Cycling ’74 (San Francisco, CA), a music software company, announced several new products at the recent AES tradeshow in New York City (October 7-10): UpMix, a surround processing and mixing software package; Hipno 1.0, a new suite of more than 40 effects and instrument VST plug-ins for VST, AU and RTAS host applications; and Octirama, a surround dynamics processor.
UpMix has been developed and tested by a team of surround sound professionals and uses proprietary algorithms to convert stereo audio into an immersive 6-channel mix suitable for film, DVD, HD broadcast and music surround formats. UpMix allows the user to check a fold down mix, rotate the five channels, create a LFE channel and rearrange the channel order to conform to various surround formats. UpMix is not intended as a substitute for surround mixing but as an additional tool to increase productivity and ease in surround production.
The Hipno Plug-In package features a mix of granular, spectral and filter/delay-based plug-ins featuring the Hipnoscope user interface. Also included in the package is a set of processors that use live video input as a control source, and a new set of modulator plug-ins sure to captivate both the novice and long-time users of Cycling ’74’s Pluggo and Mode plug-in collections.
Octirama will be available November 1, 2005, for $495 and a full-featured, multiband dynamics processor for 5.1 surround mastering for the Digidesign TDM environment. Octirama incorporates sophisticated 4- and 5-band processing for each of five channels, plus sophisticated bass management for precise control of peaks and loudness. Octirama was developed jointly by Cycling ’74 and the Plantronics Volume Logic Group, whose OctiMax dynamics processing technology is used in high-end dedicated broadcast systems as well as Cycling ’74’s Max/MSP signal processing software.
Octirama’s efficient design allows a full-featured processor to run on a single DSP chip. Functions for each of the five surround channels include an input AGC, 4- or 5-band dynamics processor, five in-band peak limiters, band mixing and a final peak limiter. More than 40 simultaneous meters provide detailed information on gain reduction, downward expansion and output levels. Octirama’s processing algorithm preserves the original surround image. Stereo and mono versions of the plug-in are also included in the package.
Hipno is now available for $199, and UpMix will be available in first quarter 2006 .
For more information, please go to the company’s Website at www.cycling74.com.
