Korg has announced a major update to their highly popular Gadget music creation environment. If you're unfamiliar with Gadget, it's a self-contained music production suite consisting of over 30 virtual synthesizers based on analog classics and musical idioms, all married to a multi-track sequencer. It works identically on Macs and iOS devices (sorry, Windows users) and invites some comparison to the early days of Reason, only with Korg's unabashedly more hipster take on soft synths.
This latest update adds three new "gadgets:" two more synths and a loudness maximizer.
Lisbon: Korg describes this as a "polyphonic sci-fi synthesizer." Since the visual icon for it is a set of VR goggles, it's hard to know exactly what they mean, but audio examples are of very tasty, washy, dreamy virtual analog sounds you might hear in sci-fi movies. At least those that deal with the fate of artificial humans and have flying cars.
Vancouver: This layering melody sampler lets you put quick musical motifs together using the keyboard. It features more than 90 unique sounds including acoustic instruments, synthesizers, voices, and sound effects. You can also import your own sounds to two sample oscillators.
Dotec Audio Dee-Max: This is a straightforward one-knob (slider, actually) loudness maximizer intended for the end of your signal chain. There's a "Turbo" mode for maximum punch and a "Safe" mode to prevent things from going way over the top.
In addition, support for Native Instruments NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) has been added for macOS. NI's own plug-in format assures perfect integration with their hardware (such as Komplete Kontrol MIDI controllers and Maschine units) and provides for tag-based sound browsing and automated mapping.
The update is version 1.5 on macOS and version 3.5 on iOS, and it's discounted through November 30, 2017. You can learn more and get it here.