The Clavia booth showcased the new Nord C1 combo organ (the product says C3, but they’re changing it to C1), featuring two sets of digital drawbars for the keys and a third one for bass pedals—in this case a Roland PK-7A connected via MIDI. Emulations include the B3, Vox Continental, and Farfisa, which are based […]

Tascam showed a FireWire interface developed with Frontier Design Group that combines a 24/192 stereo audio interface with MIDI I/O in a streamlined design that also features transport buttons and 8 short cut keys (plus a shift key). In the crowded field of stereo interfaces, the FireOne’s added control and ergonomics may provide a welcome […]

Want signs the music tech blogosphere is happening? How about a blog devoted to nothing other than the EMS Synthi, the classic, portable analog modular synth from the 70s used by the likes of Eno and Fripp? Pin writes to tell us of his new creation, which already has patches, specs, and sounds for the […]

Waldorf’s Zarenbourg electric piano was on display at their NAMM booth. Beholding its grand, future-retro design, you’ll immediately wonder: are there tines and pickups under the Zarenbourg’s hood, or a digital sound engine? The answer, alas, is the latter, which will be appreciated by keyboardists who value the ability to use multiple built-in sounds and […]

Why should you get excited about Nexsyn, the hybrid soft synth/sample player available starting today from KeyToSound that was developed by Max Groenlund, creator of the Studio 9000 for Koblo? While I could ramble on about Nexsyn’s true stereo signal path, its 4 Gig Big Fish Audio sample library, its ability to load a 400MB […]

In this case it was “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” as the folks at Moog backed up their promise of ANOTHER DIMENSION with an intimate solo theremin performance. A sizable crowd enjoyed this breath of fresh air in a convention jam packed with high energy live gigs. Ed.: Moog Music has an incredible group […]

It’s been pretty quiet at winter NAMM as far as the major DAWs; Mackie released Tracktion 3 but the larger players either just released major updates (Cubase SX 4, DP 5, SONAR 6, Live 6, and the Pro Tools 7.x updates) or have yet to upgrade (ahem, Logic 8, anyone?). That didn’t stop Cakewalk from […]

If you really like the idea of creating your own Logic EXS24 sample patches but end up not because it’s really, really a pain in the ass, you will love Keymap from Redmatica. The demo I saw took a single audio file of half a dozen instrument samples at different pitches, then automatically sliced them […]