Digital music is great, but it’s struck some notes of discord among serious music listeners. Lossy compression is reducing the quality of audio, a step backwards from the traditional CD. And if you like classical music, get ready for major headaches organizing your music. Not to mention, doesn’t anyone miss their stereo system? Enter the […]

Analog synth emulation watch continues: We’ve been waiting some time for a VST/AU Windows/Mac version of Way Out Ware’s superb ARP 2600 emulation, the TimewARP. (Currently only for RTAS/TDM, making Digidesign fans happy.) They’ve been promising it for some time; now inking a new deal with M-Audio for distribution. Now we expect it by mid-August. […]

First off, if you’re on the Mac, avoid installation of the new Finale 2006 notation software unless you’ve checked the following support information. The installer can delete a significant number of application preference files, not only Finale but other apps in your Library folder. It’s not going to make your computer blow up or anything […]

Brent, CDM’s resident game composer, is back with another look at the world of digital music in gaming. And again, gaming gives us a glimpse of what future digital music could be like — namely, permutable. (That’s a word, isn’t it?) -PK The level of interactivity in today’s game audio continues to grow and expand. […]

Usually nothing interests me less than distribution deals, but this one caught my eye. Yamaha, the only synth and instrument maker I know of that also makes jetskis, has partnered with our favorite French synth geek-gurus, Arturia. Arturia’s products, from its Moog-endorsed analog emulations to the Storm synth studio, will now be distributed here in […]

We hear a lot about studios in software, but the “studio in a box” concept lives on. Yamaha’s new portable digital audio workstations integrate a mixing console, recording, effects, and mastering — and they hook up to USB 2.0, so Yamaha’s clearly thinking of these as companions to your computer, not replacements. You can check […]

Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog: buy a new PowerBook, Power Mac, or Xserve, and Apple will drop the price of Logic Pro from $1000 to $500. I’ve been impressed by performance on the top-end Power Mac G5 and current generation PowerBook G4, so it sounds like a good deal — if you’ve got the cash […]

Remember when people singing bad covers of rock songs was called karaoke and didn’t involve a national television audience? Oh, for those more innocent times. Now we’re subjected to one musical reality TV show after another. The latest combines The Apprentice and Survivor (same producer), with American Idol; bands compete to be the lead singer […]

Be vewy vewy qwiet — I’m hunting Widgets. Yes, widgets are all the rage these days. Between Apple’s Dashboard, included with Mac OS X Tiger, and Konfabulator, which just became free for Windows and Mac and has morphed into Yahoo! Widgets, nary a desktop shall be without little floating things. The idea isn’t entirely new […]

I asked for more truly useful music widgets, and did reader Justin Maxwell ever respond — a huge list of stuff here:BPM Widget Tap tempo and get BPM Audio Calculator BPM conversion milliseconds (as observed here previously Chord Reference Another guitar chord reference, with especially slick graphics ittyBittyMIDI My favorite of these — monitors incoming […]