Results for contest

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

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Phillips SAA-1099 Sample Pack (Copyright-free and License-free)

A new pack of samples by Sebastian Tomczak:

I have made a copyright-free and license-free sample pack of the Phillips SAA-1099 sound generator chip. It is a very straightforward sample pack, consisting of 96 pitched samples and 16 noise samples, across a range of frequencies. These samples have been recorded from hardware. The audio output stage of the sound chip has not been filtered.

Sebastian has also announced a music contest:

It's time to get your chipmusic on! This is your chance to win a SEGA Master System MIDI Interface. Be the coolest musician in your town with this brand new tool that lets you control the sound chip in your SEGA Master System with MIDI data.

More information: SEGA Music Competition: Win A SEGA Master System MIDI Interface!

# Jim Reekes, The Man Behind Mac Sound

From Create Digital Music:

The legend of the early sounds of the Mac remains, apparently, an alluring one. Here, Jim Reekes talks to a Dutch documentary crew (though in English) about his thought process in designing sounds for the Mac, including the famous Mac startup sound.

# New Block Construction

Livid Instruments improves its Block:

Improving on a design and sharing the results with our users is always at the top of our list at Livid. The Block controller has been a great success and we have just made some minor design changes to make it even better. Originally milled from a solid block of wood, the square body with thin bottom has had its challenges, mostly warping and cupping. We have experienced a bit higher reject rate for bodies at the shop before they were built then we would like. Thus, the up and coming stash of rejected bodies in the Livid Graveyard that were never meant to be!

# Waveformless: 5 Ways of Emulating Vintage Samplers

Tom Shear on how to emulate vintage samplers:

When sampling technology finally became accessible to mere mortals and not just uber-rich Fairlight and Synclavier enthusiasts, the race was on to increase fidelity and leave behind the limitations of those first 8-bit samplers. Bit depth and sampling rates increased and memory capacity expanded until the average sampled sound was indistinguishable from the same sound recorded on a CD.

But sure enough, after many years of enjoying the pristine sound quality of the new sampling technology, musicians began to explore and exploit the limitations of the old school samplers. Suddenly the grain of low bit-rate samples and the metallic grit of aliasing is very much in style. So how can you emulate the sonic artifacts of some of the long forgotten vintage samplers? I'm glad you asked…

# Intello – Better Demo of first version (YouTube)

This is the plugin I am currently working on. It's called "Intello". Basically it's a glitch producing plugin and in this first short demo I'm showing you one of the 5 planned glitching modes. The plugin will be controllable by an iPhone application from a listening audience. So the listeners can interact with a performer.

More information: www.zettt.de

KVR Audio has announced it is celebrating its 10^th anniversary with a Year-Long Giveaway.

In February 2010 KVR Audio is celebrating 10 years as the number one news and information resource for audio plug-ins! To mark this special occasion we are having a huge giveaway contest for the whole year (until the end of Jan 2011)! Every month we’ll give away a prize from a major software developer, gear manufacturer or educational institution.

All you have to do is fill out our quick survey once and you will be entered into the prize draw with the chance to win one of the prizes every month! Simple.

We’ve teamed up several leading software, hardware and sample library developers to bring you a fantastic selection of prizes – with a value of more than $8000! A big thank you to these companies for being so generous (with more still to come)!

Year-Long Giveaway prizes

• Ableton is offering one lucky winner a boxed version of Live 8, the fantastic composition, songwriting, recording, production, remixing and live performance app. A value of $550.
• Arturia is providing a plethora of prizes, including two copies of Hip Hop Producer and one each of their emulations of classic hardware synths: minimoog V, ARP 2600 V, CS-80V, Moog Modular V and Prophet V – a total prize fund value of $1,503 / €1,403!
• Big Fish Audio is offering a copy of MOJO: Horn Section, Vir2 Instruments’ flexible and innovative approach to pop, funk, jazz, and big band horns in a virtual instrument.
• FXpansion will give one lucky winner DCAM: Synth Squad, the plug-in suite that delivers the satisfaction of playing real analogue instruments in software! Advanced modelling technology carefully reconstructs the soul of dusty vintage circuits within your computer for the unmatched vibe of hardware at a fraction of the cost. A $249 value.
• Native Instruments has given us a copy of its flagship Komplete 6 plug-in collection. Komplete 6 incorporates the latest Absynth 5, Kontakt 4 and Guitar Rig 4 Pro versions, which add significant creative capabilities over their predecessors, complemented by Battery 3, FM8, Massive and Reaktor 5. A $499 value.
• Ohm Force is providing twelve (!) copies of its ALL-Live bundle (one each month). This fantastic plug-in bundle includes Quad Frohmage Filter Bank, Ohmicide:Melohman Distortion and Symptohm:Melohman Synth.
• Resonant Vibes is offering several rv_samplepacks, Resonant Vibes’ line of quality-driven sample packs. Typically ranging from 100 MB to 600 MB+, each pack is created by a handpicked producer. A $209 value.
• Toontrack Music is providing Superior Drummer 2.0, the professional virtual instrument for producing drums in a digital recording environment, together with its three SDX expansion packs: Lost New York Studios SDX, The Metal Foundry SDX and Custom and Vintage SDX. Over $800 in value.
• u-he is offering the u-he Complete Bundle, which includes, as its name suggests, all u-he plug-ins released to date (ACE, Filterscape, MFM2, Uhbik, Zebra + soundbanks), worth well over $700!
• Universal Audio is offering a “User’s Choice”: UAD-2 SOLO Powered Plug-Ins Card or a UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop Powered Plug-Ins Card. This single-processor PCIe card provides access to the World’s most authentic analog hardware emulations and audio processing plug-ins — including licensed emulations from Neve, Roland, BOSS, Empirical Labs, EMT, Fairchild, Harrison, Helios, Little Labs, Pultec, SPL, Teletronix and more.

