LinPlug's  RMV is a serious instrument, having a heavy-weight sample playback engine and a sophisticated drum synth, too. It has 48 instrument pads, all polyphonic, and all have an own 12x12 modulation matrix as well as envelope generators, parametric EQ, distortion, lots of insert effects at the same time, and a humanizer. Six groove player and slicer serves the musician, and a library module with advanced search capabilities. More than 10,000 sound samples is coming with the package, plus 1,500 audio loops and 2,600 MIDI grooves. RMV costs 139 euro, check here the details.

Audio Damage wants a good reputation therefore they dropped out a new, analogue modeling compressor for completely free. Rough Rider works on both PC and Mac as a VST effect, has a stylish analogue design, and has some modern functions like MIDI Learn. Download it from here.

This plugin instrument was named after some metal god as we learnt somewhere. Image Line's Ogun is made for producing metallistic sound and noises with its additive synthesis engine. An enormous quantity of 32 767 harmonics guarantees a very precise sound tailoring process - all of this is extended with some effects of delay, chorus, EQ and reverb. It costs 79 USD, click here to know more.

White Label has created this simple reverb plugin, bucketEER, which is basicly a 16-part delay module. If you use the channels parallel with very different parameters it can mix enough the sound to create a reverb-like effect. To make a real chaos, randomize functios help you. Go here to download for free.

Stanton's new DJ controller probably set a new standard in the class. DaScratch has only touch-sensitive surfaces, all the control functions are performed in that way, for only 300 USD. Go check here, especially the demo video.

Voxengo's Elephant mastering plugin reached version 3.0 recently. It has ten types of limiting, converts bit resolution, kills DC offset, oversamples 8 times, calculates with 64-bit resolution and so on. Purchase it until 15th, October for only 70 USD - later you have to pay 90 USD. Here.

de la mancha is still very active, now they introduced a two-band compression plugin, Bathtub. You can switch the two independent stereo compressor parallel or serial, what is a really new feature. It costs 29 USD, check here and try.

Although it is promised more than a year ago, it is still nowhere. Yes, this is the new drum computer of Roger Linn and Dave Smith which had several names during the times (now it is called LinnDrum II), and several designs - the actual one is here at the right. It is extremely desirable now but we still cannot say anything about the availability; what is sure that you will not find it in the shops this year.

Cakewalk's flagship sequencer will have a new version in 2nd, October. Sonar 8 will feature a new track type, instrument for plugin synths, Loop Explorer is 2.0 already, QuickTime export/import is introducing, BeatScape is a new loop instrument, TruePianos is a new piano instrument, plus there are some new effects: a tube leveler, Native's Guitar Rig 3 LE and so on. The full version costs 600 USD, and Sonar Studio 8, a smaller version costs 370 USD. Go here for more info.

This is Alchemy, a new supersynth software from Camel Audio. It is a sample/VA based instrument, packed with a huge array of digital sound manipulation funtions. It loads almost any sound sample (you get two gigabytes with him), has sound morphing, and analogue modeled filters. The arpegggiator inside is a powerful one, also. Price is still not known, but there is a detailed web page about.

Supersynth specialist Spectrasonics promised the top-of-the-line Omnisphere months ago - and finally it is here. Priced at 499 USD, it is not a cheap toy, but it serves for the money heavily. It has a maximum of 10 oscillator per voice, plays back samples and has VA-generators also, and has an extremely wide range of sound manipulation tools. Beyond them, 6 LFOs, 8 envelope generators, 12 effects plus 8 arpeggiators per sound move the sound in the regular way. The package is coming with 40 gigabytes of samples. Check here the rest.

Great keyboard player of Pink Floyd, Rick Wright is no more. Death has reached him at the age of 65. Without his work, the electronic music scene would be very different - his early work with electronic devices, his organ playing techniques, and the still-on-top album, The Dark Side of the Moon influenced heavily all the first generation e-music stars in the seventies.

Before any official info, all the important data has leaked about the new synth module of Dave Smith. It is Mopho, a fully analogue monophonic synthesizer, with a 2-oscillator architecture, and equipeed with the legendary Curtis filter chip. It has three ADSR envelope generators, and handles an audio input, too. A separate arpeggiator plus a 16 x 4 note gate seuqencer is working to play pattern textures. Price is a decent 439 USD.

Two new exiting software for the very musical mobile phone: first, PianoChords, a simple application for two dollars. It teaches chords very effectively, with showing them onscreen, and playing back on a good quality piano sample. It knows more than 50 chords starting from any of the 12 root keys, and you can shift them real-time as you want. Check here its website.

Second is Cosmovox, a Theremin-like program, which modulates the sound with your movement of the phone: you can wave, twist, shift, and some sound parameters could be predefined to assign to a specific movement. To learn more check its website, and experience the expressive video that shows how it works.

Numark will have a combined audio interface - controller solution for the laptop DJ soon. Its name is Omnicontrol, and most of the technical parameters are kept in secret nowadays - on the official page there is very limited news information on it. The most important thing that can be known is the bundled software - you will get a Traktor 3 LE plus a MixMeister Fusion Live for the price which is to be announced.

