April brought us a shower of new tools, toys and announcements with which to up our music production game. Here’s half a dozen that really caught our eye…

Pro Tools 2022 Goes Fourth

Marking something of a watershed moment for Avid’s revered DAW, Pro Tools 2022.4 sees a complete reconfiguration of its tiering system and now comes in three versions. Pro Tools Artist effectively replaces Pro Tools Free (but adds a pricetag), serving as an entry point into music production for beginners, and including over 100 plugins; Pro Tools Studio is the core product that most will go for, adding Surround and Atmos mixing and functionality to the outgoing Pro Tools; and Pro Tools Flex caters to HD and HDX systems, and includes a wealth of added content and products yet to be announced. Importantly, all three are only available via monthly or annual subscriptions, with no perpetual licensing options. Controversial!

As well as that, v2022.4 also increases track counts from previous versions, adds a new keyboard shortcuts window, and goes out of its way to make itself approachable for newcomers. Find out more in our article Pro Tools 2022.4 Released - Everything You Need To Know and Pro Tools 2022.4 Bundles And Pricing Explained.

Audio Design Desk Bridge The Gap

Having unleashed the Audio Bridge extension for Final Cut Pro, enabling their media-orientated Audio Design Desk workstation to be tightly integrated with Apple’s industry standard video production platform, Audio Design Desk almost immediately followed it up with DAW Bridge, extending the same concept out to any DAW you like. Although providing a rather less deeply meshed implementation than that of Audio Bridge, this means you can now link Final Cut Pro with Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Cubase or any other MTC-capable DAW, so that timelines of both stay locked and synced (even down to the level of real-time scrubbing in Logic Pro), with shared transport control.

An obvious must-have for any musician or sound designer working on projects in FCP, DAW Bridge is out now in the Apple App Store.

Adam Bring Their A Game

Adam’s AX Series of monitors has been ubiquitous in home and professional studios around the world since its launch in 2010, but time and technology have moved on since then, and April saw the announcement of their imminent replacement with the all-new A Series.

The range comprises five models: the A4V compact two-way nearfield, A44H rack-mountable dual-woofer, A7V two-way with 7” woofer (superseding the insanely popular A7X), and A77H and flagship A8H three-way midfields. Adam’s famous X-ART ribbon tweeter is a constant, of course, and it now comes mounted in the rotatable HPS waveguide, lifted from the top-end S Series. Joining that on the feature list are an improved “long-throw” woofer design, and onboard DSP for button-operated voicing (frequency response) adjustment and software-controlled room correction, the last developed in conjunction with correction specialists Sonarworks.

The A Series will be available from summer, with prices starting at £379 (A4V) and maxing out at £1499 for the A8H.

SSL Catch The Bus+

The characteristic sound of SSL’s mixing consoles has proven divisive over the decades, but there’s no doubting the historic significance of the legendary built-in Bus Compressor that’s helped to define it. And now, perhaps having noted the staggering over-representation of that classic hardware on the software plugin emulation market, the British manufacturer have released what they describe as “the ultimate and most versatile incarnation of the Bus Compressor ever”, under the name Bus+.

As the enticingly busy dual-channel control panel makes immediately apparent, the Bus+ goes far beyond the bounds of the original Bus Compressor in its features and capabilities. As you’d expect, authentic THAT 2181 VCA-based SSL gain reduction circuitry forms the dynamics-shaping foundation, but on top of that, you also get three colouration modes (Low THD, Feedback and 4K); stereo, mono and mid/side configuration options; negative ratios and new Attack and Release settings; sidechain input and dry/wet mix control; and – most intriguingly – a 2-band dynamic analogue EQ and Transient Expander. All of this comes at quite a price, naturally (about two grand), but it certainly looks like SSL have pulled out all the stops in creating the definitive version of their iconic mixing tool. 

HitSend… Hit Send!

Getting project approval and subsequent payment out of clients has long been one of the least enjoyable aspects of working as an audio professional – but all that’s about to change, thanks to HitSend.

A web-based application three years in the making, HitSend aims to simplify and streamline the back-and-forth of the approval process, as well as taking the pain and insecurity out of invoicing, payment collection and accounting. Tracks are hosted in uncompressed WAV and AIFF file formats, and time-coded client comments can be exported as timeline markers to Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Cubase and Studio One, making collaboration far more effective than a thread of vaguely indicative emails could ever hope to be. And on the financial side of things, HitSend handles everything from downpayment collection and project paywalling, to invoice creation and currency conversion.

It’s a monthly/annual subscription service that could genuinely change your working life, and there’s a two-week trial available if you fancy trying before buying.

LiquidSonics Somehow Improve On Perfection

LiquidSonics’ Bricasti M7 emulation, Seventh Heaven, might be one of the greatest reverb plugins ever coded, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made even better, as the freshly released v1.4 manifestly demonstrates. The headline is the addition of up to 7.1.6 surround compatibility to Seventh Heaven Professional – a major endeavour that's entailed updating the Fusion-IR engines to support such multi-channel shenanigans, and the development of a powerful decorrelation processor to make the magic happen and negate fold-down issues.

Alongside that, the ducking feature added to version 1.2 of Seventh Heaven stablemate Illusion last year has been ported over, facilitating sidechain compression of the reverb tail keyed off the input signal – just the thing for decluttering reverberant vocals and drums. Oh, and the plugin is Apple Silicon-native now, too, which will be a huge deal for owners of recent Macs looking to ‘un-Rosetta’ their plugin collections.

A free update, Seventh Heaven 1.4 awaits you at the LiquidSonics website.

What new music technology gear grabbed your attention in April? Let us know in the comments.