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| 12-31-06 / 06:08 PM : Roland Fantom-X successor in 2007 ? (cjed) |
| With the recent rebates of the Roland Fantom-X (200$ less), many are expecting a new Roland workstation at the upcoming Winter NAMM, that starts january, 18 (2007). |
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| 12-31-06 / 05:52 PM : Review of the TC Electronic Konnekt 24D (cjed) |
 The online edition of keyboardmag provides a full review of the new Firewire audio interface Konnekt 24D from TC Electronic (famous maker of external effects and mastering racks). That is here. They were impressed by the audio quality, even better than the one in higher range interfaces. In that price range they didn't find a real concurrent. |
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| 12-31-06 / 05:23 PM : Free scores (cjed) |
 The site Freescores lists links providing free scores (PDF, also lyrics), mostly classical. Among these are however some payful sites. We can search scores for instruments, and access to last free scores online here (also to most downloaded ones). |
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| 12-30-06 / 03:50 PM : Moog Modular V 2.2 (cjed) |
| Arturia provides at download an update (2.2) to Moog Modular V, that brings Intel Mac support as with Cubase 4 support. |
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| 12-28-06 / 02:20 PM : Music Math 4.0 UB (cjed) |
| Music Math, the audio values conversion software utility (tempo, transpose, delay, timestretch value) has been updated (universal binary version). That is here. |
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| 12-27-06 / 12:30 PM : CME WIDI X-8 : wireless MIDI (cjed) |
| Audiofanzine reported that the WIDI X-8 system from CME (maker of the famous master keyboards of the same name) should be available mid January. |
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| 12-24-06 / 01:28 AM : Aside piano and violins for MAS (cjed) |
 This song uses the patch DarkerSide from Complete Piano card, SO Gold Pro XP for strings (3 violins sections, a cellos ensemble), a glockenspiel and an oboe : DSSideMAS.mp3 |
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| 12-24-06 / 01:19 AM : Long XP legato strings impro (cjed) |
| XP_STTheme was the first song made with SO Gold Pro XP (december, 15), that uses 3 violins sections (one played legato), a cellos ensemble and a basses section : XP_STTheme.mp3 |
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| 12-23-06 / 07:02 PM : Midifiles for christmas (cjed) |
| For those who would want to try rearranging musics for the occasion, there is some sites providing free christmas midifiles : Midi/Noël Christmas Midi |
| 1 comment |
| 12-23-06 / 06:32 PM : 4Front technologies TruePianos (cjed) |
| As reported by audiofanzine, the company 4Front technologies will unveil in january (2007) TruePianos, a new virtual instrument aimed at reproducing pianos, using physical modeling combined with a small amount of samples. We find this kind of products more and more often these times (Pianotech, etc.), and they are very expressive, even if not always realistic on the whole range. Besides the background music in the flash animation on the site we can watch an interesting demonstration video, very delicate :-) |
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| 12-23-06 / 03:26 PM : Avoid IE on the site (cjed) |
| Among rendering problems that plague IE (doesn't conform with the W3C CSS standard), the dotted attribute is treated as dashed (spaced lines). A workaround exists, that is applying an image (1 pixel) in background with repeat mode, but it implies defining div for each link... too complex to maintain and not elegant. Moreover we should add an asterisk towards the style definition to avoid it being treated by Firefox and Safari (are CSS compliant)... IE7 is expected to fix this bug (among others). Meanwhile you should stay with Firefox or Safari, because IE also doesn't respect the middle pannel width in all pages (sections headings) nor displays the colour gradiant background behind the heading titles, and doesn't display the scroll bar (navigation by year/month) correctly in absolute (fixed testing the browser and shifting positions by 10 pixels for IE...), without speaking about colors, fonts and images poor display quality.s |
| 2 comment |
| 12-23-06 / 12:53 AM : 30 000 listenings or downloads at musique-libre (cjed) |
