SOUND ON SOUND
A British company specialising in the maintenance and refurbishment of vintage Neve equipment have produced a new preamp design with a classic sound.
These two new rack processors from Vermona offer flexible filtering and phasing with a range of interesting modulation options.
Score = **** 4/5 stars. Named after Waldorf's Microwave synth of the same colour, Orange consists of 216 NN19 presets, 12 Redrum kits and 65 REX2 loops on a single CD-ROM.
The monotimbral K-Station offered keyboard players an affordable Novation -- but now, for a bit more money, the company have released the KS4 and KS5, which add plenty of new features, better keyboards and multitimbrality. The perfect marriage at the perfect price? We find out.
WaveMachine Labs' sophisticated DirectX plug-in allows you to replace the sounds of individual drums with samples, while keeping the human feel of a performance.
**** Score = 4/5. Many libraries offer a French horn ensemble within their menu of brass sections, but this is the first horns-only release we've come across.
The successor to the MRS1044 has more of everything - tracks, inputs, sounds - at a very similar price. But with new fierce competition, is there still room for a Zoom?
Edirol's latest audio and MIDI interface fills another niche in the increasingly competitive market for USB devices.
**** Score = 4 stars. AMG add to their growing Catalyst series of sample libraries with this two CD collection.
An awful lot of blowing went into Dan Dean's new orchestral release - but is this the wind of change, or just a great deal of hot air?
Emagic have launched two new classic keyboard emulations for Logic. We test them out.
Although XTA are perhaps better known for their live sound processors, their new SIDD dynamics processor provides world-beating dynamics processing which is just as useful in the studio.
The flagship of Behringer's newest line of mixers is a four-buss design with 26 inputs, four aux sends and an internal effects processor.
Spectrasonics' massive sample-based soft synth promises to be the ultimate source for pads, atmospheres and textures.
Dave Smith, creator of the Prophet 5 and Wavestation, moved into software synthesis in the '90s, but now he's back with what he calls 'the ultimate dongle' — a hardware analogue and digital synth. We find out if he's still evolving...
PreSonus' eight-channel Firewire interface is the first to use Yamaha's much-touted mLAN protocol. How does it compare to the proprietary driver systems developed by the likes of MOTU and Metric Halo?
Every pianist dreams of owning a grand piano, but is it really possible to combine the feel of a grand into a stage piano and combine it with great sounds and master-keyboard functionality?
Blue Sky's new active studio monitors use cutting-edge cone technology and closed-box speaker loading for improved performance.
The AGNULA project is creating what is possibly the first computer system tailored specifically for musicians — and it's all based around the Linux operating system.
An affordable new multi-pattern mic with a subtle tube sound.