Spawny gets his prize!

Last month, the lucky winner of our Wavestation competition (MT, August '93) picked up his prize direct from Korg UK at their base in Harrow. Ian Colvin from Stanmore, Middlesex received his Wavestation after a tour around the premises.

The answers to the competition were:

1. The Wavestation is 1U high
2. The Korg M1 shares its name with a famous British motorway
3. The X3 is Korg's newest workstation

No consolation prize!

If ever you were in any doubt that the computer games market generates Big Bucks, a few cool statistics about the martial arts console game Mortal Kombat will set you straight. Yes, Mortal Kombat. Even if you're not a Gameboy (or girl), chances are that those two words will have stirred some dim memory lurking within your cranial depths, such has been the blanket nature of the ad campaign. Meanwhile, the console freaks among you will no doubt already have the game and be well on your way to thrashing the almighty evil one, Shang Tsung!

So, how big are the bucks we're talking about here? Well (get ready for this), in its first week of release (September 13-19th) Mortal Kombat took a staggering £15 million pounds in UK sales! Put another way, half a million copies were sold across the UK in a single week; since then, weekly sales have levelled off to around half that figure! In fact, Mortal Kombat sold even more quickly than Sonic II, the previous benchmark for the computer games industry.

Acclaim Entertainment, the London-based company behind the game, set out to create a cultural phenomenon through the power of advertising - and that is precisely what they have done. Mortal Kombat has outsold nearly all other forms of entertainment in Britain this year, with only the film Jurassic Park grossing more - and, ironically, Mortal Kombat is currently outselling the Jurassic Park game by nearly four to one! I say 'ironically' because Acclaim's advertising campaign for the two months preceding Mortal Kombat's release consisted of screening a 30-second ad spot before every showing of Jurassic Park in every cinema across the country - a fine example of well-targetted advertising.

Let's talk some more facts and figures. Advertising: $10 million dollars has been committed world-wide, of which around £750,000 will have been spent on UK advertising by the end of the year. Mortal Kombat was given a simultaneous world-wide release on both Sega and Nintendo consoles. All in all it's available on five console formats: Super Nintendo, Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Mega Drive, Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear. Cartridge prices range from £29.99 to £59.99, with the £49.99 Mega Drive version by far outselling the others - apparently because this version has the full 'blood and guts' of the arcade original!

Inevitably, given the memory limitations of Mortal Kombat's cartridge format, music comes a poor 15th to the graphics action. However, as we've pointed out in these pages before, the new generation of CD-ROM-based games are another matter altogether.

Perhaps your next album advance should be a CD-ROM advance...

Mastering the bass

The latest sample CD in the Masterbits Climax Collection, available from AMG, exhorts you to feel the bass. Volume 7, simply titled Boss, retails at £59 including VAT and features sounds from many of the world's finest bass guitars, including Yamaha, Ken Smith, Alembic and Warwick. In total the CD contains over 500 bass samples. Fretless basses and a few synth basses are included, and single notes, chords, slaps, slides, 'dead notes', open notes and mute notes are featured, plus a few licks for good measure.

Also new from Masterbits is the Akai S1000/S1100 CD-ROM version of their World Party dance sample CD, containing over 400Mb of samples and featuring all the best samples from Masterbits' DAT-RAMs Vols 1-3. Price is £249 including VAT.

For more information, contact AMG at (Contact Details).

A Towering presence

If you should get a chance to visit Tower Records at Piccadilly Circus in London, make sure you venture into the basement. Here you'll be able to got hands-on experience of The Vid Zone, an experiment in the interactive presentation of recorded music and, what's more, an experiment which could have a significant impact on music retailing.

The Vid Zone is a custom console based around an Apple Mac Quadra 840AV 40/500 with a 1 Gb external hard drive, a Microtouch 14" touchscreen monitor and a 21" Trinitron TV. To navigate your way around the various Vid Zone screens, you simply touch the onscreen graphic buttons. In fact, the user interface is dead easy to operate - which of course it needs to be, given the circumstances of its use. The whole graphically-based presentation has a lively, energetic feel to it which positively encourages you to play around with the console.

You select your album by entering the Sky Room and touching any one of the digitised album sleeves which adorn a circular 'wall'. This takes you to another screen where you can make your individual track selections. You get a choice of 30 complete albums of music together with a single small-screen music video for each album (stored as digitised audio and video on hard disk). The Vid Zone also contains up-to-the-minute news, gossip and info, and a full Time Out-sponsored onscreen listings magazine of music events, previews and music venues which is updated weekly.