| Since the registration at musique-libre.org a year ago, the number of listenings and/or downloads reaches 30 000 (for the 20 songs published). A quarter of these are downloads, that could show that 25 percent of listeners were pleased or liked the songs a lot. And all of that without new publication since 6 months (in order to restrict the list to one page). New releases are only available through the Songs section (entries with blue MP3 label). |
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| 12-23-06 / 12:43 AM : Bloggers don't like efforts ? (cjed) |
| Numerous articles last days predicted that the number of blogs should fall in 2007 after a highest, and that we found now many more old bloggers. In fact very few update their blog in a day basis and few follow for more than a year, because of less interest for effort... However since i added the search feature to the site i see how useful it can be as a fast database for favorites, after being a modern personnal entry... and a mean to share creations. |
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| 12-23-06 / 12:31 AM : I/One Connects : Firewire Snake (cjed) |
| I/One Connects presents Firewire Snake, an audio router / converter. It can manage an hundred of audio channels on a single wire and is mLan compatible. The prices seem correct regarding the extended possibilities. |
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| 12-23-06 / 12:10 AM : Puremagnetik String machines (cjed) |
 Puremagnetik presents String machines, a 250 Mo vintage strings ensemble instruments sample collection : Roland VP-330, Roland RS-09, ARP Solina String Ensemble and Crumar Orchestrator (some of these where also in Zero-G Nostalgia). Also included are horns, organs and choirs.The product can be downloaded as a monthly subscription (5,75$, gives access to only month releases) or annual (60$, gives access to all the library). No demos are available however. |
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| 12-22-06 / 11:57 PM : A black hole in action observed (cjed) |
| For the first time scientists had the chance (happens one time over 10 000 years...) to assist to the ingestion of a star by a giant black hole, thanks to the Galex satellite of the Nasa. As usual the numbers measured are unbelievable. |
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| 12-22-06 / 11:45 PM : Google Mars & Google Moon (cjed) |
 Following Google Earth, Google presents Google Mars and Google Moon... Google is everywhere, we are also expecting the results of their work with Apple since they are connected... Besides, Microsoft had to make a deal with Yahoo to strike back. |
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| 12-22-06 / 11:39 PM : DropTeam Multiplayer Final Demo 1.0 (cjed) |
| At macgamefiles we can now download the final multiplayer demo of DropTeam, the futurist tanks game. There is no limitation, except only one scenario is available. Perhaps this new network game mode wil bring back some interest in this game. That is here (230 Mo). |
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| 12-22-06 / 09:55 PM : Id Software : Quake, Doom1&2 made on NeXT (cjed) |
 On John Romero's blog, famous funder of Id Software, we learn that they developed the first Quake, Doom and Doom II on NeXTSTEP stations (John Carmack was also a great fan at this time) ! They also convinced Raven Software (developers of Heretic) to work on this platform. Another proof that only less aware of computing concepts and poor minded games developers are Windows centric...If you didn't know, Improve (my company) started in early nineties selling NeXT softwares in France, and then developed an innovative distributed software suite for Health services (urgency), ResUrgences, made with the great WebObjects tool from NeXT(now Apple's since Steve Jobs came back at Apple and decided to buy his second company). |
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| 12-20-06 / 10:29 PM : VISTA UI isn't 3D (cjed) |
