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Abyss is a visual synthesizer. It promises to focus on the art rather than numbers.

There has always been a strong relationship between sound and color – music is often described as dark or bright, for example – and now Tracktion Software is offering a very literal exploration of this in the form of the Abyss synth plugin.

Offering a workflow that focuses on the art rather than numbers, this gives you many of the features you had associate with standard synths, like a filter, envelopes, LFOs and effects but, enables you to build patches using more than 2000 ‘sound colors’. And sounds are created by placing your chosen tints or shades on a central tone gradient, and you get an “arbitrary modulation” system with 13 sources and 23 destinations. More than 130 presets are included, and the UI is scalable and responsive.

With its emphasis on the visual, Abyss promises to make it easy for you to create evolving, nuanced textures, which can really come alive when you hook up an MPE-compatible controller.

Available for PC and Mac in VST/AU formats.

The Abyss is currently available for $77.40 with regular price of $129

Find out more and download a 90-day free trial on the Tracktion Software website.

Behringer says that its UB-Xa Oberheim synth clone will “blow you away”, as the design is completed and beta testing concludes.

The Behringer UB-Xa has been in development for three years and was originally intended to be a straight emulation of the OB-Xa. However, Behringer says that it has since grown into “a monster synthesizer with many more features and sound palettes”.

With Behringer now saying that the design has been completed and beta testing of the synth concluded, progress has definitely been made. But, do not expect to be able to buy it for a while, though… Behringer says that, because of global component shortages, this will still take some time.

The video gives you a taste of what you can expect from it; the next step is for the synth to be manufactured.

Avid has released Pro Tools 2021.6, a summer update for the DAW that brings the Hybrid Engine to HDX systems, adds support for M1 Macs and offers more I/O, tracks and voices.

Avid says that the 2021.6 update creates “the most powerful Pro Tools systems we’ve ever made”

The Hybrid Engine was launched alongside the Pro Tools | Carbon audio interface, and has now been brought to Pro Tools HDX systems. It is designed to let you switch between native and DSP processing on a track-by-track basis, giving you a best-of-both worlds approach and the ability to run bigger sessions more smoothly.

The Pro Tools | Ultimate now supports 2,048 voices and audio tracks at all sample rates, from 128 to 28kHz. That is five times more than the previous version. What’s more, the maximum number of I/O channels has been doubled from 32 to 64.

The standard Pro Tools, now supports a maximum of 256 mono or stereo audio tracks.

In addition, the update means that you can now run Pro Tools | First, Pro Tools, Pro Tools | Ultimate and Pro Tools | Carbon systems on M1 Macs. Other enhancements include the option to customize the dark and classic UI themes, QuickTime and file support improvements, and automatic delay compensation when sidechaining tracks.

Find out more on the Avid site.

Pro Tools 2021.6 is available to all users with an active subscription plan.