While not announced officially, it seems to all of us that Tascam will no longer sell and support the whole line of Giga instruments - including GigaStudio. After a journalist's question, Jeff Laity, head of marketing of the company in the US has confirmed the shocking news. Giga, which was the world's first hard-disk based sampler and itself has sent all the hardware sampler product home ten years ago was beaten by the competitors heavily nowadays - especially by Native's Kontakt which grabbed the majority of the market. To tell the truth Tascam was not very familiar in marketing software instruments and a second cause of the failure was the long lack of the Mac version.

Loyal users of the platform started a campaign for opening the Giga code to the public just for securing the future of their investment in the product and the sample libraries. Anyone can undersign the Open GigaStudio initiative to make a pressure on Tascam. If succeeded, a new dramatic situation can happen in the sampler market which can cause a siginificant price drop all over the world market.

Ableton has announced a fully functionable and downloadable demo version of Live 7, featuring all the add-on instruments (Sampler, Operator etc.), too. It works for 14 days. Try it here.

Steinberg has released Sequel 2, the next version of the popular entry-level sequencer. What is new is well-known from Cubase: advanced Media Bay, track freeze tu unload the processor power, virtual on-screen MIDI keyboard and so on. Newcomers pay 99 USD for it, and users of the previous version are charged to 29 USD to upgrade. To learn more click here.

For the 20th anniversary, Makemusic is out with Finale 2009, the newest version of the leading notation software. It contains Garritan's Personal Ensemble samples to bring life into the notes. Price is 600 USD, for more info please click here.

MOTU's latest addition to their interface line is Ultralite-mk3 - it is Firewire-based, needs no power supply and has a DSP for mixing, routing and effecting audio signals. Resolution-wide it is 24/192, and provides six line level inputs plus two microphones. On the output stage it has even more: not less than ten individual channels of analogue audio. Digital connections are streamlined to a single S/PDIF in-out. A great set of real-time effects will serve you with a long, detailed reverb, British modeled EQ, modeled compressor and much more. It costs 600 USD, click here if you want to know more.

Shadow, a company dealing with guitar accessories produced this strange device called SH Stompin'Bass on the video. The one-man-band guitarists will happily welcome because it generates a bass drum-like sound from the stomp box that used with the performer's foot. It costs 150 euro, you can order it here.

Analog synths can benefit from software upgrades sometime - at least Moog Music believes it so. They published a new firmware version for both MiniMoog Voyager and Phatty. Voyager gets only a few minor control function but Phatty is significantly enhanced with a fine arpeggiator.

Chimera, specialist of pocket-sized synths has a new baby, bC8. It is priced for 150 USD, and can be ordered here. It also contains even a small sequencer while we cannot imagine how they implemented it.

The big plugin bundle at Waves has a new version, Waves 6. It has more than 90 audio effect, and a new authorisation system which will make you perfectly happy. Upgrade is free for version 5 users, go here for more info.

Digidesign has assembled two new plugin packages to save your money significantly. MassivePack 7 and MassivePack Pro 7 are for the Pro Tools people of course - the latter contains a DSP card to speed up your workflow. Until 20th Spetember, you can spare a huge 9.000 USD with the basic package and 13.000 USD with the bigger one - while paying 1.300 or 3.500 USD. The list of the plugins found in the boxes is tremendous, check it.

RME launched two new PCI Express-based audio interface cards. HDSPe RayDAT is a 72-channel card with four ADAT optical connections, plus AES/EBU and S/PDIF. Equipped also with MIDI and a built-in DSP, routing and mixing is done on the card which frees all your CPU cores for more important tasks. The second one, HDSPe AES has AES/EBU digital connections, not less than 16 channels, with a maximum resolution of 192 kHz. Here are the products, officially.

If you can't afford a real synth, buy it on a T-shirt: a web-based shop in England sells Yamaha DX7, ARP Odyssey, Roland Juno 6 and many other valuable classic instruments as a T-shirt design, for 20 GBP. Hurry up, probably stocks are limited.

ExperimentalScene makes DarkWave Studio, a VST environment which is at a very early stage currently, 0.1. It hosts VST instruments and effects, and connects them to each other very freely. It runs on PCs, equipped with 32 or 64 bit Windows. You can pay 38 USD for the software, or, alternatively there is a free download link (which will be removed surely if the final version has arrived). Check it here.

Aurora is the project name for an open source movement to create cheap and fine DJ controllers. Here is their web page where you can find all the instructions to make your own piece - developers say they will provide assembled, ready-to-fly version of the gadget, too, for the lazy people.

TC Electronic provides two new harmoniser stomp boxes: one for the guitar player, and one for the keyboardist. Both generates two additional vocal line real-time - the guitar version analyses the strings that sounds, and the keyboardist's solution receives a MIDI file which instructs the box what to generate from the input. Both boxes contain a small reverb and delay, too. Harmony-G, the guitarist's box is here, and Harmony-M, the other one is here.

40 USD is the price for Future Imperfect Sounds' perfect, 24/96 acoustic drum kit. Drum Artillery/Rock Fusion Kit consists of 278 individual samples, and all the instruments are divided into 13 velocity layers. They provided 6 kits from the for Battery and Ableton DrumRack. Order it here.

Motion Sequential Synths from Motion Samples costs 40 USD also, and contains more than 400 analog synth groove, in minimal house/techno, between 124-130 BPM. Check them here.

IK Multimedia and Muse Research, the company that makes Receptor hardware VSTi modules, has announced Total Workstation Rack - a product, which is basicly a Receptor, equipped with IK's related products: SampleTank, Sonik Synth, Miroslav Philharmonik, SampleMoog and SampleTron. For a hardware module with more than 10,000 sample based preset sounds, the targeted price, 2000 USD is really not a pain - and you will receive an additional 300 USD off if you have a single registered IK product (but if you buy all these products separately, plus a Receptor, you end at 4,450 USD...). Go check it at the product announcement page.

Steinberg has decided a serious price cut: they offer the full Cubase 4 and Wavelab for 599 euro right from now. Experts call it Logic Pro-effect...

After the long preview period, Digidesign has released the final version of Transfuser, their loop manipulating instrument for Pro Tools. It is priced at 300 USD, and has all the features as the competitors - in some stages it goes slightly further; for example it has an on-board effect processor with more than 20 effect types. Two gigabytes of groove material is shipped in the package - check the product's page if you want to know more.

Next summer price hit at Native Instruments is related to Traktor 3, the company's DJ solution which can be bought for the half of the money, 99 euro. Check it here, for a limited time.

Reasonbanks.com's biggest hit, Analogue Monsters reached v3, with some real innovation. The sample material is almost the same as found in the previous version (Alesis Andromeda, Korg classics, Studio Electronics, Microwave and many more), extended with one gigabyte sample taken from a nice Oberheim Matrix-1000. Almost all of the patches are recreated from scratch, and a full Combinator bank is provided now, too. All this wonder costs 81 euro, here.