We forecasted a war on the free synth market this spring, after the arrival of Native's Kore Player. Now it is reality: E-mu has released Proteus VX (formerly bundled with some hardware product) as a free download for anyone, with an impressive set of approximately 800 sounds of Composer Bank - a nice offer after the 50 presets of Kore Player. Here is the link to download - you only have to accept their newsletter to get it.

Livid is so generous that they provide a free and very joyful piece of software, Looper. It works with any grooves, and you can manipulate and slice them as it is running in any other similar system. Additionally, it has open source code so anyone with a programming practice can extend its capabilities. No more words but a link.

LinPlug has updated their virtual saxophone, Saxlab with a new, 2.0 version. They resampled all the raw material with a much better equipment, and developed a lot of small goodies into the system. You have to pay 149 euros to own it. Here are the details.

Togu Audio Line has replaced their software delay with a new model. TAL-Dub II has a useful add-on, a vintage modeled distortion unit after the delay - and has some new control tricks also. It is free so take it soon.

You can download individual instruments of the Vienna Symphonic Library from now, no need to buy expensive packages. At first, they uploaded 47 brass and woodwind instruments to check the audience. Try them here.

PG Music, developer of the popular accompaniment software started a new line with the name of RealBand 2008.5 - this package includes a basic Band-In-A-Box with RealTracks and RealDrums technology inside. Both solutions are from PG, and capable of producing accompaniment from acoustic audio track chunks. The new software costs 129 USD, to learn more go here.

Behringer's ultra-compact keyboard+audio interface combo is finally hit the shop these days. UMA25S has a USB connector, a very basic stereo audio interface (with microphone input though), velocity sensitive keys of two octaves, and some knobs and buttons. Keys are normal sized but their way down is shorter than you would wait - yes, it is the slim design that Roland had already years before. But Behringer offer the product at a much better price point of course: the UMA25S costs 190 USD only. The web page of the product is here.