More is more? Now, you can show up at your next gig armed with a box full of pots – 68 of them. Faderfox is a controller maker who works in extremes: either extremely tiny controllers, or massive cases full of faders and knobs. The PC44 is very much in the latter category. The PC44’s […]

It makes things look prettier, with something called “physically based rendering.” It has crazy compositing and capture powers. It’s networked with Web support, talks to DMX gear, and intelligently handles all your MIDI gadgets and capture cards and everything else. It handles VR with HTC Vive. And that’s just a few examples of what is […]

Softube’s Console 1 was an intriguing offering when it came out, but I suspect some people balked at the price – and simply didn’t know what it was or what it was for. Now, at five hundred bucks, the audience should be bigger. And Softube are working on making the “what is this anyway?” story […]

How much time do producers spend just handling one or two inputs and stereo output (plus monitoring)? My guess is — a lot. Once you’re out of the studio, that amount goes up. But generally speaking, premium interfaces have tended to assume you need more I/O – even though a lot of electronic production now […]

Music can still have something to say. Not just a hackneyed protest song or music that wears politics like dress-up, but – something to tell you. When it hits you, you can sometimes feel a bit weak in the knees. That was the impact for me of Mary Ocher’s new album, two tracks of which […]

Wait… I don’t think I’ve ever basically said everything I needed to say in a story right in the headline before, but… yeah. This is a control-for-control 808 clone in Eurorack. And for anyone disappointed that Roland didn’t do a TR-08 Boutique Series at NAMM, here’s one that is probably exactly as analog fans would […]

There’s barely a performance medium that Robin Fox hasn’t touched, not a form with which he hasn’t moved us. From laser AV spectacles to exhibitions to work with contemporary dance (including the wonderful Chunky Move), this Australian artist is the kind of multi-faceted mind we adore. And so we sent Anahit Mantarlian for a marathon […]

Muscovite sound artist slash mad scientist vtol (aka Dmitry Morozov) has been at it yet again. This time, inspiration struck when his iPod earbuds tangled. (Good thing he hadn’t upgraded to wireless!) And the result was a new visual interface for music, embodied as kinetic sculpture. Volnovod, sounding for all the world like a long […]

Perhaps the most unexpected product news this month is Roland’s unveiling of RolandCloud. It’s a subscription service from the hardware maker, the biggest component of which is providing access to a range of software plug-ins. Roland, while one of biggest names ever in hardware and synthesizers, is still a relative newcomer to software. But their […]

There is absolutely nothing like the feeling you feel when you hear the sound of a synthesizer. Listen. “Hi, we’re at the 2017 NAMM show in Anaheim California, and I’m here with –” Wait. No. That is definitely not why I love synthesizers. Nor am I particularly enamored with the hum of a convention show […]