BEN CROSSLAND: ...and then to edit the sounds, you just use the edit button and the same buttons. So if you want to edit oscillator 1, you go straight there and edit oscillator 1. And what we've done is made it context-sensitive, and we've carefully chosen three parameters per menu that will do something relevant to the sound. In this case you can see it says, "easy, form, and complex oscillator 1," and what that means is that it's easy mode editing. So, you've just got the three parameters visible but there are parameters which are selected for the form and complex oscillator, so that they're relevant because otherwise you could be tweaking something that doesn't do anything to the sound. And in oscillator 2, this is a wavetable oscillator so now you got index and the interpolation. FM amount is pretty much always there on the third knob. Filters, you've got there the filter 2 offset, the saturation mode, and the saturation amount. Yeah, that's [SOUNDS LIKE] saturation, so we got three really relevant parameters in each easy menu. But the nice thing is that we're not restricting you to just editing those. We put them at the front so you can get straight into doing something useful, but if you want to go in deep for the editing, you hold the shift button down and press the same menu, and then you've got the full parameter set available to you. As soon as you want to go back to easy mode again, you just press the button and it's beack to easy mode. If you want to change that globally, if you always want to be in expert mode, you can do that. You can set that in the configuration menu. But this just makes it really immediate and top tidy.

BILL HOLLAND: Yeah, I know. Very easy to access everything and it's really clean for a desktop. I mean you hook a controller up to that and you're set.

BEN CROSSLAND: We've got quite a few new sound sets in here. Many of the ROM sounds are a kind of a "best of", the ones that were in the Virus TI already, but we've had some new sound sets given to us recently. We've got some from Richard Devine, Dean Coleman, Numb, [PH] Andi Vax, and myself; I've put a few new sounds in there too. And so, there's some fresh sounds out. So, we've got in first two banks some trance/techno, sort of minimalist kind of electro sounds as well in there. In banks three and four, we've got German bass and industrial sounds. Banks five and six sort of classic emulations and there's kind of "dinosaur" sounds as we call them, and then in banks seven and eight kind of experimental, some film scoring, some sound effect kind of stuff.

BILL HOLLAND: Awesome!

BEN CROSSLAND: But we're going to look -- supply an application which I calle the Control Center which is going to allow you to flash to ROM. So, if you don't like any of those, you'll be welcome to get rid of them and put your own patches in there or any of the ones that are available from the Access site for free, and yeah, that's it on the patch site I guess

In terms of the hardware, we've got audio inputs, which of course is crucial if you want to use things like the new Atomizer effect which will -- I think will ship with that but it will be available hopefully very soon after it ships. We just are going to make sure it's all right before we stick it in. And we've got MIDI In and Out. We've got -- I talked about the USB already, haven't I?

BILL HOLLAND: Yes.

BEN CROSSLAND: The thing is about the three USB and the one analog audio, and because it is a four-part machine, you can actually route all four parts discretely in stereo for you to get the whole mix, so yeah.

BILL HOLLAND: Cool!

BEN CROSSLAND:

We feel that's a pretty useful product, you know. We have kind of stripped it down in ways which hopefully won't affect people too much. If you just want something you can stick in -- anyway, it has got a custom bag with it as well. Look, that's [OVERLAPPING]...

BILL HOLLAND: Oh nice.

BEN CROSSLAND: ...that's all of them, so you can just stick it in with your laptop....

BILL HOLLAND: It's perfect for playing out.

BEN CROSSLAND: Absolutely. Yeah. We're hoping that especially with the Atomizer, the effects and stuff, it's gonna be quite appealing to DJs as well and [OVERLAPPING]

BILL HOLLAND: Well, that's what immediately what I saw when I -- It's a great little module if you need something easy to carry around and it's powerful, so.

BEN CROSSLAND: And not to mention beautiful [LAUGHS].

BILL HOLLAND: Well, it looks fantastic. I mean yeah.

BEN CROSSLAND: It's a thing of beauty to be sure of in here.

BILL HOLLAND: Alright. Well Ben, thank you so much again.

BEN CROSSLAND: Okay. You're welcome.

BILL HOLLAND: I appreciate it, and we'll be back with more on Gearwire.Com from Winter NAMM 2008. I'm Bill Holland.