Every year PC World makes a top list of what they found the most innovative products of the year. This year's sensation for us is that an electronic musical instrument, Yamaha's Tenori-On succeeded in dropping the list between iPhone, Google gadgets, 100 USD laptop and so on. Tenori-On has become the 16. - the full list can be checked here. Congratulations for Yamaha and we hope this surprise will strengthen all the leaders of the company to distribute the instrument worldwide as soon as possible.

Kenton will soon release this very simple DJ controller, Danny Mac DM-01. It is named after Danny Mac, popular breakbeat producer of the British Isles, who assembled it originally for his own sake. The functionality and simplicity of the gadget is amazing - design is very minimalistic, but all the necessary functions are highly visible. It communicates with MIDI and USB, and the LEDs on the right side are all push buttons to trigger anything you want. Price is still not known, here is the official page for more.

PSP Audioware targeted the mastering field now with this top quality limiter, Xenon. It counts with 64 bit precision internally, at a maximum of 192 kHz of sample frequency. Metering is also ultra precise and the overall sound quality is extremely high as they say... It works on PC and Mac, in VST and RTAS environments, for not less than 250 USD. Here you can browse for more info - unfortunately if you want to use the free demo you will have to have an iLok dongle...

This wonderful drum machine, MFB-503 is manufactured in Berlin by a small company, MFB. It makes three analog noises - kick drum, snare and tom -, and plays all the hats and cymbals from sampled source; the same method as it was introduced first in the legendary TR-909. You can tweak the sounds of course, and drive them via MIDI and the internal step sequencer. Latter has 90 slots for patterns and another 90 for songs. Price is 280 euro, you can read more here.

Spectral Audio is not a new player of the analog arena - now they release the second edition of Neptune, their popular monosynth. Neptune II is monophonic also, with three oscillators (third can be switched to LFO mode), has sync and ring modulators, a separated noise generator, and 24 dB filter (low and high pass modes). Envelopes are independent for VCA és VCF, and a distortion unit to boost the final result. Controlled with MIDI, it costs 500 euro - check here for full details.

Tascam closes the year with a heavy-weight interface, 1641. It has 16 inputs, 8 of them are front panel mic level XLRs, 6 of the remaining are analog line level jacks, plus an S/PDIF digital. Four analog outputs are present (all balanced), plus an S/PDIF digital, and bundled are Cubase 4 LE and Tascam's virtual piano instrument. The maximum resolution is 96/24. It costs no more than 400 USD, here is the official web page.

Kurzweil is back in the top workstation category, head to head with Yamaha and Korg. In NAMM, January they will show their new keyboard dream machine, PC3X - an 88-keys controller with an enhanced Kurzweil sound engine inside. For 3000 USD you will get 128 of ROM-based polyphony plus an independent virtual analog synth engine (limited time offer only), packed with 850 presets and 1024 user program slots. Shipped with a computer editor, outputs are 24-bit resolution analog and digital types (S/PDIF), and equipped with USB, xD card slot. It has 16 insert effects internally, 11 effect busses, four arpeggiator and lots of exciting features - check here for more.

Fxpansion's gigantic studio drum production system, BFD has version two now, and it is much more brutal than ever. It has 55 gigabytes of drum samples - that means ten drum kits carefully organised, plus 5000 grooves. It has new EQ modules, and costs 400 USD, here.

VirSyn says they developed the vocoder of the XXI. century called Matrix. It has 32 channels of 8-pole filters, all channels can be panned and leveled independently, 16 internal oscillators make noises under the speech, and there is much more to mention - check the product's page. You have to pay 129 euro until 31th, January, and 199 euro after.

Since Creamware's memorable falling we had very few information about the Scope platform. Now it is up and running again, under the company's arms called Use Audio. In some weeks at the winter NAMM they will present this unique synth module, Plugiator, which can host Scope's software synthesizers, eight at a time. It is totally controllable from any computer via USB - you can even edit with the same GUI as with the Scope DSP products - and it works perfectly as stand-alone, too. Use Audio starts an internet application for it to expand the available patch set online as it was within the machine. Price will set to 400 euro - an expansion card version for CME's keyboard will be also available soon, check the product page.

There is a second news from the company - they provide a comprehensive plugin set for the Scope user base with all the famous plugs - Minimax, Prodyssey, Pro-12, STS-5000, Vectron, Vocodizer, Modular - for only 195 euro.

