VOX: This is probably one of the most eagerly-awaited products, the first result of the new collaboration between Vox and Joe Satriani. It's the Vox Satchurator Distortion Pedal, and it's not only a distortion pedal, it is a tone generator built specifically using instructions supplied by Satriani to reproduce his famous tone -- big, natural, and harmonically rich. Development started more than a year ago. The pedal's main highlight is that, despite its high-gain sound, it preserves the guitar's original tone and doesn't produces unwanted noise. The pedal features gain, tone, and volume controls (with chicken-head knobs) and two footswitches: "on" and "more." BOSS: The effects company has shown two different models at Musikmesse, the Boss DD-7 Digital Delay and the Boss SL-20 Slicer. Both models are designed for guitar players but can also be used with any other instrument.The DD-7 features up to 6.4 seconds delay time, natural delay, chorus, analog, reverse and modulate sound modes, level, feedback, and delay time controls. All the controls including the tap tempo can be controlled by a external footswitch, dual inputs and outputs, recording (hold) mode that can record up to 40 seconds. The other new announcement is a twin pedal, called the SL-20 Slicer. It converts any instrument into a groove percussive sound source and features harmonic slicer, loop record, and 3-D panning functions, mono and stereo (with fixed, random, ping-pong, and auto modes) output modes, five banks with 10 patterns per bank, attack, duty, direct, and effect level controls and tap tempo controllable via footswitch. TC Electronic: These people obviously don't sleep! The company is offering a free 10-day trial on all their plug-ins for Pro Tools|HD. The demo licenses enable Pro Tools users to benchmark their current arsenal of plug-ins against full-blown, research intensive processing from TC. The line of plug-ins comprises a selection of plug-ins ported from the acclaimed System 6000 featuring VSS3 Stereo Source Reverb, DVR2 Digital Vintage Reverb, NonLin2 Stereo Effects Reverb, MD3 Stereo Mastering, and UnWrap Stereo to 5.1. It also includes the new LM5 Loudness Radar Meter, Master X3 Virtual Finalizer, Harmony4 from TC-Helicon, Softtube Vintage Amp Room, and the Tube-Tech CL 1B. The company has also announced that the LM5 Loudness Radar Meter plug-in for Pro Tools|HD is now shipping. LM5 derives statistical information from the ITU-R BS.1770 standard to display instant loudness and loudness history, thereby helping engineers to realize the dynamic range at their disposal during production, and to predict the dynamic range restriction needed during distribution to various platforms. LM5 is suitable for use in broadcast, post production, film, and music. TC-Helicon: The company announced VoiceTone Harmony-M, a new addition to the VoiceTone line of vocal harmony and effects pedals designed specifically for the performing MIDI-keyboard player. By following natural MIDI-keyboard playing, the new VoiceTone pedal enables singing keyboard players to add backup harmony singers to their performances without any tedious programming. Live engineer effects are also included, which automatically apply adaptive EQ, compression, and de-essing algorithms so the keyboard player can focus on playing, not programming. They also announced VoiceTone Harmony-G, which is a similar pedal, but in this case designed specifically for the performing guitarist. Harmony-G creates a fully produced vocal sound with dedicated doubling and reverb/delay combinations.

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