There are few names who have had so profound an impact on music technology as Dave Smith. Three decades after the introduction of the Prophet-5, and nearly 25 years after the first MIDI product shipped, his new creations remain some of the most sought-after musical instruments available. The new Prophet ’08 is capable of producing […]

The writing’s on the wall: DRM for music downloads is deader than the eight track. Okay, actually, that’s not fair: the eight track was relatively good technology. Just two weeks after Amazon launched their own DRM-free music store, Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon. DRM won’t be gone completely from the Zune store, but there […]

Happily, despite this image, NI is not adding Apple iTunes-inspired CoverFlow to KOMPLETE. But they are refreshing synths and effects, updating to the shiny, new Kontakt 3 sampler, Guitar Rig 3 guitar rack, and Massive synth, and cutting the price. Lost in the shuffle: vocoding and spectral delays. Native Instruments remains the unchallenged heavyweight of […]

There’s something to be said for making connections in hardware studios: if you’ve got the cables, you can make it happen. In the world of the computer, it’s another story. The vision of Jack is to make routing audio between software as flexible. As the creators put it: Have you ever wanted to take the […]

Ed.: Our friend Wallace wanders in search of truly transcendent software use, and he’s taking the leap to GURU. Expect a review soon, but here’s why we’re interested — especially with a welcome update arriving free. -PK. FXpansion has released the long-awaited Guru 1.5 update, which fixes numerous outstanding bugs and incorporates almost 100 new […]

3D goodness means getting cozy with your local graphics API — and getting ready to nerd out in a big way. OpenGL continues to progress with a major overhaul. It’s a way off, but you’ve still got lots of eye candy with OpenGL 2.1. So … if you’re not Electronic Arts or Bungie, is there […]

MOTU’s MachFive is an oft-overlooked software sampler option for both Mac and Windows. The sampler market is a crowded one, but MachFive does have some nice features, not least being a unique, one-screen interface. The sampler hasn’t quite kept pace with recent releases from Native Instruments, Cakewalk, and others, so this week’s release of version […]

Deep in Tesla’s labs, Mark Twain discovers the awesome, destructive force of Windows Sound Recorder. Be afeared, intellectual property owners!) Act now, fellow musicians — before Sound Recorder destroys music! It’s amazing how complete and total crazies can suddenly wind up with the backing of organizations powerful enough to dictate the law. Witness the strange […]

As Apple revealed in a description for a session at WWDC, OS X 10.5 includes enhanced USB and FireWire audio support. Some of that functionality is already arriving in the 10.4.10 update, which incorporates the FireWire SDK 24 and FireWire 2.1. (The SDK also includes “most” of the source for Leopard’s upcoming FireWire stack.) You […]