Slicing, remixing, looping, "live performance-oriented features" … this is Digidesign we’re talking about, right? Digi’s Advanced Instrument Research (A.I.R.) unit, the fruits of the acquisition of Wizoo, may have a pretentious name, but they’ve been doing some pretty great work on new instruments. The new project, Transfuser, will have to enter some crowded waters. Loop slicing and handling already works pretty nicely in Ableton Live (especially with Live 7’s drum racks), in instrument form in FL Studio 8’s awesome Edison and Slicex, and in tools like fxpansion’s GURU. (Superficially, at least, Transfuser bears more than a passing resemblance to the latter in its overall UI layout. And then there’s the fact that the knobs look like they were lifted directly from Live.)

Of course, Transfuser isn’t for FL Studio users. As with previous AIR releases, the Digi-owned Wizoo now make plug-ins for Pro Tools only. And if you are a Pro Tools user, you don’t have to listen to me or try to squint at the screenshots: you can take Transfuser for a test drive free. Download the plug-in for Pro Tools (LE/HD/M-Powered) before June 25, and it’ll operate for three months, no restrictions.

Transfuser Preview [Digidesign]

I can already see from these shots that this isn’t quite the way I’d want to work, personally, let alone enticing enough to make me deal with Pro Tools as a host. But "groove-making" is different for different people, so I’d be very eager to hear what someone else thinks. If you’d like to write up a mini-review for CDM, let us know.

Commercial music development on Linux is at a trickle, but a real gem as far as music production is now available: Renoise, the modern tracker tool.

Not only is Renoise a cult favorite for its unique approach to composition, but the Linux version looks to fully embrace Linux technologies. And that’s a big deal, because many music and audio users aren’t interested in Linux for political correctness. We want audio functionality and performance. Renoise promises:

• ALSA support (the high-performance audio and MIDI system for Linux)
• JACK audio support (for interconnecting application audio and other features)
• LADSPA (the native, open Linux plug-in format)
• Native Linux VST support

Renoise 1.9.1 Final and public Linux demo [Official announcement]

If you give Renoise a try on Linux, we’d love to hear about it. Renoise joins EnergyXT, another unique music creation tool — but hopefully with better native Linux support, which seemed a little less mature on EnergyXT.

Of course, “support” is an open question. We heard mixed feelings last summer when EnergyXT arrived on Linux. Part of the appeal of open source software is the ability for programmers to fix issues with code. Renoise supports Linux technologies, but it’s not open source. Still, if an application is fully supported — and you’re willing to pay the (low, in this case) price for that — I wonder if for-pay, closed software isn’t such a bad coupling with an open OS, after all.

The big question: will musicians adopt Linux, and will Linux users adopt (and pay for) payware apps. If they do, more apps could make the OS leap, too. Let us know what you’re using.

Thanks to Scott Meschke (who calls Renoise “awesome) and karhu (aka Niklas) for the tips!

Previously:

Renoise 1.9 Music App Begins Beta; Why You Shouldn’t Overlook This Tracker

Ed.: Deckadance DJ software has been on our radar for some time on the DJ software front: lots of MIDI control (with one caveat; see below), agnostic support for multiple vinyl timecode systems, and most interestingly the ability to run the whole app as a VST plug-in. Dreams of loading Deckadance into Ableton Live danced through DJs heads. The app even added built-in support for Nintendo Wii remotes. But the software, from the development house that brought us FL Studio (”Fruity Loops”) was Windows only. No more:

Image-Line has just released the latest beta of Deckadance, 1.20RC3. This version is the first version to include support for OS X. The developers have written on the Deckadance forums that the port to OS X required almost a complete rewrite. Early reports are mostly positive, with a few bugs (mostly on the Windows side reported here and there). Other notable changes include:

• Redesign of the Digital Vinyl System panel. It includes now a real-time signal spectroscope and an easy-to-use interface
• Vinyl timecode control of decks inside Live and Live LE
• Native support for Numark Total Control console

However, there’s no reports of a fix to allow pitch bend messages for deck pitch control, a personal obsession of mine. [Ed.: Wally, fairly sure you're not alone on that! -PK] Still, though, kudos to the Deckadance team for getting the OS X version out the door before the end of the year. Let’s hope 2008 holds great things in store for Deckadance!

1.20RC3 Beta Announcement [Image-Line Forums]
Windows beta download; Mac beta download

(You must be logged into the free Image-Line forums to use the download links.)

Image-Line has also posted a video showing Deckadance running on both Mac and Windows:

Speaking of sample management on the Mac, AudioFinder, the popular sample utility, is now in beta of its version 4.7. The new release integrates a basic waveform editor for quick adjustments to sound files. From the software’s forum:

This is not a new audio editor to compete with Peak, DSP Quatro or Wave Edit. This is a utility to save time editing samples. It has a maximum file length limit of 30 minutes. It is 32bit floating point. It saves all files as AIFF, and soon CAF.

AudioFinder 4.7 Beta
Sounds good to me. Could be especially handy editing my Ableton Live clips and samples and such.

The tireless developers behind the modern tracker Renoise announced a new beta on Tuesday. While the devs themselves are calling this a “maintenance and improvements release”, they’ve introduced enough bug fixes, new features and workflow improvements, along with multiprocessor support, that any other company would have slapped a new major version number on the top and called it a day.

Here’s a short list of the changes:

If you’ve been on the search for a simple, straightforward audio editor for Mac and Windows, Adobe has officially thrown its hat into the ring with Soundbooth CS3.