| Aero Windows VISTA UI isn't true 3D... the "flip" effect of windows when switching applications (alt tab) uses the same principle as OSX Quartz 2D (or Novell XGL Linux), this is false 3D : the video card (thanks to OpenGL on OSX, DirectX on VISTA) retreives windows content (as it is in the bitmap back buffer) as a large texture and applies transformations. That is the fact on OSX for genius effect, Exposé, etc. UI elements aren't defined in 3D. A video card cannot render complexe and precise graphics, for example fonts. So other rendering are in 2D. Tiger uses draw primitives that can take benefit from the video card, and Leopard should go further (Quartz 2D Extreme from Tiger is still years ahead of VISTA graphic engine, because it has evolved many times since the first version in 2002...). OSX also manages dynamic shadows for windows, menus, etc. (computed in teal time with 64 bits precision) and other compositing effects (transparency in menus, dialogs, windows - for example the terminal windows -, since 2000. Apple increased opacity in each new version of OSX and decreased the 3D appearence of buttons, to make the UI more readable...). OSX UI evolutions Quartz 2D --> Quartz 2D Extreme from 10.0 to 10.4 Flip windows on OSX |
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| 12-20-06 / 11:30 AM : Première en France : un P2Piste relaxé ! (vincent) |
| No traduction yet, please switch to french mode.s |
| 6 comment |
| 12-18-06 / 09:35 PM : Precision Sound : Dream Whistles (cjed) |
 Precision Sound presents Dream Whistles, that includes about thirty patchs for Kontakt 2 (158 Mo downloadable for 59$, 24 bits samples) : Bass, Alto, Tenor Soprano and Sopranino. Audio demos are available. |
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| 12-18-06 / 09:27 PM : VSL Bosendorfer Imperial & Konzerthaus Organ (cjed) |
  VSL presents two new samples libraries : Bosendorfer Imperial (55 Go of 24 bits sounds with 8 octaves range - a special piano that goes lower) at 265 euros and Konzerthaus Organ (14 Go of 24 bits organ samples) at 495 euros. Audio demos are available on the description pages. |
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| 12-18-06 / 09:15 PM : Miroslav Philharmonik 1.1 (cjed) |
 IK multimedia provides a 1.1 update for Miroslav Philharmonik : universal binary, it doesn't require anymore an USB dongle. Among new features are a better loading time and a better compatibility with multichannel in Audio Unit. That is here. |
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| 12-18-06 / 09:08 PM : NN Times : VISTA failed to copy OSX (cjed) |
| David Pogue from the NewYork Times compares in an humoristic article and video new "features" from Windows VISTA with what we had for some years in OSX... He concludes that despite the rule at Microsoft was clearly to copy all they could about OSX, they completely failed : so we can't really bare them for having copied, because the result is too bad...s |
| 2 comment |
| 12-15-06 / 11:10 PM : Vir2 Acoustic Legends HD (cjed) |
| Vir2 Instruments presents Acoustic Legends HD, a 19 Go acoustic guitar samples library, recorded in 24 bits / 96 Khz (perhaps not necessary...) : 2 nylon guitars and 2 steel guitars (6 strings), and 12 strings guitars, chords. It uses Kontakt 2 player. Audio demos are available. |
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| 12-15-06 / 10:48 PM : Audiofanzine : FM8 review (cjed) |
| Audiofanzine provides a full review of NI FM8. They also liked it a lot. |
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| 12-15-06 / 10:42 PM : Adobe CS3 beta (cjed) |
| On the Adobe site we can download a beta version of the Adobe CS3 suite. It operates only two days without a CS2 licence (perhaps we can install it again ?) and it weights about 650 Mo. That is here (registration required). |
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| 12-15-06 / 10:14 PM : WoW Burning Crusade : second trailer (cjed) |
 At gamestrailers we can watch a new trailer of WoW Burning Crusade (and in H264). It looks wonderful but this is only a cinematic scene. |
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| 12-14-06 / 09:14 PM : Exponential ITMS sales grow curves (cjed) |
 Macbidouille forums led to this blog, that demonstrates through graphs the grow of ITMS sales during 2003 and 2006, as with ipods sales curve. All is explained, the curves show cumulative sales and as it is on a logarithmic scale, the near straight lines prove an exponential grow. |
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| 12-14-06 / 01:14 AM : Reason Pianos : review (cjed) |
| Audiofanzine published a review of Reason Pianos (was unveiled last August) . Their audio demos are stunning for a product at only 120 euros. |
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| 12-14-06 / 12:44 AM : Nexuiz 2.2.1 update (cjed) |
| A new version (2.2.1) of Nexuiz is available. We can also download 35 new maps made by fans. This open source multiplayer Quake like game uses an enhanced version of the Quake engine. |
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| 12-14-06 / 12:36 AM : Redline Racer 1.0.2 (cjed) |