The Vid Zone was launched at Tower Records on October 1 st with albums and videos from such artists as U2, Billy Joel, Jamiroquai, Manic Street Preachers, Cypress Hill, Rage Against The Machine, Beverley Craven, PM Dawn and, er, Cilla Black! In fact, here's a useful tip: if you want to disperse a crowd of onlookers, play the Cilia selection! Guaranteed to work or your money back...

For more information, contact developers Maya Media on (Contact Details).

X3 packs it in

It may be just coincidence but in our review of the X3 (September's MT) we criticised the keyboard for having only two outputs and looked forward to a rackmount version. Well what's this? The X3R has all the features of the X3 (minus the keyboard of course!) and four individual outputs. Hooray, our prayers have been answered! It will sell for £1199. More from Korg, (Contact Details)

Spaced-out classics

Two new releases from Time + Space this month are aimed at those who want to add a classic touch to their recordings. Classical Choir features bass, tenor, alto and soprano voices, ensemble, clusters, sustained notes and syllables among others. It costs £149 for the CD-ROM. Orchestra is the second release, featuring various parts of the orchestra individually and together. It retails at £199 for the CD-ROM.

Moving slightly away from the classical genre, Dance Industrial II is also due for imminent release. It's the follow-up to East-West's critically acclaimed Dance Industrial CD and will retail for £59.95 (for a double CD).

More from: Time+Space, (Contact Details)

Hot Toast

The Video Toaster video card and software from American company NewTek has long been a firm favourite with Amiga users - American Amiga users, that is. Thanks to Sony, who never manufactured a PAL version of the image generator chip used in the Toaster, NewTek's highly-regarded product - which is used by professionals and amateurs alike - has never been widely available over here.

However, all that could change with the introduction of the Prime Image StdCon/PCB card for the Amiga. This American card, distributed in the UK by London-based company Vortex Communications, provides timebase correction, synchronisation, and standards conversion of a composite or Y-C video signal from NTSC, PAL or SECAM to NTSC or PAL in composite or Y-C. At £1250 excluding VAT, it doesn't come cheap - but the dedicated video amateur and pro users will consider it well worth the asking price.

As well as selling the Prime Image board by itself, Vortex will put together complete Toaster packages. An example configuration consisting of Amiga 4000/040 (with 16Mb RAM, a 540Mb hard drive and a Microvitec 1440 monitor), Video Toaster 4000 card and software (the latest incarnation of the Toaster) and Prime Image StdCon/PCB converters (2 cards for input, one for reconverted output, and an 8-slot expansion box) will cost approximately £9350 plus VAT. Cheap at the price, some would say.

For more information, contact Vortex Communications Ltd at (Contact Details).

Sounds Of The City - 2

How does one enter - and survive - the current music industry? Who leads in the battle between creativity and technology? Is techno and rave simply unscrupulous splicing or does it have an underlying creativity which taps into the mood of the 90s? If these are the kind of weighty issues that keep you awake at night, you may be interested in an event taking place at University College Salford on Saturday 6th November.

Dubbed Sounds of the City 2, this is the second conference to take place at the University's Centre for Media, Performance & Communications and offers a range of forums and workshops and a "rich" line-up of guest speakers including a producer, a manager, a sound engineer, a club promoter - and a few musicians. Also in attendance will be MT Editor Nigel Lord, who'll be taking part as a member of the panel in the debate scheduled for late afternoon.

Obviously an event no right-thinking individual could afford to miss, tickets are £35 for the full day's events and the evening bash 'Life On Planet Groove' (Manchester's well-established jazz-funk night). Concessions - at the drastically reduced price of £5 per day - are also available. For further information contact: Anni Whiteley, Conference Co-ordinator, Centre for Media, Performance & Communications, (Contact Details).

Cyberseed setback

With just days to go, the cyberpunk multimedia event Cyberseed (previewed in last month's 'Scanners' under the heading 'Seeding the future') unfortunately had to be postponed. It seems the venue owners suffered a crisis of confidence/period of collective insanity and suddenly decided they wanted a lot of cash upfront.

With the enthusiasm of everyone involved still intact, organiser Brian Davis is now hoping to stage the event during November. For further information, contact him on (Contact Details).

D50 classics

Sounds OK are now providing UK distribution for Sound Support's 'Classic Synthesiser Collection' for the Roland D50/550. This set of 84 sounds has been programmed to emulate old analogue synths, and uses only 'analogue' waveforms.

The Collection is available on Atari, Mac and PC downloader disks, priced at £28 plus £1 p&p including VAT.

Sounds OK also distribute the Metra Sound range of sound cards, sample disks and sample CDs.

For more information, contact Sounds OK on (Contact Details).

The end of DAT?

