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Roland’s new E-X50 arranger keyboard is built for entertaining, whether you are at home or on stage.

Roland today introduced their new E-X50. Described by Roland as both an arranger and entertainment keyboard, the new E-X50 could be just the thing to put the fun back into your playing and performing. It is designed to be used both in the home and on stage and, as well as a range of “high-quality sounds,” also includes accompaniment features, a mic input and Bluetooth audio.

The E-X50 has a built-in stereo speaker system, so you’re good to start beguiling your audience without any other gear. Roland says that it’s includes its premium acoustic pianos into the instrument, and electric pianos, organs, guitars, orchestral instruments, synths and more.

The auto-accompaniment features enable you to control them with your left hand while playing melodies with your right, in the traditional way. There are 300 preset styles that cover rock, pop, jazz, ballads, dance music and other genres.

In addition, you have some flexibility with these accompaniments, as well. For beginners, Auto Bass Chord mode enables you to control your arrangements with one or two fingers. Whole mode is designed for more advanced players, and lets you play full left-hand chords.

If you want to sing along, you can apply effects to the mic input, while stereo outputs enable you to connect the E-X50 to an external audio system if you need more power. USB ports enable computer connectivity and flash drive support so that you back up sound setups and recordings.

If the pre-loaded styles are not what you want, you can add and upload your own to the E-X50 via the Style Converter software or download new ones from Roland Cloud. Additionally, Scales, tuning and other parameters can be adjusted.

The E-X50 Arranger keyboard available priced at $499.99. Find out more on the Roland website.

Is it time to take another look at the classic loop-based DAW

ACID Pro is often viewed as one of the precursors of Ableton Live. However, Magix Acid Pro DAW is still very much  in its own right. In fact, it’s just been updated to version 11. Now with Brainworx plugins and MIDI triggering of chopped-up samples.

It is still one of the easiest options if you want to sequence multiple audio loops of differing tempi and pitches, Acid Pro 11 comes with a whole bunch of plugins from Brainworx, including mixing and mastering effects, a vintage-style synth and an automatic tuner. The Morph Pads multi-effect, meanwhile, offers an XY pad for creative sound design.

In addition, there are more Acidized loops, as well, plus an app store that enables you to buy more. Plus, Acid’s Chopper now supports MIDI control, so sample slices can be triggered from your hardware.

It runs on PC and is optimised for Windows 11.

Acid Pro 11 is available on subscription ($8/£6 a month) or in Producer ($199/£149) and Suite ($299/£237) bundles.

Find out more and download a demo on the Magix website.

Developer Sean Costello has released Valhalla Supermassive 2.0, a free update to the free über-effect.

Valhalla Supermassive Version 2.0 features two new modes that specialize in reverberant echoes – i.e., echoes with some reverb.

What Sean Costello say about Supermassive 2.0:

Valhalla Supermassive is 2 years old, and to mark the occasion, we’re releasing the 2.0.0 Supermassive update with two new reverb modes, Aquarius and Pisces.

Aquarius and Pisces are both modified feedback delay networks in a topology I’m calling “EchoVerb.” These algorithms have a strong audible echo, which directly corresponds to the displayed Delay time.

By modifying WARP, FEEDBACK, and DENSITY, Aquarius and Pisces can be used for standard delays, delays with reverb mixed in, reverb with a strong pre-delay, or weird and wild echo sounds.

Example of Aquarius in action:

A sound example for Pisces:

Valhalla Supermassive 2.0 is available now as a free download.