 An update to Redline Racer racing game allows to fix (among other things) the crashing bug during start in full screen. That is on Macgamefiles (or on the Ambrosia Software site, their bandwidth is great), 184 Mo in size. I will finally be able to try it... |
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| 12-14-06 / 12:28 AM : Parallels Desktop available at fnac.com (cjed) |
| The virtualization software Parallels Desktop is available at Fnac site, that is uncommon :-) |
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| 12-14-06 / 12:22 AM : Apple / Orange : global solution (cjed) |
| Apple decided to go a step further in France, unveiling a global solution including ADSL subscription to Orange provider and Macbook loan : 59,90 euros per month for 36 months, the Macbook can be buyed after 12 months (5 euros more per month for 8 mbits instead one). At Macgeneration readers made calculations... that is still 1800 euros for the Macbook, the price of a great macbook... |
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| 12-14-06 / 12:10 AM : Leopard : 50% of the new features not unveiled (cjed) |
| As stated by Macosrumors, new features from Leopard that are known by now only represent 50% of the new features to be released when OSX 10.5 ships... The surprise will then be huge for Microsoft, that is yet unable with Vista to catch up with the first MacOSX 10.0 (early 2001)... |
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| 12-13-06 / 10:21 PM : ITMS sales : +78% (the truth) (cjed) |
| Analysts Piper Jaffray firm, aware of computing market and Apple, gives informations contradicting reports from Forrester Research that stated previously that ITMS sales have fallen. On the contrary sales were up by 78 percents during this year (2006) ! Some reported the new info, as La Tribune, others not...s |
| 2 comment |
| 12-13-06 / 01:17 AM : Microsoft likes mac more than Windows (cjed) |
| Computerworld reported that James Allchin (Microsoft co-founder and Windows development chief) said in a mail sent to Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates in 2004 that he would prefer using a mac... if he didn't work at Microsoft. He explained Microsoft is unable to make secure and non buggy softwares. That is here. |
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| 12-12-06 / 01:03 AM : Review of Blade Runner : remastered (cjed) |
 DVDRama provides a review of the new remastered version of Blade Runner DVD that was out these last days, comparing images with the old (1999) : no more crop left and right in image, no more jumps, the picture is sharper and brighter, with more details. The sound is also far more better. As the original Dune DVD, the first Blade Runner DVD was a DVD 5 (one side one layer, that was 4,7 Go only). |
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| 12-12-06 / 12:46 AM : WiiSaber : lightsaber using OSX and Wii (cjed) |
 Following MacSaber that allowed to mimic a lightsaber operation using movements sensors of the mac books, here is WiiSaber, that uses the last Wii remote OSX driver to play saber in an even more realistic way. |
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| 12-12-06 / 12:35 AM : Rumor : Illuminous interface in Leopard (cjed) |
| As rumored by Applegazette, the next OSX user interface included in Leopard (and replacing Aqua) would be named Illuminous. |
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| 12-12-06 / 12:29 AM : Parallels interview (cjed) |
| IMG published an interview of Parallels, the editor of the virtualization software Workstation. As announced OpenGL and DirectX support will be complete very soon. |
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| 12-12-06 / 12:05 AM : Halo 3 second trailer (cjed) |
 As announced a second very short (1 minute) trailer of Halo 3 has been available for few days. |
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| 12-11-06 / 12:50 AM : VLC 0.8.6 available (cjed) |
 VLC 0.8.6 is out. Among new features are the Intel macs compatibility, the support for WMP9 format, a better compatibility with H264 format... It can be downloaded here (we can also look at a realtime downloads counter, 2 per second average). |
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| 12-09-06 / 01:27 AM : Why the site looks bad on Windows :) (cjed) |