Could compact discs replace DAT tapes as the standard medium for onstage playback of pre-recorded material? As CD-R machines - and with them the cost of CD-R pressing services - steadily become more affordable, so the attraction of pressing up a limited run of CDs increases. At the same time, DAT machines are retreating into the niche pro market, with attendant price hikes, while CD players are, and will remain, inexpensive mass-market units - easily bought, easily replaced.

CDs become even more attractive once you realise they come ready-stamped with timecode which is transmitted via the digital outs on a CD player. With the addition of a suitable reader/convertor, you could slave a MIDI sequencer to compact disc - and run your MIDI music, mix and lighting sequences in sync with music on CD.

Cue the CDTC Timecode Reader/Generator from Dimension Audio. This 1U 19" rackmount unit will convert the CD timecode, which is accurate to 1/75th of a second, to all SMPTE/EBU formats and to MIDI Time Code - giving the crucial timing reference for MIDI sequencers with MTC read capability. Add a CD player with a coaxial S/P-DIF digital output (not an optical out) and you'll be up and running. Well, maybe. The suitability of CD players for onstage use has to be questioned - what about the possible problems of vibrations and knocks, for instance?

The CDTC doesn't come cheap, but there again for playback purposes the combined cost of a CD player and a CDTC unit compares very favourably to that of a timecode DAT machine. Price: £1495 excluding VAT.

For more information, contact distributors DTL Broadcast Ltd at (Contact Details).

Scoring with Sibelius

Sibelius 7 is a new notation program for the Acorn Archimedes and Ax000 ranges which, claim its developers Sibelius Software, is unique in being an 'expert system': it has been taught hundreds of rules and conventions of music engraving, and constantly applies them to the music "so anyone can produce professional results without any specialist knowledge."

Developed and marketed by two composers, twin brothers Jonathan and Benn Finn, Sibelius 7 costs a not inconsiderable £795 including VAT (£499 for educational users) and is available now. For further information, contact Sibelius Software at (Contact Details).

Kurzweil meet the PC

PC music add-ons have long been looked down on by musicians as mere hobbyist fodder; however, a new generation of PC products emerging now could well ring the changes. Two new add-ons available from PC music specialists Digital Music exemplify this brave new world - one coming from the synthesis side, the other from the digital audio recording side.

Summit K2K is a compact module designed around the Kurzweil K2000 wavetable synthesis technology - and it costs just £399 including VAT! Jointly developed by AVM Technology and Young Chang/Kurzweil, its features include 6Mb of compressed wavetable sample ROM, over 300 CD-quality sampled sounds, 32-note polyphony, 16-part multitimbrality, 48 onboard effects algorithms, 18-bit DACs, amplitude and pan control for each voice, and compatibility with the General MIDI spec. Roland MT32 and Kurzweil SuperOrchestral patch maps are also supported.

Essentially, then, it seems that the K2K is a multitimbral playback module which utilises K2000 samples. That makes it of interest to more than just PC users, and it seems that the module can be utilised in a more general MIDI setting.

On the digital recording front, Digital Music have also been appointed exclusive EEC/European distributor for the Audio Canvas XA-16 Digital Audio Processor from Promedia Technologies, USA. This full-length add-in card for the PC can record directly to disk with 16-bit resolution at up to 48kHz sample-rate per channel, and play back stereo audio off disk. It utilises a Texas Instruments DSP chip and Crystal Semiconductors codecs (compressors/decompressors), and delivers a frequency response of 20Hz-20kHz, a signal/noise ratio of greater than 85db and a total harmonic distortion of less than 0.05%.

Audio Canvas comes packaged with a 4-channel software mixer and the Voyetra WinDAT editing software, and is available for a price of £495 including VAT.

UK and EEC/European dealer enquiries welcomed for both products.

For more details, contact Digital Music at (Contact Details).

CD-interactive music

Philips Interactive Media and record label Rhythm King have joined forces to produce The Worlds of..., the first interactive music title to make use of Philips' CD-i Digital Video technology, which allows up to 74 minutes of digitised video to be stored on a single CD.

Five Rhythm King acts are immortalised on the new title: CNN, Heaven West XI, Ugly, Sultans of Ping, and ©. The interactive aspect of the disc is based on a mix of music, film, fantasy and talk; more specifically, you can, for example, remix a CNN track using the 'mixer' at the bottom of the screen, cut up and randomise ©'s lyrics, and dip into interviews with members of Heaven West XI. Most bizarrely, with Sultans of Ping you are set the task of navigating your way through the tunnels of the Tokyo underground to a secret location where the band is interviewed by Radio 1's Mark Goodier!

Priced at £15.99, The Worlds of... is set for November release and will be among a series of CD-i Autumn releases to feature Digital Video.

Digital Video is available as a £150 add-on cartridge which fits into the CD-i player; the company's entry-level CD-i model is the £399 CDI210.

