Novation: Mininova synth announced

Looks like a good week for hardware, in my last post we talked about the new MASCHINE generation from the guys at Native Instruments, and now its turn for Novation to show us their new small synth called MiniNova.

This synth its small in size, but offers a huge range of features like a Vocoder (microKorg style) but it also includes a pitch correction feature called VocalTune™. It has 256 presets ready to play and edit in real time and a 128 preset bank to save your own sounds, it also includes a free software patch editor and library to tweak your patches easily and download preset packs and share with other users.

But for me the feature that sets this apart from others is the 8 animate buttons that lets you tweak and warp sounds in realtime, and features a filter knob and 4 editing knobs to tweak any parameter that you like, and what really hook me, is that it includes 7 effects and you can stack up to 5 for each voice and tweak them via animate buttons and the 4 edit knobs, these effects are: distortion, reverb, chorus/phase, delay, compressor, EQ and a gate/stutter.

 

As you can see it integrates perfectly into Ableton Live and it will into any other DAW, and the sounds are really cool, and the vocoder works good (at least on the video), and another feature I almost forgot is that you can plug your guitar, or your bass or any instrument with a 1/4 plug, to use any of the effects, vocoder or vocaltune, sounds good right?

The price is not announced yet, but being a Novation product I expect a fair-priced high quality synth. It will include +1 GB of royalty-free samples and loops from Loopmasters, Ableton Live Lite and the Novation Bass Station synth, to take advantage of its MIDI I/O capabilities too.

The links is here.  You can leave your thoughts and comments about it 🙂

Do you think this will be the microKorg killer? I do.

 

Native Instruments: New MASCHINE Generation (MASCHINE MK2)

Native Instruments is about to release their series of renowned MASCHINE controllers: MASCHINE MK2 and MASCHINE MIKRO MK2; and they will release the software version to 1.8.

 

 

The first think you will notice is that you can choose between black or white hardware, bright multicolored pads and now besides the 6+GB Library it also includes the MASSIVE synth with more than 1,300 presets, ready to be browsed within your MASCHINE.

Also we get the option of customizing your MASCHINE with custom kits on different colors!

 

 

And now the great Mr. Jeremy Ellis with both the new MASCHINE and MASCHINE MIKRO making it look easy…

Nice, right?

 

Well for more info on these great controllers, go to the official site where you can pre-order to get your hands (or fingers) on this before October 1st.

Do you pre-order your gear, or buy without trying? Or wait until the reviews come out?

 

 

 

Sonic Charge Permut8 (Preview)

The guys at Sonic Charge left this message at their blog regarding their new product “Permut8”:

Unfinished Permut8 Puzzle

“In an attempt to make life a bit more exciting we are currently beta testing two new releases simultaneously. One is a VST/AU called Permut8. You can see and hear it on our home page if you manage to solve the puzzle first. We don’t give anything for free here at Sonic Charge, not even screenshots or demo tracks : ). ”

All right… So I did had an exciting moment solving the puzzle but when I did get to hear what this exciting toy* is capable of doing I had to make a video:

So that was really cool! It seems to be a really powerful tool, and we still have more stuff to hear from this full-of-awesomeness-machine.

I already have some questions and comments for the Sonic Charge team:

1. How did you manage to do something that cool?
2. What does the bottom panel its supposed to be?
3. The integer, fraction, step mask, substract  labels probably scares you if you’ve only used “traditional” plugins… but I’m just trying to figure out what will they do…
4. The NOP, AND, MUL, OSC, RND, OR, XOR, MSK, SUB labels makes me think that you will summon little aliens by their names and you’ll be able to control them via MIDI!
5. Those switches makes me want to play and tweak the damn thing right now!

Permut8 Sexy Screenshot

Visit the sexy** guys/aliens at:
http://soniccharge.com/

*Just kidding its not a toy, but I really wish that I had one like that…

**Just kidding again…

Suscribe for more exciting news!

FL Studio Mobile

Image-Line is pleased to announce FL Studio Mobile is now available from your local App Store. There are two FL Studio Mobile applications:

 

• FL Studio Mobile: For iPhone & iPod Touch, G3 & G4 with Retina display support – $14.99 introductory and $19.99 after
• FL Studio Mobile HD: For iPad 1 & 2 – $19.99 introductory and $24.99 after

 

FL STUDIO MOBILE KEY FEATURES

 

• Load and extend projects in the FL Studio desktop version
• Resizable, stackable piano keys & reconfigurable drum-pads
• Stuffed with FL Studio quality instruments, drum kits & loop files
• 99-track sequencer, Piano roll editor & Step sequencer
• WAV, MIDI & FLM (project) import/export
• iPad HD version, iPhone 4 Retina Display support
• Compatible with the Akai SynthStation 25

 

Just go to the App Store and if you have an iPhone/iPod Touch FL Studio Mobile OR if you have an iPad FL Studio Mobile HD.

 

FL STUDIO MOBILE FAQ

 

What about Android OS? It’s on the roadmap, stop nagging! We have a development team working on a low-latency Android audio-engine and there are many screen resolutions and device specifications to consider, it’s not as simple as you may think 🙂

Does this mean FL Studio on Mac OSX soon? FL Studio Mobile is not a port of the Windows version of FL Studio. It is the product of a completely separate development team, and code, so FL Studio Mobile, while compatible with FL Studio has no impact on FL Studio development and vice versa.

Can I load my own samples? Not in version 1.0. We plan to enable user uploads in a future update.

 

Can I use VSTs? No, iOS does not support VSTs and frankly the devices it runs on don’t have the CPU power to perform the synthesis you are used to on a desktop. FL Studio Mobile uses high quality sample based instruments made from Image-Line plugins and sample packs.

More Info at: Image-Line