V-Collection 8
Price: €399 retail (education and upgrade pricing available)
Everyone's favourite (ok, my favourite) soft-synth manufacturer has announced the latest version of its suite of vintage instrument emulation, including four new instruments. Faithful recreations of the Roland Juno-6, the Oberheim OB-Xa, the E-Mu Emulator II and the Moog Vocoder. You might not have heard of some of these instruments – but you definitely will have heard them on recordings.
The new instruments complement the existing 24 instruments in the library. If the thought of learning 28 software instruments scares you, Arturia conveniently include a library to search by different keywords or sounds that will then load the relevant instrument for you. There are dedicated help functions and videos for each instrument to help navigate the library.
Surrealistic MG-1
Price: Free!
This software instrument is an emulation of a little-known ‘80s synth from Moog. The original instrument was originally developed for a chain of shops in the US and was marketed as a ‘first synth’ for people who wanted to explore the instrument. This might explain the slightly unusual naming conventions for sections of the synth (oscillators are called ‘tone sources’).
This is a pretty standard 2-oscillator synth with a nice emulation of the Moog ladder fi lter. The controls are straightforward, and the modulation section can be routed to most other sections of the synth. It might not be free forever – so get it now before the price increases!
MixBox CS
Price: $40
Emulations of hardware in software form are nothing new. IK Multimedia was one of the companies to do this fi rst, and it is still among the companies doing it best. They were also ahead of the curve in seeing the potential for iOS as a platform for running these emulations. The latest product is an iPad app that emulates a virtual channel strip allowing users to combine a range of processors and effects as a chain.
There are 70 separate effects available within the app that can be linked together in chains of up to eight effects at a time. The app is compatible with GarageBand, Cubasis and other iPad-based DAWs. A lot of the individual processors are based on famous real-world devices, but if you don't have time to search through them, IK have created presets to get you started!
Sub8
Price: £185 (retail)
The Eris range of monitors is currently very popular in education because they sound good and are competitively priced. They come in a range of sizes right down to the 3.5 with (unsurprisingly) 3.5” drivers. These small drivers are never going to create a huge bass, so Presonus have a developed a subwoofer to complement its entire range of monitors to add those lower frequencies for those who feel they need it.
The Sub8 has an 8” driver and contains balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs. The outputs are routed via a crossover to select which frequencies go to the sub and which go to the main monitors. Although designed to complement the monitors from the same range, they could work well with any set of monitors in a small studio.
