Native Instruments, the German music powerhouse, is now readying Komplete 6 and Guitar Rig 4 for debut this Fall. The Komplete 6 announcement should hit any day now with Guitar Rig 4 to follow.

Native Instruments is not one to sit back on their heels when it comes to holding onto their dominance in a particular category and it appears, from the rumors we’re hearing as of late, that they want to keep their lead in the computer-based guitar effects realm. With increased competition coming from all angles, NI obviously wants to stay ahead of the pack. Each one of the Guitar Rig updates has been a huge improvement over the prior version, so expect something special.

When NI dropped the price of Komplete 5 over the Summer, it didn’t take much of genius to figure out that a new version was on the horizon. Now comes word that the new Komplete 6 will hit shelves sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Looks like our intel was spot on yesterday: Native Instruments has officially announced Guitar Rig 4 Pro, the next generation of its excellent, computer-based guitar effects action. The fourth version features advanced new speaker emulation technology, and further expands on many other of the product’s attributes.

Guitar Rig 4 Pro introduces advanced cabinet and microphone modeling, providing an enhanced organic tone based on latency-free convolution technology. The advanced speaker emulation is also the basis for the versatile new “Control Room” module, developed in collaboration with leading German studio guitarist and recording expert Peter Weihe. This new module allows users to freely mix and match up to eight phase-aligned studio microphones for each cabinet, allowing an unlimited range of high-end studio recording tones.

To further expand its comprehensive arsenal of carefully modeled amplifiers, Guitar Rig 4 Pro offers two additional tube amp models that include the hot-rodded “Hot Plex” and the energetic “Jump”, both based on Native Instruments’ sophisticated Dynamic Tube Response technology.

The comprehensive arsenal of effects in Guitar Rig 4 Pro is complemented with two new delay units and two new flavors of reverb, bringing the overall number of included effects to 48.

Musicians who use Guitar Rig for live performance benefit from the new, dedicated master effects section, which enables popular stage configurations that can now include global equalizers as well as overlapping delays and reverbs. For recording purposes, Guitar Rig 4 Pro also introduces true-stereo processing across the whole signal chain, which greatly accommodates the usage of the software as a universal effect unit for stereo signals.

Serato, the New Zealand concern, has announced the sequel to ITCH, dubbed, wait for it, wait for it, ITCH 2. The second generation software introduces modular

components, effects, and indicates a new road map for the digital mixing software.

With ITCH 2, and Vestax officially announcing the VFX-1, Serato is now set to finally bring effects to their DJ software. The Vestax VFX-1 has a powerful range of effects that are hosted within Serato ITCH 2.0, and will be the very first product that will showcase Serato DJ effects. (Note: Serato has not announced exactly what effects will be available —Ed.)

The Vestax VFX-1 is styled to match the popular Vestax VCI-300 but will also work with other ITCH DJ controllers. “The focus of the ITCH project has been the development of future DJ controllers. The second generation ITCH components allow for a more customizable setup for professional DJs. They also compliment the current all-in- one ITCH hardware for those wanting a more advanced DJ rig, “ stated Serato’s Sam Gribben.