An update comes to us from the Xentronix camp (thanks for the e-mail Frans). First, they have a new Refraction screenshot, showing their latest Beta available for download. You can view a larger image by clicking on the thumbnail at the frontpage, or, since i'm such a nice guy, just click here.

Second, big news about Sample Studio, Xentronix's (very) good audio app. If you remember correctly, Sample Studio was open sourced recently. Why? Several reasons: lack of BeOS support by other companies, Steinberg was being a bit of a p.o.s. about their VST support for BeOS among others. But as they state, things have changed (for the better): Zeta is close to completion (i won't tell you how close) and Steinberg is coming around and willing to release their source to VST and VSTGUI (also mentioned here recently), so Xentronix has changed their ways a bit. Read on...

"With Steinberg finaly willing to make the sources for VST and VSTGUI available to us after all, we believe this platform is viable again to continue our intended Killer Application. While not refering to SampleStudio by this, we do need this application to be available to our other planned application.

Currently, there does not seem to be anyone finishing this application, and therefore we decided to continue on the Pro version ourselves. The source of SampleStudio Basic as is available on our download page and on the BeUnited CVS server remains available, though binary releases of this should either refere to this as SampleStudio Basic or fork with a completely different name.

We have done lots of work on SampleStudio Pro already as can be seen in this recent screenshot.

This screenshot shows the currenly available support for VST plugins running side by side with our build in effects and analyzers. It runs on our newly implemented virtual memory system allowing files of gigabytes to be loaded while using only about 18Mb of native memory. Unfortunately the disk speed under BeOS is not that fast, but Zeta handles this much better.

All people who donated will receive a personal discount on the final product, up to free versions as the donations varied from $3 to $50.

Of cource, if any one is interested, we are accepting a few beta-testers for this product under NDA. To apply, you can mail to Xentronix."


As you see, big changes. Sample Studio is now forked and development will continue in the form of a Pro version. I'm sure it'll be of the hight quality that Xentronix has accustomed us to and this will make some people happy (maybe... Dane?). Stay tuned for more info as we receive it.