Results for Avid

Blastwave FX has announced a Blastwave FX and Avid Competition and Giveaway.

We’ve teamed up with AVID/Digidesign for our next sound design competition. This time, the stakes are high! The grand prize, retailing $8300, includes the AVID Media Composer, SONOPEDIA, Pro Tools LE, Mbox 2 and much more.

Skip Lievsay (No Country for Old Men), Jacob Ribicoff (Nine) and Ric Viers (Blastwave FX) are our esteemed judges, and you’ve got until Cinco de Mayo (May 5, 2010) to get your entries in.

Oh and one more thing, just by registering, not only will you receive 45 free sound effects, you will be automatically entered to win a basic post package retailing $1800.

Blastwave FX has also announced a limited time sale for its Pop!, Buzzsaw and Ambience I Sound FX sample libraries, offering a $100 USD discount on each title.

More information: Blastwave FX / Competition and Giveaway

Future Media Concepts (FMC) has announced the addition of two new courses featuring the award-winning Avid/Digidesign Pro Tools audio editing system; Pro Tools Operator Recertification and Pro Tools for Game Audio.

The de facto standard for sound production, Pro Tools allows users to experience the ultimate in audio quality and workflow efficiency at an affordable cost. Launching in February, the new courses will follow FMC’s highly esteemed, world-class manufacturer authorized training curriculum, providing students with a proven, hands-on educational experience.

New FMC Pro Tools Courses

• The two-day Pro Tools Operator Recertification course is available only to those previously Operator Certified in Pro Tools, enabling experienced students to expand their knowledge and skill-set in an in-depth, recertification course. Upon completion, students will be able to master the ins-and-outs of the new Pro Tools Digital Audio Workstation platform featuring dozens of new virtual instruments and plug-ins, exciting new scoring and MIDI features, and technically advanced workflows.
• The three-day Pro Tools for Game Audio course will expose students to core skills, workflows and concepts involved in producing audio for the gaming industry. An invaluable course for any audio production enthusiast or professional, Pro Tools for Game Audio teaches vital skills for the increasingly expanding global gaming market. Interested students must have completed FMC’s Pro Tools 101: Introduction to Pro Tools, and Pro Tools 110: Essentials of Pro Tools courses to be eligible.

More information: Future Media Concepts

Avid has introduced the Digidesign Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack, a collection of five professional virtual instruments that enable musicians and producers to harness the full creative power of Pro Tools, while writing, composing, and recording music.

The Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack includes updated versions of the Structure™ professional sampler workstation, Strike™ virtual drummer, Velvet™ vintage electric pianos, Transfuser™ groove creator, and Hybrid™ high-definition synthesizer. All the instruments have been updated with new features that offer much deeper integration with Pro Tools, supporting audio and MIDI region drag-and-drop functionality, enabling customers to more easily obtain creative results quickly.

Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack features

• Structure, a powerful professional sampler workstation, allows customers to create, sculpt, edit, and refine everything from acoustic instruments to complex soundscapes in real time. This release now includes over 5 GB of new sounds, offering users more sonic possibilities than ever before. Structure now also supports more sample formats natively, including both Giga-Sampler and Kontakt 3, providing customers an easy way to integrate existing sample libraries and begin using them in Pro Tools right away.
• Strike, a virtual instrument that emulates the performance style of a real drummer, makes it easy to create, control and produce professional drum performances from within Pro Tools. It now offers new, high-definition acoustic and electronic drum kits, providing users with a more wide-range of percussion options. Strike now also offers expanded options for customers to use their own samples. allowing for highly customized drum sounds and virtual performances that will put a human touch on any track.
• Velvet delivers realistic emulations of a variety of classic electric pianos, and offers more sonic possibilities than previous versions, including classic “digital” e-piano sounds of the ‘80s and a new enhanced reverb effects module, which provides vintage sounds that provide a classic touch to recordings.
• Transfuser is an innovative, real-time loop, phrase, and groove creation instrument, which now offers a new bass module inspired by the Roland TB-303, allowing customers to re-create these original vintage sounds as well as more modern synth bass. Transfuser also includes1.6 GB of new audio loops and content, including new electronic drum kits and a new 6-band parametric EQ, providing more options and more creative control within the instrument when creating beats and grooves.
• Hybrid is a high-definition software synthesizer plug-in that combines the warmth of legendary analog synths with a full range of modern manipulation capabilities. It now delivers all-new tonal possibilities with more than 250 new patches, and includes multi-square waveforms and new Blue, White, Mod, and Crackle waveforms for the noise oscillator, enabling customers to create anything from fat, retro synth sounds to edgy modern leads and everything in between.

The Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack compliments the 70+ virtual instruments, effects, and utility plug-ins already included with Pro Tools 8, greatly expanding its creative power and delivering incredible sound quality, feature innovation, and musical playability. This release marks the first time these five virtual instruments have been offered for purchase as a bundle, and a single unified installer is featured, designed to make set-up and authorization simple and straightforward.

The Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack will ship in Q1 of 2010, and carries a MSRP of $499 USD. There are unique upgrade options for customers who own existing instruments to upgrade to the latest version of their instrument, or else obtain additional savings by upgrading to the full collection.

