New Gear Alert: elysia’s skulpter 500 Preamp, Europa Synth Plugin from Reason, Avid NEXIS E5 NL Storage Solution & More

elysia announces the skulpter 500 preamp.

elysia’s versatile skulpter 500 preamp offers compression, filtering, and saturation—all under the same 500 Series hood.

The skulpter 500 features gain stages based on single resistors controlling a fully-discrete, Class-A amplifier, capable of complementing any microphone with remarkably true and natural sound. Additional coloration is available via two variable saturation/filters and an intelligent one-knob compressor.

skulpter 500 provides a balanced DI input with significant headroom of up to +19dBu, so just about any signal coming from guitars, basses, synths, and effects will benefit greatly from audiophile-class amplification and versatile processing performance.

The skulpter 500 is made in Germany, exclusively using top-quality components, gold-plated PCBs, a rugged 4mm aluminum front panel, and solid aluminum knobs.

skulpter 500 is available now, priced at $879; see it in action here.

Reason’s Europa Synth is now available as a plugin for other DAWs.

Reason’s renowned Europa synthesizer is now on offer from Propellerhead in VST/AU plugin and web audio format.

Propellerhead announces Reason’s flagship Europa synthesizer is now available as a standalone VST/AU plugin and in web audio format. Europa is a unique spectral wavetable synthesizer that offers 30+ engine models and wavetables, 24 filter types, advanced modulation, and powerful effects. The Europa plugin and web version now bring these creative possibilities to even more musicians and producers.

Europa’s sounds are shaped by bending and animating once-static waveforms into kinetic modern sounds. With three independent synthesis engines, advanced spectral filtering, powerful modulation options, a full suite of effects, customizable envelopes, and over 500 presets from leading sound designers, Europa can create epic pads, huge chords, aggressive biting basses, and everything in between.

Propellerhead is offering Europa for $99/€99 until June 30th, 2018. For more information and a demo version, click here.

Avid announces availability of the NEXIS | E5 NL nearline storage solution.

Avid expands their NEXIS family with the E5 NL, enabling users to access content more efficiently than ever before.

The E5 NL is a high-density, on-premises storage solution, and the newest addition to the Avid NEXIS family—the world’s first software-defined storage platform for media. The E5 NL allows Avid customers to seamlessly and efficiently manage media across all their online, nearline, and archive storage resources.

Avid NEXIS | E5 NL is tightly integrated into Avid media applications, services and workflows, and includes a new web-based Avid NEXIS management console for managing, controlling and monitoring Avid NEXIS installations. The E5 NL can be easily accessed through MediaCentral | Cloud UX or Media Composer, and also integrates with MediaCentral | Production Management, MediaCentral | Asset Management, and MediaCentral | Editorial Management to drive collaboration, including advanced features, such as project and bin sharing. Extending the Avid NEXIS | FS (file system) to a secondary storage tier makes it easy to search for, find, and import media, enabling users to locate content distributed throughout their operations more quickly and efficiently.

Avid NEXIS E5 | NL is now available through Avid resellers. For more information, click here.

Steinberg announces the Dorico Pro 2 and Dorico Elements 2 scoring software.

Steinberg implements key upgrades to their Dorico music notation software, along with the addition of a more streamlined “Elements” version.

Steinberg is pleased to announce the release of a new version of their professional music notation application, Dorico, along with the new, entry-level Dorico Elements. With the introduction of Dorico Elements, Dorico is now called Dorico Pro, to reflect its high-end capabilities.

Dorico Pro 2 adds significant new functionality across the whole application, with a particular focus on supporting media musicians working in film, TV, video games, and other production environments. Dorico Pro 2 now allows composing to picture, with features to attach a video to the project, add markers for specific events in the action, and tools to help find the best tempo for the material. In addition, new tools for automation in Play mode have been added, allowing users to make fine adjustments to tempo and MIDI controllers using familiar graphical tools.

Boasting many of the powerful and time-saving features of Dorico Pro, Dorico Elements is the perfect starting point for composers, arrangers, and students. Dorico Elements provides fluid input and editing, beautiful graphical notation, and great-sounding playback, delivering results that maintain the overall standard for which Dorico is renowned. Allowing the creation of publication-quality music for ensembles of up to 12 players, with the same automatic music layout and engraving of Dorico Pro, Dorico Elements is the ideal choice for musicians starting out in composition and arranging.

Dorico Pro 2 is priced at $599.99, with special educational and crossgrade pricing available. Dorico Elements 2 is available for $99.99, and also offers special educational pricing. For more information, click here.

Accusonus releases ​Beatformer​, an all-in-one beat sculpting plugin.

Beatformer by Accusonus is a powerful yet simple tool for adding character and vibe to your drum loops.

​Accusonus, developers of music software tools based on artificial intelligence technology, announce the release of ​Beatformer​.

Beatformer allows users to effortlessly shape their beats, without compromising their character and musicality. You can use ​Beatformer on every track, for transparent to extreme sound manipulation. The plugin has four intuitive controls (Boom, Punch, Squash, and Air) that offer powerful DSP in a simple, intuitive design. With more than a dozen high-quality algorithms under the hood, ​Beatformer opens up a wide range of musical beat-shaping possibilities.

Check out an introductory video of Beatformer here.

Beatformer is available in ​AU, VST, AAX 64-bit Mac & VST, and AAX 64-bit Win formats, at a special introductory price of $79 (reg. $99).

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