According to Future Music and Matrixsynth, Roger Linn, legendary maker of the first digital drum machine is finishing his second instrument. The name of the device was - planned earlier this year - Boomchick which is now renamed to LinnDrum II. It will come in two different versions, a full digital one and an analog-digital hybrid. Price is not known still, if you need some more info please read the Matrixsynth article.

Modartt, developer of the modeling piano plugin Pianoteq, is offering a free Yamaha CP-80 model for free for all the registered customers. They made two versions of the luxury epiano: an old original version was faithfully emulated, and a virtually renewed one with brighter string sounds is also available. Here.

Goldbaby seeks for analog enthusiasts: their new library, Tape909 is a huge arsenal of TR909 sounds recorded with a two-track Ampex reel recorder. It consists of 1446 pieces of 24 bit samples - naked sounds directly taken from the drum machine's output plus processed versions by vintage analog effects. To have the wave files you have to pay 19 USD, or if you need the organised versions for Battery, iDrum and so on buy the 24 USD version. Here.

Internet enterprise of a brave russian sound engineer, GlobalMixing offers vocal tuning and timing service through the internet. You just upload your track and will receive the corrected version very soon for 20-30 USD. Check the site for details.

Musicrow's new plugin, Magic Vox is a new approach to the sample based sooftware synth: it has only high quality guitar harmonics samples to start from. The result is a nice, ethereal sound, check it here. Purchases can be made soon, price still a mystery also.

Synapse Audio, maker of the popular pattern sequencer, Orion offers Orion Platinum 7.1 for less money during the holiday season: the package costs only 100 euro including a free update route to the long-awaited 7.5 version which will be released early next year. This new version will feature multiprocessing support, separate 32 bit and 64 bit versions, a completely rewritten audio engine and new, high quality effects. Click here for more.

Jomox became a big expert of 909-clones so it is highly awaited to produce something in the 808 field. In January we will be totally satisfied: XBase 888 will be out on the street then, with real analog bass and snare drums (plus tom-tom), and with a digital section for downloadable drum samples. It is not a real clone - tells their web page -, beacuse of the lots of extra features: pitch envelope on the bass drum, LFOs, and metalizer effect on the snare and hihats. Price still to be announced.

This exactly CD-sized analog synth, bC16 is the first product of a new company called Chimera Synthesis. For 229 USD, it runs on battery, has an oscillator and a filter, an envelope generator, plus LFO, noise generator and ring modulator. Connections can be made via mini banana jacks, but no one knows how to drive it - in the manual there is no mention of MIDI or C/V. (Their web page promises MIDI - C/V converter though.) Also promised a 16-step analog sequencer. Try to get more info here.

If you don't want to stuck into your opened plugin windows you can choose VertexDSP's new software, vxPlug. It is also a plugin, but it can open several different effect plugins in the same window to edit. You can define all the connections for each plugin and tweak it infinitely. It costs 40 euro, for PC and Mac also. Here.

Japanese musical instrument giant, Yamaha has announced yesterday they had a successful negotiation with the Austrian financial investor company that owns all the shares of Bösendorfer. According this, they will acquire all the shares of Bösendorfer earlier next year, at a price which is not public (still).

Rumours said Yamaha guaranteed to keep the manufacturing process in Vienna, the city which cannot be imagined without the Bösendorfer sound. The company has 180 employees now, and makes a turnover of 13 million euro per year.

Here comes the official press release.

Developers of well-known music generation software, Koan (Brian Eno's favourite tool) has set up a new company, Intermorphic to go further in the field. Their new toy, noatikl works on a different way, but has similarities with the old classic. The new stuff makes notes as well as controller and program change info for nudging synth and effect engines. During Christmas all of us will have time to enjoy the 30-day demo version - if it is good I will start the new year with a 250 USD investment...

Update: prices started to get lower due to the user responses. A non-commercial license form is introduced and costs 99 USD only, and the full commercial version is 189 USD.

Tons of free softsynths, effects and audio samples - Free Music Software is a new webpage where you can boost your studio's capability for free. Check it.

Precisionsound has a Christmas present of sampling 36 gigantic bells of Gavle, Sweden. The name of the package is Gefle Bells, and costs 19 USD. All samples are for HALion and Kontakt, and taken with 24 bit resolution. Here.