More information: Avid / Pro Tools Instrument Expansion Pack

Avid has announced the release of Sibelius Student, a notation and composition software platform specifically designed for students in grades three through 12.

Based on the same popular software used by industry professionals, Sibelius Student offers a tightly packaged set of features designed to help students complete music theory assignments, compose pieces for real ensembles, score music to video and increase literacy in music notation, while providing teachers with specific features for classroom use and management.

New in Sibelius Student

• Magnetic Layout – Snaps score elements into position automatically, avoiding the need for time-consuming manual positioning and editing.
• On-screen Keyboard window – Enables young musicians to use the computer keyboard to compose, developing their familiarity with music notation via an easy-to-use interface modeled after a piano’s keyboard.
• Versions and Comments – Saves multiple versions of a score within the same file and enables the addition of Post-It style sticky notes to saved versions, allowing development to be tracked over time and changes to be easily recalled.
• Export audio files – Empowers students to share scores as audio files by using the high quality virtual General MIDI sound module to convert compositions into audio, enabling easy sharing and collaboration.
• Virtual instruments and effects support – Supports the use of VST or Audio Unit virtual instruments or effects, providing for greater control and coloration of playback sounds.

Network Pack and Classroom Control
Sibelius Student is also available as a Network Pack, which includes 20 seats of Sibelius Student and a single copy of Sibelius 6 Professional Edition to help educators prepare lessons and supervise classroom work remotely. A Classroom Control panel in Sibelius 6 lets teachers control students’ computers through the school’s existing data network, and provides teachers the ability to send scores or worksheets to all students at once, freeze student’s computers to gain attention, send out on-screen messages, and gather students’ work into a single folder at the end of instruction.

Sibelius Student is now available to purchase for $99 USD. 20-Seat Network Packs are available for $1,499 USD.

More information: Sibelius / Sibelius Student

Avid has released version 8.0.3 of Pro Tools 8, a digital audio workstation software for PC and Mac.

Avid is excited to announce Pro Tools 8.0.3 software, a free update for all registered Pro Tools HD 8, Pro Tools LE 8, Pro Tools M-Powered 8, and Pro Tools M-Powered Essential 8 users.

Get official Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard support, plus over 100 of your most requested software improvements and fixes. In addition, you can use Pro Tools 8.0.3 on Windows 7* as a public beta, or as a fully supported release with Pro Tools M-Powered Essential.

Check the release notes for details on what is new in Pro Tools 8.0.3.

Current Avid customers (version 8.0 and higher) can access the version updates online at no additional cost.

More information: Digidesign

Avid has released version 6.1 of Sibelius, the music notation software, which includes an innovative toolset designed to provide aspiring and professional musicians with a more efficient approach to music composition.

Sibelius 6.1 provides compatibility for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7, and includes other improvements and fixes. It is available free of charge for registered Sibelius 6 users.

Changes in Sibelius 6.1

• Sibelius will now avoid collisions between magnetic slurs and objects under their arc — e.g. notes, articulations and accidentals — by adjusting the shape of the slur and moving its end points to produce the best shape.
• New Play > Repeats dialog, allowing you to specify any sequence of bars for playback, and also to specify that nth-time endings should be played back after a D.C./D.S. jump
• Live Tempo can now include tap points, so that you can specify where you will tap, allowing the use of advanced conducting techniques such as melded and dead beats.
• Sibelius is now compatible with HyperControl™, the new two-way communication standard built in to M-Audio’s Axiom Pro range of keyboards. HyperControl automatically maps the keyboard’s controls to playback, Mixer and note input controls in Sibelius, and the Axiom Pro’s LCD display constantly updates to show the current values.
• Improvements in keyboard navigation between notes in different voices, and in which notes are played when individual notes in chords are selected.
• New Sibelius 6-style chord symbols can now be left-aligned.
• New baseline and superscript chord symbol suffix appearances for word-based suffixes (e.g. add, omit, sus, etc.)
• Further options for the numbering of 2- and 4-bar repeat bars.
• It is now possible to specify the width of leger lines on half note (minim) and whole note (semibreve) rests.
• Improvements to the positioning of the left- and right-hand ends of tuplet brackets.
• The Word Menus page of Preferences now shows the words as they will appear in the actual word menu, rather than plain text versions of them.
• It is now possible to adjust the Y position of rests once more, using a new Rest Y control on the Notes panel of Properties.
• New Merge Bars plug-in.
• Export anti-aliased bitmap graphics via File > Export > Graphics.
• Export embedded TIFF files in grayscale via File > Export > Graphics.
• Pick-up bars at the start of a score can now be exported as a short irregular bar rather than a full-length bar padded with rests when exporting a MIDI file.
• Many improvements to MusicXML import.
• Many improvements to the ManuScript language.
• Sibelius is now compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7.
• Sibelius for Windows is now a Large Address Aware application, allowing it to access up to 3GB RAM on 32-bit Windows, and up to 4GB RAM on 64-bit Windows.
• …plus many other small improvements and fixes.

Sibelius 6 for Windows and Mac is available to purchase for $599 USD (educational pricing is $329 USD per copy with additional discounts when purchasing bundled multi-seat licenses). The version 6.1 update is free for current Sibelius 6 users.

More information: Sibelius