BitHeadz Announces Support for Apple Dual Processor

BitHeadz, Inc. is proud to announce support for Apple's new dual processor Power Mac G4 computers. This added support will enable the award-winning Retro AS-1 Analog Synthesizer and Unity DS-1 Digital Sampler to effectively double their performance capacity and achieve unprecedented levels of power and integration.

"The ability to offload all synthesis and sampling tasks to the secondary processor is a huge leap forward," says BitHeadz CEO Steve O'Connell. "By freeing up the host processor, we make more room for today's powerful sequencers to accommodate extra audio tracks, plug-ins, and software instruments," notes O'Connell. "We believe this is a milestone in the evolution of the computer-based virtual studio."

Not only will the new versions of Retro and Unity allow for increased performance from host applications, they will also double their maximum number of simultaneous voices. Retro AS-1 will achieve up to 128 stereo voices, while polyphony for Unity DS-1 will increase to 256 stereo voices, the most of any commercial sampler.

"With the development of the G4 Altivec engine and now the dual processor, Apple has given us technology that has quadrupled the polyphony that we we're seeing on last year's G3 computers," says Director of Sales for BitHeadz, Earl Sondreal. "Our software will continue to take advantage of Apple's latest innovations in computer hardware, adding more value to BitHeadz products, and leveraging the Macintosh platform for digital music creation."

Dual processor support will be included in version 2.1 of the Retro AS-1 Analog Synthesizer and the Unity DS-1 Digital Sampler. The updates are free and are expected to become available at the end of the Q3, 2000.