Drumtracker is Toontrack's answer to Drumagog - a software that analyses your acoustic drum track and makes a MIDI file, according to your beats. The very low price is 99 euro, for both PC and Mac. Check here.

Transfer 314,95 USD for Sony here, and you will own a brand new ACID Pro 7. The world famous loop sequencer has numerous new features like track freeze, a serious new mixer, rendering sound real-time, programmable tempo changes, a very new, sophisticated time-stretch algorhythm. It works with every resolution up to 24/192.

Sonoma Wire Works published a four track mini recording software for iPhone/iPod Touch, called FourTrack. It records only two tracks only at a time of course, but handles downloaded sound files as well. Compensates latency, and has a master compressor/limiter at the final stage. Via wifi, it is possible to synchronise with desktop recording application - it is not clear whether it performs automated mixing or not. The price is relatively high, 10 USD: here is the link to the App Store, and here is the official info link.

You only have to pay half price at Native Instruments for all the updates during the Christmas season - it is the first good news from the company. Second is for the interface buyers: Audio Kontrol 1 will contain a bundle of a great Native synth of your choice from Absynth 4, FM8, Pro-53 or Massive. Third, Guitar Rig Kontrol Edition will contain a Cubase LE, a Kore Player, plus Pop Drums as a Soundpack. Check here.

Sugar Bytes perhaps open a new race with their new baby coming in November: Consequence is a tool dedicated to writing nice chord progressions. It will have built-in instruments, too, to hear what you did. More info to come, here.

Mixed In Key, the popular DJ software reached version 4. For those who are not familiar with: it is a program that finds the key of a song from the audio file. The price is 58 USD, and here is its product page.

A revolutionary software has unveiled for iPhone: RjDj is as simple as a great piece. It listens for the incoming sound signals from the microphone, and generates improvised music real-time, accordingly. You should enjoy the generated soundscapes with your earphones to maximise the experience. You also have some freedom to tailor the music that generated: selectable scenes help to find your proper mood. The software records its performance if you want, for later use. To learn more, check the developers' blog.

Native Instruments will sure make a big hit with a new generation of DJ software: Traktor Pro and Traktor Scratch Pro. What is the most interesting is the totally redesigned user interface which seems very logical. It even displays the album art of the tracks that playlisted. A huge bunch of new effects will improve the excitement, and the loop functions make it a real sequencing instrument - just check the demo videos.

Sony has officially announced the next version of their loop-based sequencing software: ACID Pro 7. For the 400 USD it will do all the audio resolutions up to 24/192, with the maximum configurability - surround 5.1 is also supported. It will come with 3000 audio and 1000 MIDI grooves from Sony, and all the MIDI functions are highly extended. A professional mixer panel is the next big smash in the application, with flexible routing, and integration with external effect processors. The official webpage is already opened for everybody.

For four USD founder of Roxy Music and the ambient movement, Brian Eno will move into your iPhone. His new application, Bloom generates music real-time, after you set some rules. It still let some interactivity during the music making process. Buy it here at the App Store.

UltraMixer, a nice DJ application runs on Windows, OS X and Linux, too. It has three levels: the very simple Free is rather a sample, and works for two hours at a time. Basic for 109 USD has no such disadvantage, and Professional has numerous goodies for 239 USD. The lattest has ASIO support, real-time effects, time-stretch, sample player, looper, 31-band graphic equaliser, BMP-counter, controller interface and so on. Check here if you are interested more.

Stay tuned, the entire Pro Tools family will renew in the near future, an official info page is already set up. It will have numerous new plugins, five new virtual instruments, a new graphical user interface, enhanced scoring and MIDi editing, and better controller integration. It will run well on Vista, too, and on the Mac it will handle HD-video thru QuickTime.

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.

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

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.

The cheapest digital DJ solution, Quad has a new version, Quad2. This is the system which handles four time-coded vynil discs via standard, ASIO-compatible sound cards for 89 euro only. The latest version runs on Mac already, and has a comletely customisable user interface. It has more nice goodies, like the tempo-adjustable effects. Check the official info sheet here.

We had an article on the free DJ software, DJ-1800 already; now it has a major upgrade, version 3.2 which streams the live mixed material to the internet. Check it here - for Mac users only.

Update: unfortunatel DL-1800 is not free any more - the full single-user licence costs 80 USD.

Mixxx is a very nice and free software for the laptop DJ which runs on three platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux. And that's not the full story: it is developed with a real open source effort, and they did almost all the important functions we got used to in the expensive packages: plays mp3, OGG, WAV, FLAC, has real time stretch and BPM detection, supports numerous hardware controllers natively, supports multi-channel sound devices, has multiple skins, uses on multi-core CPUs, the maximal audio resolution is 24/96, crossfader's envelope is selectable - just to name some. Get it here.

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.

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.

Why spend a lot on Tenori-On - here is a software emulation of the biggest instrument hit of the year which runs on the cheap iPhones. 1.0 version is still seems to be reached not so recently, and playback still has some timing problem, but fingers crossed - and check here the development.

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.

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.