Apple has announced that Mac OS X v10.6, aka Snow Leopard, will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple's online store is now accepting pre-orders.

Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users for $29.

AcousticsampleS and Lance Herring are announcing the upcoming release of the Kawai-EX sample library. It's a Kawai-EX concert grand piano that used to be in the Kennedy center in Washington DC. The product is already in an advanced state.

Here are some features of the final product :

- 5 "pedal up" layers, 5 "pedal down" layers, and 15 release samples per note (5 only for the light version).
- Thumps samples.
- Automatic Pedal noises samples.
- Multiple mic position and mixing from the interface (in PRO version).
- Ability to save polyphony by enabling / disabling each position.
- Sympathetic resonance (pedal down samples).
- Multiple releases. They have been carefully picked up for each note to really reproduce the real mechanical behaviour of a note.
- As always, a custom ...

Focusrite is now shipping the new Saffire PRO 24 DSP, a 16 Input / 8 Output FireWire audio interface that features VRM, a breakthrough monitoring technology, in addition to real-time DSP-powered tracking plug-ins, all tailor-made for the modern recording environment.

The Saffire PRO 24 DSP has an MSPR of $399.

Ueberschall has released Caribbean Flavors Vol.1, a versatile and very colorful production tool with a pristine sound which is focused on 32 live-recorded Construction Kits from the Caribbean. This upscale production offers many styles of the modern and traditional Latin music culture such as:

• Bachata,
• Buleria,
• Merengue,
• Salsa,
• Porro,
• Champeta,
• Cumbia,
• Montuno,
• Guaguanco,
• Guajira,
• Merengue.

All material provides the live-emphasized essence to aid in production realism, artistry and identity. Sessions were recorded with world-class musicians from Puerto Rico, Columbia, Cuba, Venezuela and Germany. Arrangment and ideas come from the famous musician, percussionist and Grammy Award winner Nené Vásquez; ...

The Covert Operators announced a series of videos that are a complete guide to Ableton's MIDI Devices.

In 25 minutes time, you will learn what these devices do and in some cases you will see an example of how to put the features of a device into practice.

The Video Pack covers :

• The Chord Plugin (1:45)
• The Velocity Plugin (3:28)
• The Scale Plugin (4:10)
• The Note Length Plugin (7:00)
• The Random Plugin (4:29)
• The Key Zone Editor (2:39)
• Using a 3rd Party MIDI LFO in Live (1:43)

Pricing : 10€