Photo: Rob DiCaterino. Apple apparently isn’t killing the white, $999, plastic MacBook at the low end of its line any time soon. They’ve even gone so far as to update the model – and that turns out to be a very good thing for visualists who want to go Mac on a budget. Previously, you […]

Living in the digitally-connected age means a constant flow of media – but also the chance to reprocess (or even hack) it. Tim Exile (aka Exile aka Tim Shaw) is an electronic music innovator and one-man DSP laboratory. He didn’t just turn on his TV to watch today’s US Presidential Inauguration – he mashed it […]

If we want real change, we may have to push some of our own buttons. Whatever part of the political spectrum, whatever part of the world community, as you come to the CDM community I do believe that we as creators are touched by larger issues. I think it doesn’t make sense to talk politics […]

I’ve been waiting for the near-ubiquitous ExpressCard slot on laptops to see some audio goodness, so one of the more welcome announcements of NAMM is that there’s now finally an ExpressCard-enabled version of the Universal Audio platform. The UAD is a DSP platform for computers, with an emphasis on high-quality, boutique mastering and effects plug-ins, […]

Score one for “old school” on the Theremin – minus one for “old school” on the Minimoog keyboard. There’s plenty of debate about whether or not you can justify splurging on the extra cash for the Moog name on synths and effects – no one questions Moog’s quality, but there is other great boutique gear […]

While Novation was refreshing their Automap software for NAMM, M-Audio was unveiling their own dynamic controller technology, called HyperControl. M-Audio has one (big) edge on Novation: their controller technology can access ASCII keystrokes – something I’d love to have in all keyboard control editors. And HyperControl sounds like it has some promise, at least on […]

Cubase 5 includes under-the-hood improvements to performance, but many of the new features – like the unusual LoopMash loop masher upper instrument – come in the form of instrumental add-ons. LoopMash is interesting, but it’s more a bundled instrument than a truly integrated feature. The big traditional DAW announcement at this NAMM show was Steinberg’s […]

Speaking of extra heads, I recently completed a music video – Fail With Me – with collaborator Edward Guglielmino, for the album Late At Night. Edward Guglielmino – Fail With Me from Jaymis on Vimeo. A continuation of the Quick, Single-Shot philosophy I espoused and we discussed 6 months ago. I think this integration is […]

DisplayLink technology has existed for a while, and started appearing in more devices in 2008. It sounds like a very visualist-friendly concept – add extra monitors via USB – yet I haven’t seen it in action nor heard from any VJs using this hardware. The DisplayLink site proudly displays seemingly daisy-chained monitors, and touts the […]