Products of Interest

AmpliTube Live Virtual Guitar Amplifier/Effects Processor

Hardware-based physical modeling products that emulate guitar amplifiers such as Line 6 have been on the market for some time now. They have found their place in the world of guitar players who are constantly striving to make their guitars sound in idiosyncratic ways. AmpliTube Live takes the idea of virtual amplifiers and effects and packages it for the portable computer environment, stripping away the hardware part and concentrating only on the software. The interface resembles the layout and design of conventional amplifier heads and will look very familiar to guitar players (see Figure 1).

AmpliTube Live is an offspring of the AmpliTube Plug-in, and is designed to function in a real-time performance environment, running on the Macintosh OS X platform (Version 10.2 or later, G4 computer recommended). The software is mainly based on models of common guitar amplifiers and effects processors, including three equalizers, three cabinets, three amps, and four effects: wah-wah, delay, reverb, and over-drive. In addition, a complementary chromatic tuner with a ±20 cents range comes with software.

Figure 1.

AmpliTube Live interface.

AmpliTube Live does not require additional software or hardware to run, working with the built-in Macintosh audio/soundcard utilities without any special setup or configuration. The software comes with multiple designer-boutique skins and 64 factory presets, with an additional 64 memory locations for user settings. Settings can be selected and controlled by means of generic MIDI foot pedals. Computation and processing of all effects is carried out in 32-bit floating-point format.

The virtual Stomp Box section comes with three pedal processors which include the vintage wah-wah pedal in manual or auto mode, analog delay, and an analog solid-state overdrive. The three Amplifier models can be switched between Clean, Crunch, and Lead modes, and are designed to emulate well-known products such as the Marshall JCM-800 and Fender Solid-State combos. The Equalizer is modeled after a spring reverb for a metallic resonant vibe at the penultimate section of the signal path. The signal at the final stage is fed to the Cabinet modeling section. The three cabinet models are: Ampeg AX-30 100W Tube, Vox top boost AC, and Marshall vintage 4 × 12 cabinets from the 1970s.

AmpliTube Live is listed for US$/€ 129. Contact: IK Multimedia Productions, Via dell'Industria 46, 41100 Modena, Italy; telephone (+39) 059-285-496; fax (+39) 059-286-1671; electronic mail ikm@ikmultimedia.com; Web www.ikmultimedia.com; in the USA, contact: IK Multimedia US; telephone (+1) 772-466-9763; fax (+1) fax (+1) 206-666-6534; electronic mail ikmus@ikmultimedia.com.

Figure 2.

Bang & Olufsen Beolab 5 loudspeaker.

Bang & Olufsen Beolab 5 Loudspeaker

Danish manufacturer Bang & Olufsen (B&O) has released a newly designed, high-quality loudspeaker. The Beolab 5 is a four-way, four-driver conical unit, designed with the aim of minimizing floor and ceiling reflections to achieve clearer stereo imaging (see Figure 2).

The Beolab 5 contains a 15-in. bass driver, a 6.5-in. lower-midrange driver, a 3-in. fabric-dome upper mid-range driver, and a .75-in. fabric-dome tweeter. The frequency response is rated at 19_Hz–20 kHz. The two midrange and the highrange drivers are aimed upward, directed onto elliptical "acoustical mirrors," developed by Sausalito Audio Works, and the bass driver is directed downward. According to the theory behind this design, the sound reflecting off all parts of the ellipse will always pass through the other focal point from the one at which the driver is aimed, keeping the path-length at a constant, thus maintaining phase coherence. The elliptical "mirrors" are spread around a semicircle, so that most of the output is directed forward, minimizing the effect of rear-wall proximity. With the vertical axes limited, the axial response of the loudspeaker comes close to matching its rated power response.

The driver units are actively driven by 2 × 1000 W and 2 × 250 W amplifiers. The bass driver is tied to a digital signal processor that...