| Here is a short explanation about the site rendering being so different on Windows (darker, saturated colors) - without mentioning bugs in positioning and dashed lines (bad conformance with standards in IE - ok in Firefox), and bad rendering of images (bad graphic engine on Windows). You have to know that Microsoft uses a 2.2 gamma value (TV standard) where Apple choosed 1.8 (standard for printers, as it was targeted for prepress), resulting in brighter colors on mac for the same colors values. A solution could be to replace the images with pictures in PNG format (can include the source plaform gamma value to proceed to compensation when displayed on a target platform using a different gamma value). The GIF and JPEG formats do not convey this information. However Windows didn't manage well PNGs. For backgrounds we should be able to detect the runtime platform and apply an adaptive factor (algorithm to determine)... Formula to adapt RGB values from Windows to another gamma (Annexe D, we want the opposite) The sRGB color space Article upon sRGB |
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| 12-09-06 / 12:47 AM : New Mozart ? (cjed) |
| Could Halvor H, a composer from Norway that just signed in soundsonline, be the new Mozart ? We will have to check this if the composition he posted here is really new. Similarities are stunning. That reminds me known themes... i will probaby end being ridicoulus with this news :)s |
| 7 comment |
| 12-09-06 / 12:37 AM : Soundsonline contest back (cjed) |
 The Soundsonline music contest is back, with new rules and the possibility to try unreleased new products for the winners. There is still great songs in the last entries. |
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| 12-08-06 / 11:36 PM : The whole theory for unification (cjed) |
| L'internaute provides an interesting and easy to understand science article about physical laws unification. |
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| 12-08-06 / 10:28 PM : Computerworld : Safari the best browser (cjed) |
| ComputerWorld published a comparative review of some of the best known internet browsers (there are more on Mac in fact if we count Camino, Shiira, Omniweb or iCab) : Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari. Their choice finally went for Safari over Firefox... but it isn't for Windows. And this is without considering the next version of Safari included in Leopard, that will use stunning new system features. |
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| 12-08-06 / 10:14 PM : Leopard Server (cjed) |
| Macworld published this time an article about Leopard Server. We had few details about this version (should be out when Leopard ships, or a bit later). |
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| 12-07-06 / 10:13 PM : Mac games in 2007 / Apple coming (cjed) |
| Macworld presents a survey of mac games market for the past year and expectations for 2007 : planned releases, orientations, impact of various virtualization solutions. Meanwhile we learn a bit more about Apple coming in the game market as an editor. |
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| 12-07-06 / 03:06 AM : A smooth FM (cjed) |
| SmoothStab uses sounds from FM8 demo (3 of sequence type, one of drums type and one of organ type) as with a bass and aditionnal hit hat from Kontakt 2 : SmoothStab.mp3 |
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| 12-06-06 / 10:17 PM : Bundle EastWest / Muse (cjed) |
 Soundsonline and Muse are selling special EastWest/Receptor bundles. The Receptor is a hardware container for virtual instruments : 24 bits converters, hard disk, many Go ram, analog and digital I/O, 16 virtual instruments at a time, effects routing. The EW Receptor/Composer's Choice Mega Bundle, including a Receptor fitted with 160 Go hard disk, 2 Go ram and EWQL SO Gold, Colossus, Symphonic Choirs and Bosendorfer 290, is priced 2999$ (that is 40% less than the total value).Other configurations are available on the Muse Research site The solution can operate in standalone (default mode) or with a computer. |
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| 12-06-06 / 10:02 PM : ProTools 7.3 (cjed) |
 Digidesign just released ProTools 7.3 (HD, LE and M-Powered, for OSX and Windows), that offer new tools and should be faster. We can watch demonstration videos on the description page. The update isn't free (175$ for the HD version, 75$ for LE and 49$ for M-Powered). |
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| 12-06-06 / 09:55 PM : WoW : multithread update on OSX - 2X faster (cjed) |