Soniccouture packed a full gamelan orchestra into 24 gigabytes for 600 USD. Balinese Gamelan consists of 25 instruments, and recorder in 24/96 resolution. Check here.

A nice software company, plasq had a product, Wormhole, a VST plugin for PC and Mac. It does the same like VST SystemLink - connects VST applications of separate computers - but in a much easier way, using a wider range of physical layers: Ethernet, Firewire or wi-fi. Dvelopers now decided to open the project and instead of selling it for money it is now a free and open source project. If you have an agreement with Steinberg for the VST developers' kit you can ask them for the source code here at code.google. The original page of the product is here.

You can choose from a lot of telephone company operators' sound samples on this page, for free. Grouped by companies, all the files are good quality mp3s so you can make a fine Extended Remix from Kraftwerk's Telephone Call.

Tone2 sent a heavy-weight contester into the softsynth arena: Gladiator. It makes noises with harmonic Content Morphing which means that you can start with a huge number (more than 30,000) of oscillator waveforms, and you can modulate, squeeze and crunch them with a wide range of DSP algorhythms real time - and you can manipulate the process with MIDI controllers real-time also. Gladiator is not a CPU-hungry beast, comes with 750 presets, has a great, 512-band vocoder, all the patches consist of 18 oscillators, oversampling is 162x for great sound quality, the number of the different filter characteristics is 40, in the very end you can insert as many as 20 effects, and a nice arpeggiator makes music generation easy. It is not the cheapest of all kind: 200 USD - but it is not so expensive if you consider the feature list.

This nice audio-MIDI sequencing software is Rosegarden, an integrated music production solution for Linux. It comes for free and has an open source code - and th eworking method is the same as we get used to in similar programs. Rosegarden handles software synth plugins, format is the Linux-wide popular DSSI, and accepts effects plugin on its mixer, if they are LADSPA-compatible. Notation is also implemented professionally. The actual version number is 1.6.0, go here for downloading.

Hungary's premier sample creator, Reasonbanks.com has released Cybervox, a sample package for Reason users full of semi-human robotic voices and sounds. It has more than 700 words spoken in English by the smart machines, organized into NN-XT and Combinator banks. Check it, buy it, it costs only 36 euro.

This week PG Music has released a new version of the popular accompaniment software called Band-in-a-Box 2008. It has 10 new drum kits, 5 new styles, and 3 multi-styles. Multi-styles is a new feature in the package meaning that you can have several substyles under each multi-styles which adds lots of expression. If you order it before Christmas you will get a free 12-pack with additional drums, styles and a Roland virtual synth.

Band-in-a-Box has several improvement over the previous version: it has accord recognition function which extracts accord progression from any digital audio file. Price is between 129 and 500 USD, depending of your needs. For more questions go here.

Muse Research, father of the VST hardware synth module, Receptor released a new product based on their classic. Receptor Komplete is an ordinary Receptor but it has Native's full Komplete package factory preinstalled. Its price is 2500 USD, check it here for more details.

We can't get enough free wave editor - at least it seems so. On the picture you can see Wavosaur, a free multi-window wave editor, which does all the graphical cut-copy-paste functions that are necessary. I zooms very quickly, handles skins, works with 32 bit samples at maximum resolution, output is ASIO-compatible, addresses multi-output interfaces. It hosts VST effects with a fine effect rack, and you can set up a complex rack setting for batch processing many files. Spectrum analyser is implemented also, real-time oscilloscope too, plus a graphical envelope editor. Calculates RMS - check it here.

Last week, at the age of 79, composer and great inventor of electronic music, Karlheinz Stockhausen has passed away. He was born in a small village in Germany, and started to learn music when he was 7. His career was extremely successful but controversial - he was the most famous composer of the so-called contemporary music which was often described as leaving the audience completely. In contrary, Stockhausen had the greatest influence on lots of experimental pop musicians of the seventies who made the ground for 90s' and 2000s' electronic pop music.

One of his last public words on the terror attack of the WTC, 2001 caused serious scandal - he found some similarities between art and terror.

We took our picture from Wikipedia - if you want to read more check Stockhausen's article there.

Audiowarrior released a comprehensive Mellotron library called Tron. It costs 49 USD for download (100 USD in shops), format is Kontakt, here is the link.