The tiny and popular new synth box of the renewed Waldorf company, Blofeld got a keyboard version with the same name. Technically it is not a simple replica but a much stronger synth engine: 60 megabytes of sound sample ROM that can be wavetabled, plus a VA-engine for screaming analogue emulation. Check the official webpage for a very detailed documentation. Price still TBA.

After a long time Korg has unveiled a new sensation again: a new workstation, M50 which has basicly a very similar sound generation system as in the M3, but with a very competitive price: 1500 USD for the 61-key version (more keys to come later). For the money you will get 256 megs of sound ROM, 608 preset plus 640 user programs, 170 different effect algorhythms, a sequencer with huge note capacity, and a polyphonic, programmable arpeggiator. All this comes in November, check the product page for the rest of the info.

To make a phone call or surfing via 3G is not the easiest tasks with the new iPhone as the news coming about extraordinary bugs but the phone has won as a music platform undoubtly. Three new products prove it: at first, IR-909, a Roland TR909-clone, which has the same sequencer philosophy as the original. Additionally, it is packed with not only the characterictic 909-samples, but 606, 707 and 808 also. For 5 USD, it is worth considering... To learn more click here.

Next is TouchOSC, a continuous controller software which emulates the design of the most desired tool of he class, Jazzmutant's Lemur. It sends control signals via wi-fi regarding the OSC (Open Sound Control) standard. It is interpreted by a few software components like Max/MSP.

TouchOSC performs rotary controllers, faders, push buttons, toggle buttons, X6Y pads and LEDs. Check here for more info.

Last but not least this is Sruti Box, a faithful emulation of the old Indian instrument with the same name. Its most interesting feature is the movement sensitivity - you can alter the sound with moving your phone. Check here for more.

Ableton bundles a free softsynth, Operator, if you buy Live until 30th, October. Hurry up, the analog/FM world is waiting for you.

M-Audio pushes the limit up with their new Firewire interface, ProFire 610. For only 500 USD it has 6 ins and 10 outs, with a full 24/192 resolution, plus equipped with a DSP, which is controlled by a dedicated mixer/router software. The box acts as a standalone A/D converter if you don't connect your computer. Check here the detailed specs.

Don't you have groove? No problem, erratic2 from de la mancha will make it. This drum sample player has several random functions to make your life happier - random layers, random velocity, random pan and swing functions color the mechanical beats. It has 15 sound slots, six velocity layers per sound, 15 independent outputs, and the package contains 300 megs of drum samples. For 39 USD, it is quite attractive. Check here.

VRSonic has a new VST reverb, HeadSpace Room which accurately models the environment of the sound source. You can adjust the exact dimensions of the room, and the material that covers the walls. An extensive library of 35 different material is modeled within the program. It produces mono, stereo and 5.1 surround output. Payment is required to own it, as low as 99 USD only, here.

Steinberg updated Cubase seriously in all platforms - 64 bit Vista version has arrived also as a beta. The new Cubase 4.5 supports all the new Steinberg interface-controllers that were introduced earlier. New on the support topic is the VST integration of the Yamaha Motif XS synths - you just connect it via Firewire and the hardware synth acts as a plugin. A new format is also introduced: VST Sound, which can hold any type of a synth sound for any gardware or software synth or effect. A useful extra is bundled: 1.5 gigabytes of sound sample material for HALion. Here is the detailed spec list, and here is the download link.

Three Kore-news came from Native Instruments, together. At first, Kore 2 has a reduced price from now: 400 euro, instead of 500. Second, you can buy Kore 2 software without the hardware, only for 200 euro - name: Kore 2 Software Edition. Third, a huge deal on sound programs: Kore Electronic Experience is a package which contains seven Soundpacks for Kore, for only 160 euro. Click here to learn more.

Here is a fine piece of technical art, Coyote-1 from Howler Audio. It is an open source guitar effect box which comes with a full hardware and software documentation, so guitarists with a programming talent can write their own DSP code to perform effects that are new to us. A small Windows utility helps to organize effect patches in the desired order. The box has a Propeller DSP from Parallax, there are eight cores inside, all running at 80 MHz. It has a high-level programming language, Spin, and of course you can reach the cores with assembly instructions, too. A direct video output is also present from the processor itself, so you can connect a video monitor. Check here for more details.

MoReVoX has sampled a lot of old spring reverbs and collect them into a huge, 250-piece wave file collection, RetroVerb. The files has very good quality - al of them has 24 bits resolution, stereo and 5-channel surround, taken with a very good equipment -, and can be used in any convolution reverb software. It costs 79 USD, here.

NuSofting released Modelonia, a new softsynth plugin that uses physical modeling to produce sounds. It has accurate brass and plucked strings models, and you can combine the diferent elements inside the instrment. Skinning is performed also, with two selectable skins that are coming from the factory. All these costs 51 euro, here.