VSL Dimension Strings

VSL presents Vienna Dimension Strings, a strings library that features 8 violins (62 GB, 300 000 samples), 6 violas, 6 cellos, and 4 double basses.

It provides many articulations : three different sustain (vibrato, non-vibrato and espressivo/progressive vibrato), legato performances and portamento performances with crossfade, trill performances (legato, marcato), repetition performances (legato, portato, staccato, spiccato, various crescendos), various tremolo variations (normal, with fast attack, and slow-motion tremolos), pizzicato, snap pizzicato and col legno, fortissimo sounds with short articulations.

It also allows to create custom players groups : level and/or position in the mix for each player or desk, individual controllers for dynamic changes, presets for selecting the individual strings of each player of a group, mixing of different articulations for desks.

The violins sections are available (through download or on a 64 GB USB stick), while other sections will be provided in 2013. Full library is priced 695 euros for now (normal price is 1190 euros – standard and extended libraries are priced 595 euros each).

An audio and video demos are available.

Black Mesa : HL with HL2 engine

The Black Mesa mod (original Half Life single player made using the HL2 Source Engine) is available here (3 GB). It requires the Source Engine 2007 SDK (available from Source Engine based games on Steam).

The soundtrack is also provided for free.

Installation details on Mac (using either WineSkin or Winebottler and PlayOnMac) are available here and there.

Emotuned : article at DZone

An bistory of Emotuned application project can be found at DZone. It presents the project idea, the work on required framework (porting CP2JavaWS to php and adding new features), the CSS3 player wrapped to a new Cappuccino component, use of new Cappucino dynamic controls (popovers, animating), a new HTML5 drag and drop upload component (that works with Safari and Firefox), tricks for performance enhancement.

Roland A-88 : Ivory Feel master keyboard

Roland presented the A-88 master keyboard, that features Ivory Feel G touch, pitch/modulation bender, and weights 16 kg only. The price isn’t announced yet (it is listed at 914 euros at DV247).

Roland Integra-7 : Supernatural sound module

Roland presented Integra-7 sound module, 16 parts multitimbral (128 voices of polyphony), that features 6000 sounds :
– acoustic Supernatural sounds : piano, electric piano, acoustic and electric guitars (with automatic chord fingering and strumming, and amp simulator), strings (with automatic legato, portamento, pizzicato, staccato, et tremolo), brass (with over-blowing, staccato, fall, grow), and ethnic instruments (Shakuhachi, Erhu, Sitar, Kalimba).
– analog type synth sounds : filters and envelopes, PCM besides oscillators.
– drum sounds derived from V-Drum.
– a new surround effects module (also manages audio input) and SFX sounds (with realtime control).
– all sounds from XV5080 (however does not manage import).
– whole sounds from the 12 SRX expansion cards. However only 4 cards can be selected simultaneously.
– an improved GM2 module.

An iPad application is provided.
The strumming effect for guitars and effects on brass are interesting, however strings seem using the same samples as found on previous SRX 04 / Fantom X (these are great however not as realistic as those from recent samples libraries).
The price isn’t annouced yet (listed 1511 euros at DV247).