Soundbooth Now Shipping [Hart's Audition, from the Adobe audio product chief]
New Soundbooth User-to-User Forum

Of course, to the rest of the world, the big news is that Adobe’s full Production Premium and Master Collection suites are shipping. But Soundbooth is one program that could make sense to buy alone, as a basic audio editor. It sets itself apart both by being cross-platform and by being geared for beginners and people wanting a simple, streamlined tool. And the killer feature: there’s a lasso tool you can use directly on the audio spectrum. I’ve been using that to isolate sounds in field recordings that would otherwise be impossible to grab.

I hope to have an in-depth look at the finished tool soon, so no conclusions about the shipping software yet, but in the meantime, see our preview from the beta.

Propellerheads have unveiled the newest version of Reason, entering beta now and shipping in fall. “Eagerly anticipated” genuinely applies here — I’ve heard various chatter about the new version for over a year. Anyone expecting audio recording or plug-in support, it’s still not here, but the upgrade does have some major enhancements that appear to stay true to its roots.

Thor “polysonic” synth: Continuing the industry-wide trend of combining different synth methods, Thor features six different envelopes, four filter types, wave shaping, and unique “analog-style” modulation routing. From anyone else, that description might be a non-starter, but the Props have a long history of really terrific synth design, and they promise Thor, like its predecessors, will be light on CPU usage — definitely bucking a separate industry-wide trend.

A mixer for quantization? Here’s where things get really interesting. The ReGroove mixer isn’t a mixer. It’s a groove/swing quantization tool. Quantization is real-time and adjustable, and can be applied to a full 32 groove channels independently. For anyone ready to break out of the mechanical sound of sequencing, this could be a powerful tool. I find it especially intriguing given the ridiculously simplistic quantization tools in Ableton Live; for some fine-tuned grooves, the combination of Live and Reason might again become popular. Oh, and yes, 32 independent grooves could well prove to be absurd overkill — we’ll have to figure out just how to use this. Or you could just apply one of the included groove presets, including (Props’ words, not mine) “vinyl funk gems of the 70s.” Sweet.

New sequencer: Yes, the original Reason sequencer was downright awful. This one sounds like one you might actually use:

…make global edits using “clips,” assign notes and controller events to different “lanes,” manage multiple takes, and edit events numerically—to name but a few of the hundreds of enhancements. Controller data now uses vector automaton for the smoothest of transitions. Users can manage tempo and time signature changes through a transport track. The inclusion of a floating tool window makes getting to frequently used tasks a snap.

In other words, Reason’s sequencer is a real sequencer now, at long last.

Also tasty-sounding: a new monophonic arpeggiator.

Despite its fantastic, CPU-light synths and effects, Reason had clearly fallen behind in terms of workflow. Beefing up quantization and sequencing and adding a new killer synth may be modest changes, but they sound like the right direction to me. I think the big question for a lot of users will be whether Reason fits in with another tool that handles audio, like Live, FL Studio, or a DAW. (And, for you hard-core sequencer types, maybe no audio at all but Reason inside an insane tracker.) I look forward to testing it.

The New Reason

And now, the obligatory giant rack shot:

Adobe’s new audio application, compatible with Intel Macs and Windows PCs, has been formally announced today. CDM was one of the first sites to look in-depth at Soundbooth CS3 back in the fall, and we broke the story that the software would be available as a standalone. Now we have a little bit more in the way of details: Soundbooth will ship in “third quarter” or “summer” (depending on which language you read), and it’ll ship with the CS3 Production Suite. I’m a little disappointed that Adobe chose not to ship it as part of the Design suite, since part of the product’s vision was to help people using tools like Flash get into audio, but then again, I think Adobe retained something to “upsell” to.

The good news is, you’ll be able to buy Soundbooth standalone for US$199. And that sets Adobe apart from Apple’s Soundtrack Pro, which requires you buy Final Cut Studio.

Interestingly, this leaves Audition Pro as exclusively a standalone app. Adobe has promised it isn’t abandoning Audition, though. I think this makes some sense: Audition is really geared at the audio production market. The people who are experts in Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, and so on are more likely to want a streamlined tool like Soundbooth, and hire someone else to do audio production. Well, unless they’re one of the multi-disciplinary creatives who read this site, of course, in which case they may go all-out.

Adobe has put together a product comparison with Audition. It basically breaks down to this:

Interested in using webcams to translate on-screen motion to MIDI? Want x, y, and z 3D tracking? Ben Tan writes to let us know about his in-development software project called Peripheral MIDI Controller (pmidic) which does just that. The current build is still a work in progress, but has added enough stability and features that it should be worth a look.

Peripheral MIDI Controller

Grab your pen light and start waving it around for filter cutoff and resonance — whoo!

Right now, it’s Windows-only, but the libraries on which it’s built are cross-platform and could be ported to both Linux and Mac. (He’s using Intel’s OpenCV, which is the most popular, open platform for computer vision — odds are if you’ve seen slick webcam tricks, OpenCV was involved, because writing these algorithms from scratch requires a heavy-duty math and computer science background. And the app itself is built with the superb super-cross-platform wxWidgets library.)

If you’ve been looking to experiment with webcam control, this could be a good start — practicing interpreting the control data, experimenting with lighting, and experimenting with inputs all take time. And if you’re a coder, the project is open, so all of us C++ beginners can slog a little collectively.