an affordable price? Ultimate Support's new Custom Mic Stand Tops allow you to match your music with a visual vibe guaranteed to get you noticed. Although they work with all standard mic stands in the market, if used with our new Live series stands, they act as a functional, one-hand clutch. All this without breaking the bank!"

Six unique designs are available, each with universal connectors making it easy to mix and match with any new or existing mic stand in your arsenal: "Are You Talkin' to Me?" (Brass knuckle clutch), "Dark Magic" (Celtic Cross-themed), "Bring It on Sucka" (Hand-grenade clutch), "Love/Hate" (Conical clutch), "Venom" (Black widow clutch), and "Smell The Rubber" (60's-style shifter clutch).

Garritan has announced a new World Instruments library presenting a comprehensive collection of expressive and exotic instruments from around the world.

The Garritan World Instruments collection offers a large variety of beautifully sampled flutes — Native American flutes, bamboo flues, Irish flutes, Chinese and Japanese flutes, Indian flutes, clay flutes, pan flutes, nose flutes and many other exotic winds from around the globe. Included is a dynamic array of pitched and un-pitched percussion instruments — Taiko drums, Gamelan ensemble, Log drums, tablas, ewe drums, balaphon, Udu drum, talking drum, steel drums, an array of Latin percussion, and much more. There are numerous types of plucked and bowed strings, including: Indian Sitars, Japanese koto and shamisen, African kora, Middle Eastern oud and santoor, and erhu. A variety of other instruments include didgeridoo, Middle Eastern reed instruments, accordions, Tibetan bowls, and harmonium, to name just a few.

The Garritan World Instruments Library is designed with playability and expressive control in mind. It features controls for dynamics, vibrato, tongue/slur techniques, airflow, auto legato, auto-variability, auto-portamento, trills and more — to make these samples musical, realistic and expressive. There is even support for wind controllers (like the Akai EWI). A unique feature of the Garritan World instruments is its support for Scala files to adjust to different temperaments and tunings.

Powered by the ARIA playback engine (developed by Plogue Technologies), the Garritan World Instruments will work on a single computer, laptop and even some netbooks, Mac OSX or PC platform, standalone, or plug-in for all major sequencers (VST, AU, RTAS), works with Finale 2009 and with other supported notation programs.

Garritan World Instruments is expected to be released first quarter 2009. Pricing will be announced upon release.

MOTU has introduced Volta, a virtual instrument plug-in that allows users to play and automate modular synthesizers — or any hardware equipped with control voltage (CV) inputs — from their favorite host audio workstation software.

The first product of its kind, Volta receives conventional virtual instrument input such as MIDI notes, MIDI controller data or even high-resolution audio track ramp automation and then responds by outputting a corresponding control voltage signal, which the host software then routes to the outputs of any DC-coupled audio interface connected to the computer. The resulting DC voltage can then drive a standard CV input, such as those found on classic modular synthesizers, modern analog mono synths and even popular effects processors such as Moogerfoogers.