PreSonus has just announced the release of a brand new FireStudio Driver (version 3.3) for the FireStudio 26×26 FireWire recording system (PC or Mac). A partial list of the new features include:
- Expanded Mix Mode – Replaces DAW returns 11-18 with ADAT 2 1-8 for a total of 26 inputs in all nine stereo mixers.
- Quick route to monitors – Direct routing to monitors and phones from the mixer page.
- Auto route to monitors – Auto routes currently selected Mix tab to the user choice of monitors or headphones.
- Phase alignment when locking to external clocks has been further improved (Windows systems).
- Improved ASIO performance, particularly on multi-core PC systems.
- ASIO streaming performance on Windows Vista has been improved.
- The operation mode settings available on Mac OS X have been updated to match the settings available on Windows. On both platforms there are four modes available: Normal and Safe Mode Levels 1 to 3.
- OS X Driver Installer modified to install without reboot.
If you are a Sibelius user, you’ll want to upgrade to Sibelius version 5.25. There’s a long list of fixes and enhancements in this version, and here are just a few of them:
- It is now possible to delete multiple user-defined text styles in a single operation.
- New Notebook (laptop) features keyboard shortcut set for recent model MacBook and MacBook Pro computers, which do not have an embedded keypad.
- You can now shift-click on the device and sound menus in an expanded staff strip in the Mixer to reset the device or sound for all staves in the score by choosing (Auto) from the menu.
- When using Kontakt Player 2 for playback and inputting very short notes in step-time, notes played as they are input would hang; this problem has now been fixed.
- When using Sibelius Sounds Essentials for playback, some General MIDI sounds would not play back during input until after you had played back the score at least once; this problem has been fixed.
- When Play notes as you edit is switched on, Sibelius will always play the appropriate sound when a note is input or selected, even if the staff to which the note belongs is muted in the Mixer.