| Blizzard made available an update to WoW for intel macs that uses the new multithreaded OpenGL feature of OSX 10.4.8, and would double the framerate. Considering the same machine, all games should then soon be far more faster on OSX than on Windows. That is here, but we have to wait for their "gnomish engineers" :) to fix the load problem before accessing the file. |
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| 12-05-06 / 11:04 PM : Alesis IO|26 & IO|14 (cjed) |
| Alesis announced that they are shipping their pro audio interfaces IO|26 and IO|14. They include 24 bits/192Khz converters (8 analog inputs and 18 digital inputs on the IO|26). That is here. |
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| 12-05-06 / 10:54 PM : Garritan : small special price (cjed) |
| Garritan announces a little special price (group buy until december, 21) on its products Jazz & Big Band, Stradivari Solo Violin 2.0 and Personal Orchestra (139$ each) . That is here. |
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| 12-05-06 / 10:45 PM : Soniccouture KIM (cjed) |
 Soniccouture just released KIM, a 24 bits/44,1 Khz samples library for Kontakt 2 and EXS24 including 137 samples (184 Mo, 5 velocity layers) from dulcimer (or zither) from Thailand. It uses a dedicated KSP script for reproducing the natural tremolo of the instrument. It is priced 29,66 euros (downloadable). Audio demos are available on the page. |
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| 12-05-06 / 10:04 PM : 100 Go hard disk for ipod (cjed) |
| Macnn reported that Toshiba will ship as soon as January 100 Go hard disks for ipod, just in time for next true video ipods that are expected soon (actual ipods video cannot store long movies). |
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| 12-04-06 / 11:10 PM : Armado shipping, demo available (cjed) |
| Armado is finally out as announced (19,95 $). A demo is available for OSX and Windows. That is here (129 Mo). There is also a trailer on Apple site. |
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| 12-04-06 / 10:27 PM : VirSyn Cantor 2 (cjed) |
 VirSyn presents Cantor 2, an evolution of their voice/sing synthesizer. As with Symphonic Choirs it allows to enter the text to sing (not in latin). A demo version is expected soon. Meanwhile we can listen to audio examples. |
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| 12-04-06 / 10:11 PM : Guitar Pro 5.1 for OSX review (cjed) |
 Macgeneration provides a review of Guitar Pro 5.1 for OSX. The port seems good looking finally, not bad for an application originated from Windows. That is here. |
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| 12-04-06 / 09:04 PM : Rumors about the keynote (cjed) |
| Macosrumors last rumors for the January keynote bring new expectations : 2 or 3 iphones, a tablet mac, more infos on the iTV, new Mac Pro, announces for gamers. |
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| 12-04-06 / 08:59 PM : Safari : 4%, soon 10% (cjed) |
| Net Applications reported that Safari users represent 4% of internet users, that is just a third of Firefox users, another indication of the mac growth dynamic. Apple would have planned to reach 10% marketshare no further than mid 2008 (a bit more 5% at this time). |
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| 12-03-06 / 02:09 PM : Virtual Guitarist 2 review (cjed) |
 Audiofanzine provides a review of Steinberg Virtual Guitarist 2. The software operates like Akkord Guitar included in Kontakt 2. We can listen to some demo phrases they made for testing.s |
| 2 comment |
| 12-03-06 / 01:54 PM : QuickTime anniversary : 15 years (cjed) |
 Macgeneration reported the anniversary date for QuickTime, that is now 15 years old (was out in 91) ! We can read about versions here. I started with QT 1.6 on a LC475 in 94, and a little before with a Classic emulator on Atari MegaST with monochrome HD display (640*400...) QuickTime 2 was a revolution, and then version 4 (the famous Sorenson trailer for SW Episode 1).Some links about QT and QTVR : QT bridge site Macbidouille forums about QTVR |
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| 12-02-06 / 12:05 AM : x264 QuickTime Codec (cjed) |
| The project x264 QuickTime Codec is an open source H264 encoder/decoder codec for Quicktime. It is intended to be faster than Apple's and to provide more control over quality. It can be downloaded here. |
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| 12-01-06 / 01:50 PM : Cable internet is not dead ? (vincent) |
| No traduction yet, please switch to french mode.s |
| 3 comment |