For the whole of the month of July 2009, Universal Audio is offering a free UAD2 Solo DSP card ($499 Value) to anyone who buys an LA610 MkII preamplifier/compressor.

Customers purchasing the LA610 MkII simply need to download and complete the promo form and return it to the local distributor in order to claim their free UAD.

A new page dedicated to tutorial movies for XILS 3 is available on the XILS-lab web site.

XILS 3 is an exciting new matrix style virtual modular synthesizer. Based on the architecture of the legendary EMS VCS3 synth, the XILS 3 is capable of creating both 'classic' sounds and totally new ones.

Features :

• Three aliasing-free oscillators: sine, ramp, square, triangle.
• One 2/4 poles low pass filter (a 3 pole self-oscillating mode is also planned).
• One envelope, based on two different designs, trapezoid and ADSR.
• One spring reverb.
• One ring modulator.
• One 128 steps sequencer.
• Two output static filters.
• One joy-stick.
• Three connection matrix.
• One input gate.
• One input envelope follower. ...

VoxBox by Puremagnetik has been developed as a one-stop solution for instrument building and sound design applications that require vocal timbres. Whether you wish to construct standalone voice programs or to layer vocals into existing sounds, VoxBox provides the raw material for patch thickening and harmonic variant creation.

The included VoxBox menus and looped phrases are equally suited as ready-to-play without further processing. Simply load up one of the tempo synced clips or play the one-shot phrases as you would any other instrument.

Voxengo has updated its mastering limiter plug-in Elephant to version 3.4.

Changes :

• Latency change reporting fixed in AudioUnits.
• Lock-up problem on single-core CPUs fixed.
• Plug-in initial loading time reduced.
• K-metering is now following specification fully.
• Calibration K-metering modes added.

Expert Sleepers presents Silent Way, a suite of plug-ins designed for use as part of a modular analogue synthesiser system. The plug-ins produce no sound themselves, nor do they process sound - rather, they generate signals to be used as control voltages (CVs), which can be patched into the control inputs of oscillators, filters, VCAs, etc. of an analogue system.

There are currently two plug-ins in the Silent Way suite - Silent Way DC and Silent Way Voice Controller. These are described in more detail below. It is anticipated that more plug-ins will be added to the suite in the future - watch the website for product announcements.

All plug-ins also feature :

• Full MIDI and OSC control.
• MIDI/OSC scriptability.
• Sample-accurate handling of MIDI note messages.

Silent Way DC
Silent Way DC is a simple plug-in that generates constant output signals. It is intended to be used in conjunction with parameter automation (via MIDI or directly by the host application) to generate varying signals. For example, you could use it as an LFO where you draw out the LFO waveform in your host's parameter automation GUI.

Silent Way Voice Controller
Silent Way Voice Controller is a virtual instrument plug-in designed to directly control an analogue synthesiser by generating the appropriate CV and gate signals via an appropriate audio interface. By listening to the synthesiser's output signal, the plug-in is able to calibrate itself to generate the appropriate pitch CV for the incoming MIDI notes. As well as the basic pitch and gate signals, the plug-in can generate three multi-stage envelope CVs which you can feed to VCAs, VCFs, etc. in your synth.


Silent Way is available for both Mac OS X and Windows in VST and AU formats at a price of $49.