For more information contact Philips Interactive Media, (Contact Details).

Now's the time

From Friday 5th November to Saturday 4th December, the city of Nottingham will be playing host to NOW '93, an Ambitious arts festival currently in its fifth year, which is being programmed and presented by Contemporary Archives and sponsored by Becks.

NOW '93 aims to combine "new technologies, club culture, music, theatre, dance, video, film and visual art operating at the cutting edge of Britain's cultural industry", with particular emphasis being placed this year on showcasing exciting developments in video and mixed-media art forms.

One of the festival's highlights will be Rhythms of the Globe, a continuous 36-hour multimedia event billed as "a post-rave culture artwork that maps out new possibilities for the arts for years to come". Taking place in a disused railway station from 12 noon on Friday 3rd December till 12 midnight on Saturday 4th, this combination of dance performance, installation, gig and party will provide a "virtual environment" of projected computer and video images and a soundtrack created live by percussionists from around the world alongside DJs (including Nottingham's own DIY sound system) and sound sculptures. The music and visuals will be accompanied by a dance performance choreographed by Julie Hood from Michael Clarke's dance company.

Meanwhile, in another area of the building, advertising images from Prague, Johannesburg, San Francisco, Lisbon, Minsk, Harare and other global locations will be received live via an international computer network and processed and displayed in a collage which will evolve over the 36 hours of the event.

The venue is the Low Level Station, London Road, Nottingham, and admission will be £5.50 (£3.50 concessions) on the door only - except for the peak period of 10pm to 2am, for which advance tickets are available.

On a related note, there will also be a workshop weekend featuring dance, percussion, DJ skills and video technology at some point during the festival (contact the NOW '93 box office for further details - see below). Also potentially of interest to MT readers is Future Realities, one in a series of Monday lunchtime 'discussion events'; taking place on 8th November, this will consider what effect new technologies such as virtual reality, electronic imaging and communications networks will have on our concept of theatre.

For further information, write to: (Contact Details), or (Contact Details).

Where console meets workstation...

In the fast-moving and increasingly global world of hi-tech business, where rapidly-evolving computer and communications technologies are constantly upsetting the balance of power, companies who want to stay (ahead) in the game are having to forge strategic alliances. Witness, for instance, the PowerPC alliance between erstwhile arch rivals Apple and IBM.

The latest example of alliance fever is a joint venture between console giants Nintendo and high-end graphics workstation company Silicon Graphics; this will see high-powered graphics hardware from the latter used to generate 3D worlds in a Nintendo console scheduled for release in 1995. Nintendo get specialised graphics technology without the cost in time and yen of having to develop their own, while Silicon Graphics will earn royalties on sales of the console. Smart, eh?

1.3 x Akai 3000

The introduction of v1.3 software for Akai's 3000 series samplers brings a number of new features to the range - many implemented as a direct result of suggestions made by users. Key new features are as follows: Disk mode now includes new Find and Tag functions for easier file access, while Edit Sample mode adds a new Cut function for automatic trimming of samples and a new Quality control which allows you to achieve higher-quality resampling at low bandwidths. Edit Program mode adds new 'analogue-style' LFO features such as a Random waveform and a Retrigger function.

V1.3 software for the CD3000 has some special additions: a new Auto Pause function automatically Pauses the CD each time the CD3000 finishes sampling, while a new Auto Naming function automatically creates new names for successive samples.

The new software is available free on disk. All you have to do is send a blank S3000-formatted disk (stating which sampler you own) to: Toni Rutherford, Akai UK Ltd, (Contact Details).

Roland throw down the Gauntlet

Roland UK have announced a new competition designed to encourage the use of General MIDI by musicians, keyboard players and computer music enthusiasts. The Roland Sound Challenge competition, as it is known, will net the lucky winner £2000 worth of Roland products, of his or her choice.

So what do you have to do to be in with a chance of winning? Simply, submit a piece of music, no more than 5 minutes in length, as a sequencer file or a Standard MIDI File on 3.5" floppy disk. The music must be recorded using a GM/GS sound source; this needn't be a Roland instrument, but it's worth bearing in mind that song entries will be judged by Roland UK using an SC7 sound module to play back each sequencer file on.

There are two categories to choose from: Original (ie. best original piece of music) and Arranged (best arrangement of a well-known piece of music). The ultimate winner will be chosen from one of these categories, while three runners-up will each receive a pair of new Roland MA-20 self-powered speakers.

Entries must be submitted by 14th January 1994, marked 'Roland Sound Challenge'.

For an official entry form and more details regarding allowable sequencer file formats and the information you must supply on your disk in order to qualify for entry, contact Roland (UK) Ltd at (Contact Details).