Applied Acoustics Systems has released Strum Electric GS-1, a guitar track production plug-in for music producers and composers.

Strum Electric GS-1 runs on both Mac OS X and Windows, as a standalone application as well as in host sequencers supporting the VST, Audio Units, and RTAS plug-in formats.

You can preview Strum Electric GS-1 below:

Strum Electric GS-1 is available now at a retail price of $229.

If you’ve used AAS Strum Electric GS-1, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Description:

Strum Electric includes a collection of classic single coil- and humbucker-fitted guitars, a two-channel amplifier with spring reverb, a speaker cabinet, and effects all featured in a ready-made preset library. It also includes an elaborate voicing module which automatically voices chords played on the keyboard as a guitar player would on the fretboard.

Techniques such as down- and up-strokes, slides and bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs, palm muting, muffled strings, and arpeggios are triggered by special strumming keys. Strum Electric also ships with an inspiring MIDI loops library which provides rhythmic figures, strumming patterns, and chord progressions in various musical styles.

Note that demo versions and sound samples are also available at :

This is an interesting development. Since both Macs and PCs are Intel-based, the long term viability of having four or more plugin formats is questionable.

At the very least, VFX could give new life to a broad range of free plugins developed for the PC.

Suggested Minimum Requirements: 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.5.x or later

Cool developement, or are all the plugins you need already available on the Mac?

Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Omnisphere is cross-platform, compatible with Apple Macintosh OS X 10.4 and higher as a native Universal Binary and also with Microsoft Windows XP/Vista. Audio Units, VST, and RTAS plug-in formats are supported for compatibility with all major host software.

Here’s their description:

This epic ‘Power Synth’ breaks completely new sonic ground by combining a wide variety of hybrid realtime synthesis techniques, an epic library of remarkable ‘Psychoacoustic’ sounds, and many innovative features that have never been seen before in any hardware or software synthesizer. The new instrument is the first to be based on Spectrasonics newly developed STEAM Engine.

“This is truly an Epic project,” said Eric Persing, Founder and Creative Director of Spectrasonics. “We have been working for many, many years; sampling unique sounds, experimenting, specifying the synthesis features and building the STEAM Engine to run it all. It’s been a very exciting process involving our team of software engineers, sound designers, musicians, and graphic artists from all over the world. We’ve been very deliberate in making it easy to use, and yet extremely powerful. Omnisphere is our new flagship synthesizer, and points the way to all our future virtual instruments. We are thrilled to offer a new product that will have a host of expansion capabilities in the future.”

Omnisphere offers a host of hybrid synthesis and new control capabilities including Variable Waveshaping DSP synthesis, Granular synthesis, Timbre Shifting, FM, polyphonic Ring Modulation, high-resolution streaming Sample Playback, Harmonia, Dual Multimode Filter structure, Chaos Envelopes, an advanced Unison mode, and the innovative Flex-Mod™ modulation routing system – to name a few.

The huge core library of Omnisphere is filled with years of creative sampling experiments and thousands of inspiring patches. Spectrasonics has pioneered several brand-new types of sampling for the core library of this instrument, including unique “Psychoacoustic” sounds and soundsources created with a new Composite Morphing Technique (CMT) – which morphs the harmonic characteristics of one instrument to another. As a bonus, a section of the core library is also devoted to representing the best of Spectrasonics award-winning sample libraries. When all of these organic core library soundsources are combined with the synthesis power of the STEAM engine, the sounds become “alive” in a truly dynamic and expressive way.

Among the many unique features this new multitimbral synth offers are its flexible arpeggiators with the innovative Groove Lock integration with Stylus RMX – allowing the arpeggiator’s pattern to instantly groove with the feel of the RMX drum loop; Live Mode for transitionless patch switching and layering, Stack Mode for powerful performance mapping; and integrated modulatable FX Racks.

Omnisphere is also the successor to Spectrasonics’ popular Atmosphere instrument, and contains enhanced versions of all the classic Atmosphere sounds. However, the brand new core library in Omnisphere is 10-times the size of Atmosphere and features thousands of completely new and different sounds.

There is an upgrade for all Atmosphere customers, available from Spectrasonics Techshop.

Chris Randall continues with his video overviews of Audio Damage sofware with this introduction to Dr. Damage.

