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Today, Native Instruments announced Traktor Pro 4, a major update to their flagship 4-deck DJ software that adds flexible beatgrids, high-quality stem separation, Ozone Maximizer, and Pattern Player.

Official video intro:

New in Traktor Pro 4:

• Stem Separation powered by AI and RX – Precisely isolate and manipulate drums, bass, instruments, and vocals individually.
• Flexible Beatgrids – Traktor Pro 4’s beatgrids are ideal for moving between genres or mixing tracks with a changing tempo. With flexible beatgrids you can precisely follow each tempo change throughout a track, enabling highly accurate looping, beat jumps, beat effect layering, and beat alignment—all without impacting the audio quality.
• Pattern Player – Bring the sounds of iconic drum machines and leading producers to your sets.
• Ozone Maximizer – Ozone Maximizer utilizes technology from iZotope’s award-winning Ozone mastering software. Its Intelligent Release Control allows you to finally boost the loudness of your sets without distortion.

Features:

• Core functions
  • Complete control over up to four decks in Track, Stem, and Remix Mode
  • Highly reliable Sync to keep everything sounding on point
  • [New] Advanced flexible beatgrids for precise effects, looping, navigation and mixing between tracks with changing tempo
  • [New] Ozone Maximizer with iZotope’s award-winning technology to boost loudness while preserving transients and dynamics
  • Mix recorder to record your sets
  • A range of EQs and filters modeled on industry-standard mixers
  • Key detection and shifting feature for harmonic mixing
  • Smart Playlists for efficient library organization
  • [New] Two free months of Beatport Streaming Advanced or Beatsource Streaming
• Creative tools
  • 40+ studio-grade Native Instruments effects to transform your tracks, available in four chainable Deck FX slots
  • Mixer FX for quick and easy effect layering
  • [New] High-quality stem separation powered by iZotope’s pro-grade RX technology, including four-track waveform display
  • [New] Pattern Player packed with drum patterns from iconic drum machines and the signature sounds of leading producers
  • Additional free remix sets available to download
  • Reliable looping, hot cues and beatjump functions, plus high-quality timestretch algorithm
  • Remix decks for adding samples and effects and triggering them in sync with the rest of the mix
• Integration and compatibility
  • Best-in-class timecode vinyl tracking
  • Plug-and-play support for CDJs and most club mixers
  • Ableton Link and MIDI clock support for seamless integration with hybrid performance setups
  • Deep MIDI mapping for personalized mapping of any compatible hardware and software
  • Compatible with all Traktor hardware and mappable with any DJ hardware
  • Supported audio formats: MP3, WAV, AIFF, Audio CD, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, non-DRM AAC

  

Introducing Flexible Beat Grids in Traktor Pro:

Introducing Stem Separation in Traktor Pro 4:

Introducing Ozone Maximizer in Traktor Pro 4:

Introducing Pattern Player in Traktor Pro 4:

Tractor Pro 4 is available with the following pricing:

• Traktor Pro 4: $149 / €149
• Traktor Pro 4 upgrade from Traktor Pro 3 (50% off): $74.50 / €74.50

Void & Vista have introduced Folds, a new virtual instrument for Kontakt Player that’s based on the human voice.

Folds combines evocative performances by male and female vocalists; processed, designed and re-synthesised multi-layered vocals for other worldly textures; and basic waveforms and noise, to provide a rich set of options for sound design.

It’s built for Native Instruments free Kontakt Player, and is compatible with all major DAWs, including Ableton Live, Logic and Garage Band, ProTools, Cubase, Bitwig and others.

Features:

• Over 300 snapshots
• 5gb samples
• 32 Sound Sources
• 2 layer sound design engine
• User impulse response import
• NKS 2 / Kontakt Player Compatible
• VST, AAX & AU
• Kontakt 7.7.0 or higher
• macOS 11 or above
• Natively compatible w/ Apple Silicon
• Windows 10 & 11
• Download & install via Native Access

Folds Walkthrough Video:

Folds is available for $132.80 with discount code FOLDSLAUNCH20 through May 8th (normally $167).

Native Instruments’ Pro-53 synth returns for free as Pro-54, but only in your web browser.

Much to fans’ disappointment, Pro-53 was one of a long list of products that Native Instruments discontinued in 2020, but those who’ve been hoping that this Prophet-5 synth emulation plugin might return have new hope thanks to the release of Pro-54.

The good news is that this is free and open-source but, at the moment, you can only use it in your web browser.

This new port is programmed in Cmajor, a language that’s designed “for writing fast, portable audio software”. The Cmajor project was started in 2021 by Julian Storer and Cesare Ferrari in collaboration with Native Instruments. NI has been using it in its “production code” since 2023.

Storer has serious pedigree in the music software industry, having previously created both the Tracktion DAW and JUCE, a cross-platform audio app development framework. Cesare Ferrari previously worked at ROLI.

Together, the two men founded Sound Stacks, a company that fell under the Soundwide umbrella brand that has since been replaced with the Native Instruments name. Their brief here was to “drive development of new audio platform technologies for improving productivity and performance for developers” but it seems that the two are now focusing on their Cmajor endeavours.

Apparently, Pro-54 has been created with NI’s blessing, though; it’s a direct port of a “never-released” internal C++ port of the original synth, and has a GUI that was recreated in HTML/javascript using “mostly salvaged low-res bitmaps for that authentically vintage feel”.

For fans of the 2002 original – and anyone who loves the juicy sound of the Prophet-5 – it’s fun to be able to play it again in your browser, and programming types can check out the source code, as well.

Will we ever see a Pro-54 plugin, though? The Cmajor homepage says that any Cmajor ‘patch’ (of which the Pro-54 is an example) can be converted to a native C++ JUCE project and then compiled into any audio plugin format you like, so a VST/AU/AAX version is technically possible.

We’re told that native support for Cmajor patches themselves could soon be coming to a DAW near you. Tracktion Waveform is confirmed to be getting this soon, and Storer and Ferrari hope that others will follow in due course.

For now, though, you can play the Pro-54 for free on the Cmajor website. Other patch examples on there include an electric piano, an 808 and the CompuFart.