New Products

RTW, specialist German vendor of visual audio meters and monitoring devices for professional broadcast has stepped into music analysis with the newest addition to its loudness metering family, the MM3 MusicMeter. MM3 MusicMeter includes a vectorscope, PPM/TruePeak or VU, real-time analysers, Loudness vs. Time charts, as well as numerical and graphical loudness display and zoom modes. Usefully it can operate in vertical or horizontal modes and supports analog, SPDIF and USB inputs plus a SPDIF output. It even delivers a buffered stereo signal or downmix from a 5.1 stream. The MM3 MusicMeter is compatible with RTW’s USB Connect software package, which is available free from the company’s website. USB Connect offers users direct audio signal transfer and additional control from within a DAW environment, further expanding the capabilities of the MM3. The unit is set to retail at £513 and will be available soon through a limited number of exclusive partners and from the RTW website.

Waves has now brought its version of live pitch correction to the plug-in world. Waves claims its intent is to provide a tool that helps vocalists stay in tune whilst performing, to increase their confidence and focus on the emotion of their performance. Waves Tune Real-Time boasts super low latency and even goes so far as to claim that pitch correction is engaged ‘as soon as the notes leave the singer’s mouth’. Waves claims that the advanced formant correction maintains the natural sound of the singer’s voice during pitch alteration. The plugin offers a simple layout and touchscreen compatibility. The key and scale of the song can be selected along with sensitivity, and apparently vibrato can be tuned while preserving the voice’s natural movement. For advanced setups and backing track playback MIDI can be used to control the target pitch plus notes can be tagged to fix or avoid if desired.

Waves Tune Real-Time is compatible with all Waves SoundGrid applications, eMotion mixers and MultiRack setups. DiGiCo Support is coming soon with the upcoming Waves for DiGiCo SD installer update. At an introductory price of $99 (normally $199) from the Waves website this almost too easy an option for studios and touring acts.

The Lauten LA-320 is another addition to the Series Black range. This time Lauten have delivered a vacuum tube based large diaphragm condenser microphone that is designed to be used for vocal and instrumental recording. That said it can handle enough SPL for louder sources as it is rated up to 130dB Max SPL at 1kHz giving only 0.5%THD. The mic specs claim a maximum self noise of 17dB-A so it is not the quietest mic, but still not beyond expectations for a vacuum tube system.

The diaphragm is a gold sputtered, one
true-condenser capsule and offers simply a cardioid polar pattern. There are independent high-pass (120Hz) and low-pass (12kHz) filters and the microphone comes with a custom power supply that is switchable for use in all countries. The LA-320 implements a dual triode vacuum tube (though a model is not quoted) and a transformer balanced output that Lauten claim is inspired by vintage circuitry. The mic is primarily aimed at the higher end of the home recording market but could prove a useful studio tool also. A shock-mount is included with the microphone, the screw- in type to avoid accidental slippage and as with other Lauten packages the whole thing comes in a neat looking hard-case. The LA-320 is available now and retails for $799.