Dr. Damage Features:

• Multi-mode filter (4PLP, 3PLP, 2PLP, 4PHP, 2PHP, and 4PBP modes). The 4PLP self-oscillates at high resonance without audio input, allowing Dr. Device to be used as a theremin-type instrument.
• “Tube” style soft saturation and bit reduction.
• Stereo bucket-brigade-style delay, with two filtering modes and tempo-synced time.
• 2-node XYZ control pad, hardwired for control from popular hardware XYZ pads.
• Sophisticated motion recording and kinetics control over the XYZ pad

FabFilter

Originally released in March 2004, FabFilter One focuses on the best possible sound and filter quality. The approach yields a pure and solid-sounding oscillator and a self-resonating cut-off filter that has been tuned carefully to achieve the character and warmth of a classic analog synthesizer. FabFilter One’s filter sounds raw but never cheap or ‘digital’, even at full resonance.

FabFilter is currently finishing its next product, FabFilter Volcano, an extensive filter effect plug-in building on the filter technology developed for FabFilter One. The release is planned for Spring 2005.

FabFilter One 3.0 is now available for $59 (US) as an Audio Units plug-in and a VST plug-in for Mac OS X and as a VST plug-in and stand-alone version for Windows on http://www.fabfilter.com. System requirements are either Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or higher with an Audio Units or VST 2 host, or Windows XP, 2000, 98, Me, or 2003, with a VST 2 host.

All five expansions contain new phrases, styles and combis recorded and programmed by professional sound designers and musicians from all over the globe.

Designed to cover a range of styles from movie scores to Industrial, each expansion offers a rich selection of new and amazing samples and sounds that let you instantly increase the possibilities of your Xphraze.

Analog Impact by Christian Halten and Jörg Hüttner

From Mr. Nice Guy to Dirty Gabba Analog Impact serves up pulsing riffs and floating pads that are perfect for Ambient, Drum and Bass and Industrial music.

105 Combis and over 200 patches featuring deluxe samples of synthesizer classics such as Jupiter 8, Korg MS20, Prophet VS, Prophet 5, Yamaha CS01 and more.

All of the Combis are preprogrammed with special Modwheel, Pitchbend and Aftertouch variations and offer a lot of fun and variety.

Chronic Beatz by LA Riot

Rolling with the funky phrases and big rocking beats you will explore the field of Nu Hip Hop and R’n’B. 50 Combis, and 334 patches and phrases from California’s legendary Nu Hip Hop Sound Designers.

Mad Synth Explosion by Matthias Klag

These 100 Combis, 209 Patches and 87 Phrazes are full of unexpected morphing and vector sounds, lively synth patches- and basslines and some seriously cranked up FX. Every Combi is ready to plug and play, from distorted FX to melodic patterns, an invitation to compose and arrange your music. This Xpansion also contains high end drum recordings and samples from a speech synthesizer allowing you to create your own rhythmic sentences.

At The Club by Cem Oral aka Jammin’ Unit

An Xpansion built for electro, funky techno and house essentials. Made by producers from the clubscene, featuring samples from hi end studio sessions and prooves how versatile Xphraze can be. An individual, great sounding tool box for producers of electronic dance music featuring 80 Combis for professional clubbing.

Trance Explosion by Pop

This Xpansion features 121 Combis consisting of the hi-quality samples of analog equipment that made trance what it is today. Brand new soundbanks arming you with brand new tools for trance, goa, hardcore and relatives.

Priced at USD 49.00 each, Xphraze Xpansions are available directly at www.wizoosounds.com (online). In addition, Wizoo is offering a package of all five Xpansions for USD 199.00.

All Xpansions include Xphraze 1.2 but the new version can also be downloaded at http://www.wizoo.com.

Improvements over the previous version include extra automation features, support for surround formats and high sample rates.

• Roger – You can apply human vowel filters to your audio with Roger. Use the vowel bar at the bottom to click through the vowels and click the portrait to select one of the Roger family members. Features include portamento, automation, Midi-controll and rythmic talk-nonsense mode.
• Follo – Dynamically adjusts the peak of a resonating bandpass filter according to the level of the incoming audio. Applications of Follo include an autowah on a guitar, and a thumping resonating bass generator.
• Orbit – Orbit lets you control the virtual position of your sound source. It accurately calculates the sound source’s reflections of the walls of a virtual ‘outer room’, using the exact amount of delay and attenuation for the direct sound and all reflections alike. Useit a s a physicallly correct panner, select from preset source trajectories, or create them yourself via live midi controll or parameter automation.

List Price is $249, upgrades cost $79.95.

More information, demos and mp3’s can be found at http://www.audioease.com.