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Alesis Strata Club brings a new compact form to its best-selling range – a versatile e-drum kit with studio sound and silent practice capabilities.

Alesis has a new member of its Strata Drum electronic drum set family – the new Alesis Strata Club, all set to deliver the pro-quality performance of their Strata kits in a new Club format that’s perfect for compact spaces, be that a crowded stage or a spare bedroom.

The Strata Club is a full 7-piece kit that shares the latest tech with its bigger cousins. It’s therefore ideal as a compact kit in its own right, for use as a practice kit, or even for enhancing and expanding an acoustic kit for players looking for more variety and range.

Front and centre of the Strata Club’s eye-catching features is its 7” touchscreen drum module, as found on the Strata Core, featuring a multi-core processor bringing the kind of controllability and speed of set-up we enjoy every day on our smartphones into the world of recording gear.

That touch screen gives unrivalled, intuitive navigation, DAW-style mixing, and drum set customization, alongside six rotary dials, push encoder, transport controls, and dedicated volume knobs for different outputs.

And that extra processor power means that the Strata runs the full BFD3 sound engine, Alesis parent company InMusic having acquired BFD’s maker FXpansion in 2020.

Meaning that the Strata comes with one of the best and most expansive drum libraries around, being 25 GB in size with 144,000 individual samples across over 370 different kit pieces and 800 unique articulations, along with compressors, EQ, filters and other audio tools – all built into the Strata from day one.

And with great sounds and ease of use built in, the Strata won’t let you down on feel and playability either. Strata features high-quality mesh drum heads with adjustable tension for perfect rebound and Strata’s patented anti-hotspot sensor system for natural, expressive playing surfaces.

Key to the Club’s portability and footprint is its integrated rack system while still serving up a full 7-piece kit. This includes a 12-inch dual-zone mesh snare, a pair of 10-inch dual zone mesh toms and a 8-inch kick drum tower with a mesh head to deliver true-to-life rebound and response.

This is topped off with a 14-inch ARC triple-zone, 360° ride cymbal, a 12-inch ARC triple-zone, 360° crash cymbal and 12-inch ARC triple-zone, 360° hi-hat cymbal with Alesis’ Active Magnetic Hi-Hat Controller for extra realistic feel.

The ride and crash both incorporate ARC for 360-degree playing without dead zones, allowing players to choke cymbals by grabbing the edge just like the real thing, while the triple zones allow players to play bow, bell, and edge of all cymbals to trigger different variations on the sound.

You want even more? Go for the Strata Club Expansion Pack which adds one more 12” premium dual-zone mesh drum pad and one 16” ARC 360 triple-zone cymbal to the kit along with a new 28” crossbar and cables for easy connection to that drum module.

The new module features USB/MIDI connectivity for seamless DAW integration, owners get the full BFD Player desktop application with virtual drum expansion pack and there’s even a 90-day free subscription to drum tuition platform Drumeo incuded in as well.

“We’re proud to introduce the Strata Club, a kit designed to eliminate the compromise between space constraints and professional performance,” said John Boudreau, Director of Product Development. “We’ve engineered a solution that gives drummers and producers the authentic feel and sound they demand— without requiring dedicated space or soundproofing.”

The Alesis Strata Club is available globally includes Amazon website, starting today for $1,599 with the Expansion Pack coming in the early summer of 2025 for $349. Find out more on Alesis site.

UA expands its collection of amp modelling plugins with the UAD Woodrow ’55 Instrument Amplifier, a software version of its Woodrow ’55 pedal that recreates the vintage tones of the 1955 Fender 5E3 Tweed Deluxe.

Today, Universal Audio releases its UAFX Woodrow ’55 pedal as a plugin, putting an “American classic” in your DAW, and ‘This is the amp that defined what electric guitar sounds like.’

Closely emulating its every component via painstaking circuit analysis, Woodrow ’55 is said to authentically capture the sonic nuances of an amp beloved by everyone from Neil Young and Chuck Berry to Joe Bonamassa and Ariel Posen, delivering the “punchy cleans, rich tube-driven overdrive and natural compression” that made the original a bona fide classic.

Woodrow ’55 features a considerable assortment of modelled speaker responses and virtual mics with which to play with, along with a healthy range of artist-crafted presets that provide an easy route to imitating some of the 5E3’s most memorable moments in musical history.

“This is the amp that defined what electric guitar sounds like – from the first fuzzed-out rock records to today’s alt-country and Americana,” Universal Audio’s Lev Perrey says. “With UAD Woodrow ’55, we’ve made that iconic tone accessible to anyone producing music in the box.”

Here’s the official intro video:

UAD Woodrow ’55 is available now with intro price of $59 (regular $199). The plugin is also available as part of Universal Audio’s subscription service, along with 50+ UAD plugins. In recognition of Spark’s third birthday, the company are offering a two-year subscription for $99/year.

Acustica Audio has introduced a new software synth, Alice-9, described as a “next-generation sample-based synthesizer.”

And, would it be a soft synth introduction without some gratuitously sexy 3D renderings? The world may never know:

Alice-9 is powered by Modular Unified Synthesis Technology (MUST) – a hybrid synthesis technology that Acustica says integrates the precision of analog circuit behavior modeling with a convolution-based approach. It incorporates advanced features such as nonlinear convolution, dynamic Volterra series, and time-varying models to reproduce the complexities and nuances of analog hardware.

Features:

• Next-Generation SCO Oscillators – AL9’s Sample-Controlled Oscillators go beyond traditional sampling and wavetables, delivering dynamic, time-evolving waveforms with natural drift, modulation, and analog-like behavior.
• Enhanced MUST Engine – Powered by a refined Modular Unified Synthesis Technology (MUST), AL9 blends analog circuit modeling with convolution-based processing for exceptional realism and responsiveness.
• Hybrid Sound Architecture – Combines high-resolution sampling, analog-modeled filters, and dynamic modulation into a unified engine — bridging the gap between VCO, DCO, and sampler.
• Extensive Waveform Library – Hundreds of carefully curated sounds, from vintage analog tones to orchestral textures, including rare instruments and hybrid timbres.
• Superstereo Imaging & Aging Control – Create wide, immersive stereo fields with natural decorrelation, and add analog imperfection through adjustable aging for a vintage character.
• Advanced Modulation & Envelopes – Flexible but focused tools: intuitive LFOs, fast envelopes, key tracking, velocity sensitivity, and creative modulation paths without unnecessary complexity.
• Integrated Studio-Quality Effects – Includes Acustica-grade Chorus, Delay, Reverb, and EQ, plus a Saturator with a powerful OTT-style multiband dynamics processor for impactful, polished sound.
• Complete Performance Toolkit – Features like real-time MIDI Learn (local/global), arpeggiator, portamento, MPE functionality, modulation sliders, and visual feedback make AL9 a true instrument — not just a sound source.
• Professional Sound Design – Over 500 presets created by top-tier musicians and engineers demonstrate AL9’s full sonic palette and versatility across genres.

Alice-9 (AL9) is available now, with an intro price of €169 through May 13th, 2025 (regularly €249).