Macintosh

Techspansion has introduced AudialHub — an inexpensive Mac app designed to convert dozens of different audio formats (and even the audio tracks from video files) to AAC, MP3, WMA, WAV and Apple Lossless formats, with the standard metadata tags in most formats converted and passed on to the finished file.

Nearly every aspect of the decoding and encoding workflow is available for tweaking. A dynamic Preview panel allows for quick playback checks. Multiple queues — all with their own separate settings — can be run simultaneously.

Key Features:

• Conversion from dozens of audio types to popular formats like AAC, MP3, WMA, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, 3G (cell phones), Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and Audio and MP3 CDs.
• Audio tracks inside video files can also be converted.
• Common tags (Artist, Album, etc) are automatically passed when applicable.
• Up to 16 hours of audio can be converted to a single MP3 CD.
• Easy-to-use Trim capabilities to narrow down short segments of audio.
• Quick Preview capability to check out compression quality and Trim settings before a full conversion.
• Dynamic file queue, allowing mid-conversion changes or additions, Pause/Resume, and an “always ready” Assembly Line Mode.
• Run multiple simultaneous conversions in separate queues with separate settings.
• Growl notifications, Dock progress indicator, and AppleScripting automation support!
• Normalization, audio track selection, multiple decoder options, and direct access to add custom low-level command-line settings.
• Detailed Users Guide and Help Center.

AudialHub is available immediately for $18.81 USD. A free trial is available.

‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ by Alex Leopard

Description:

Alex ‘The Mac’ Leopard sings Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough.

Maybe we don’t get out enough. First we thought the mpressor was le sexy, now we’ve got the hots for Apogee Electronics’ Duet, a FireWire audio interface designed specifically for Apple’s Mac computers.

According to Apogee, Duet is the first two-channel audio interface with control functions built directly into Apple’s Logic Pro, Soundtrack Pro and GarageBand software, creating a powerful yet simple personal audio system for professional production on a Mac.

Duet’s inputs and outputs feature two channels of Apogee’s A/D and D/A conversion. The inputs offer two premium, digitally controlled microphone preamps with 75 dB of gain and two unbalanced high impedance instrument inputs. The two channels of reference quality output are available via the 1/4″ powered speaker connections and studio quality headphone jack.

Duet is designed for ease of use and portability. Its sleek, ultra-compact chassis gives it a small footprint in the workspace and its bus-powered FireWire connection makes it possible to create professional recordings anywhere. Duet’s multi-function controller knob can select the input or output source and set gain or level. Duet is also capable of controlling MIDI devices with a simple setting in Apogee’s Maestro software application.

You can see how the Duet works in their promo video, below.

More gear pr0n and specifications after the break….

Read more…

 

 Apogee Electronics Duet [3:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Nexoft’s LoopAZoid is a free tool for playing one-shot samples in your songs.

One instance holds up to 48 different samples, which can be freely assigned to up to 96 different MIDI notes – two each, for forward & reverse playback. Each of the 48 sample channels has a pre-defined MIDI note attached; triggering these in your sequencer plays the associated sample.

Building sample kits in LoopAZoid is easy and fast. LoopAZoid can handle stereo and mono samples and play them back with up to 64 voices, while each sample can be played fully polyphonic.

LoopAZoid makes handling samples and kits as easy as possible: all loaded samples are stored as file references within your song. Samples do not have to be within a certain directory to be used together, so you could easily build you own disk hierarchy and have the sampler take care where your samples are.

The software is available as Mac or PC VST.

Sonic Studio began shipments today of the 1.2 release of soundBlade.

The 1.2 release incorporates hundreds of optimizations and stability enhancements, as well as almost two dozen feature additions, including an 8-channel option for surround work.

Running natively on Mac OS X, soundBlade relies on Core Audio for default I/O so hardware lock–in is eliminated. The application combines Sonic Studio’s EFM and 4 point editing capabilities with their SSE real time audio engine and options such as Series 300 DSP I/O processors and the NoNOISE II suite of restoration tools.

soundBlade carries an MSRP of $1495.