Ueberschall packaged the sound of the early 80s into 1.6 gigabyte: the name of the game is 80s Punk and contains construction kits for assembling punk/new wave/ska orchestrations easily. Check the link.

Zero-G produced a giga dance groove library called Ecstatic Grooves. 1650 trance, dance and techno loop plus some sounds - released yesterday. Here you can find more info.

db audioware is on the market since ten years ago, producing different VST plugins from the very beginning. To celebrate this thing they released Flying Haggis, a strange-coloured virtual guitar amp plugin which is still in beta stage and can be downloaded by all the registered users of db's virtual amplifiers for free, here.

The next good news is the overall price reduction for all the products can be pruchased at db audioware's site: you have to pay 25% less for a limited time - it's still a secret when will they close this possibility.

Kong Audio, specialist of producing VST plugins of ancient Chinese instruments now released Matoquin, which is a thousand-years old Mongolian musical instrument originally. It has become widely popular under Genghis Khan, and it is now a 24/96 quality, sample based plugin for everyone. Go check here, it has a very fair price of 68 USD.

Hammond released a monophonic tube-based electronic musical instrument, Solovox in 1940. Precisionsound has sampled a well-working piece of this wonderful instrument now - they produced 531 piece of 24 bit waveform for Kontakt and HALion (plus SoundFont), arranged into 12 different programs. Sound is very warm and pleasant, check the demo - buying it means 39 USD of cost.

Jazzmutant's two groundbreaking hardware controller, Lemur and Dexter are physically identical - and now you can run both software solution on any machine. Dual Mode is a new feature where you can run Lemur software on a Dexter and Dexter software on Lemur - the only difference is pricing. Dexter users get this function as a free upgrade but Lemur players have to pay 400 USD to transform their gadget. Check it here.

Christmas is still two weeks away but Native Instruments placed their present under the tree. They lowered some prices seriously and permanently: Komplete is now under 1000 euro, Komplete Synth, Reaktor, Kontakt and Komplete Classics cost 400 euro, all the individual synth products are 200 euro, not counting the GM supersynth bandstand which is 99 euro only.

Modern German Synths is a new sample package from PLP - it contains 600 megs of sampled German synths. Sample sources are not revealed in the short web promo site but formats are there: acidized Wav, Aif and Recycle.

IK Multimedia and Moog has a giveaway program from now until 28th February. You can enter with buying a SampleMoog collection for SampleTank - it contains four gigabytes of samples taken from 16 different Moog synthesizer and over 1000 sound presets. Winner will be drawn randomly - he will get a real analogue hardware synth, Little Phatty, and there is a second prize, a Mooger Fooger pedal, and a third: clothing with Moog logo. Go check here.

Samick, manufacturer of several different audio equipment and musical instrument has established a new company dedicated to manufacture USB audio products. The firm's name is SIMS, and has two news now: first of them is about a regular two-channels interface called Amon, working with 24/96 resolution, for 225 USD. Best is the second product, Primus a25, a two-octaves MIDI keyboard with a 24/96 audio interface inside, for as low as 270 USD. On the picture you can also see that it has 8 rotary encoder for tweaking softsynths. It will be available in the beginning of the next year, if you are interested more go check the product's page.

From a place which was not known until know, a new Moog-clone has emerged: Memorymoon. It is more or less a correct copy of the original, the demo music on their site is nice but not a groundbreaking experience - and the price is a quite-fair 30 USD. Other news from this site is Messiah, a Prophet-clone which will not make a headache for Arturia but you have to pay only 10 USD extra for it if you buy the two synths together. Go here and enjoy.

M-Audio's new interface, Fast Track Ultra is as small in size as big in features: it has six analogue inputs and outputs (4 of the inputs receive microphone signal), plus two S6PDIF digital channels. The heart of the unit is a DSP which makes mixing and routing very easy, plus runs real-time effect algorhythms like delay and reverb. Connection is USB, bus-powered, and a real surprise: two independent headphones output. Price is 450 USD, check the details.

A quite practical device: Nintendo's console, Wii has a groundbreaking new wireless controller which made the unit so popular. A plain but very smart idea is to use it as a musical instrument and the solution is already here, you can download it for PC and Mac free. It works in two modes: with drum mode you can beat a MIDI drumset in the air just like the real ones, and in keyboard mode playing is like touching a non-existing piano keyboard.