Gadget sites usually stay away from pro audio, but a no-compromise, three-display, $11,000+ Core 2 Extreme BTO PC from Altium can apparently get even Engadget’s blood pumping. Maybe they need a bigger machine to edit podcasts? Since we prefer cheap thrills here, look instead to Dan Nigrin’s just-released Major Malfunction plug-in for Ableton Live. (Mac/Universal, $10) Watch for the CDM review next week, and after that, maybe my own attempts to build Pluggo plug-ins in Max/MSP. Also on the software watch: SynthMaster is a new semi-modular plug-in for Windows.