The week before Christmas and New Year’s is usually totally dead, but apparently some software developers were clearing house and getting updates out the door before going on vacation:

Reaktor 5.1 (Mac/Win) is actually a major new update with new instruments and sounds. The update is a whopping 80 MB; upgrade via NI’s update manager.

TC Electronic has overhauled its UI for a slick new look in PowerCore 2.0, which also makes it easier to demo new plugs.

Apple still seems to be hunting bugs in its Soundtrack Pro audio editor; 1.0.2 does something, but not sure what — grab those 41.6 MB and find out.

Virsyn’s TERA 3 is an all new update to this powerful modular synth, with multi-sampling, filter morphing via something called a “terrain filter”, arpeggiator, updated spectrum oscillator . . . you know what, it looks amazing, but I’m officially in powerful soft synth overload, so I leave it to you to figure out what it does if any of you are devoted TERA users. And I’ll cozy up by the fire with a fresh new copy of Reaktor and see if I can whip up some musically useful ensembles.