More information: KVR Audio

Sonic Academy has re-launched its website, a comprehensive online resource of video tutorials, features, news and reviews to help you produce and record your ideas, then share them with the world.

To kick start 2010 with a bang, leading music technology portal Sonic Academy can unveil a brand new site brimming with fantastic new features, extra sections and Sonic Subscriber options and to celebrate, have got a HUGE competition where you could win a sack full of tech goodies!

Whether you’re a DJ, musician, or producer, consider yourself a professional or are just starting out, Sonic Academy offers the highest quality video tutorials and resources including features, news and reviews making them a one stop shop for all your music and ‘tech’ needs.

Sonic Academy new features

• Exclusive features from some of the scene’s biggest experts.
• New ‘Live Recordings’ section with video content, resources and articles.
• View the video tutorials in new modes.
• New video tutorials in the famed ‘How To Sound Like Series’ including Nu Disco, Tech Trance, Minimal, Synth Punk and ‘Tech Tips’.
• Brand new monthly and annual membership options.

To celebrate the launch Sonic Academy are running a massive competition to win a X1 Controller + free subscription to their website for a year.

Win an X1 Controller and a free Sonic Plus subscription for a year! 10 runners up will also win Annual Sonic Plus subscriptions. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is to register for FREE on the Sonic Academy site before 28th February 2010 and if you are already a registered member or a subscriber then you will be automatically entered into the competition!

More information: Sonic Academy

Tonehammer has announced a Guess the Instrument contest.

Microhammer (our little brother company specialized in weird instruments) will be releasing 9 new instruments later in Februrary, however we wanted to give you an opportunity to win the entire collection.

The first person that can guess what instruments were used in the demo (see below) will win the entire Microhammer February collection for free.

We don’t really expect anybody to be 100% on the money, since the instruments are highly unconventional, but give it your best shot and may the best ear win. All we ask is that you leave your answer in the comment field below and have fun. Microhammer is all about exploring new types of instruments and sounds, so let your mind be open and suggest anything that come to your mind.

More information: Tonehammer

Defected has launched the Producer Competition 2010, a competition in partnership with Traxsource , Ableton and Loopmasters.

Last year’s competition generated a huge amount of interest from the dance community, clocking up 1,500 entries with close to 20,000 people registering on the site to rate and comment on the tracks. The standard of tracks was of the highest order, but eventually 19 year old Dutch producer Robacco Bossa’s track ‘Black Bird’ was selected as the winner and released on Defected Records. This time around Defected have teamed up with download hub Traxsource, top sample resource Loopmasters and leading production software company Ableton to bring you another chance to hit the big time.

The rules of the competition remain the same; upload your tracks to the site where they’ll be rated and commented on. Phase II of the competition sees the Defected A&R team pick their favourite 10 tracks, which are then voted on by the public.

Voters Prizes

• 1ST PRIZE: Track released on Defected or partner label, Copy of Ableton Suite 8, Loopmasters sample packs worth over £1k, $200 of credit on Traxsource.
• 2ND PRIZE: Copy of Ableton Live 8, 5 Loopmasters sample packs of your choice, $100 of credit on Traxsource.
• 3RD PRIZE: Copy of Ableton Intro, 5 Loopmasters sample packs of your choice, $50 of credit on Traxsource.

Everyone who registers on the site to rate, vote for and comment on the tracks is entered into a competition to win a 160G ipod. Plus all those who register will automatically receive a 30% off voucher to spend on anything they like in Defected’s D-Store.

More information: Defected