Add Midi support to your Game Boy
Posted: 24/06/08 12:22 PM
By: Elliott Fienberg
Rekkerd’s quick links this weeks pointed me over to a cool little product called Midify. At $35 i’d be very curious to see how it works with something like Nanoloop on my Old Grey. But could also be very useful for the plethora of applications being made for the Nintendo DS
M-Audio and its annoying quest for mobility
Posted: 11/02/08 11:38 AM
By: Elliott Fienberg
Near the end of 2007, M-Audio quietly added a new interface to their lineup, the Fast Track Ultra. It’s a USB 2.0 device and includes their Octane preamp technology in the four pres on the front panel. It looks good and I felt it was a clever addition to their line of mobile devices. Yes Firewire is nice, but it doesn’t have as wide support and reliability as USB does in my opinion. Then, at the Winter NAMM show, they unveiled some sort of super-interface called the ProFire 2626. It’s got eight Octane preamps, an onboard DSP Mixer and Router, can operate standalone, and has an array of features in the sync department. Overall it adds up to 26 in and 26 out, hence the title.
Read moreNew offerings from Akai
Posted: 22/01/08 09:11 PM
By: Elliott Fienberg
So Akai had some big announcements from this year’s namm show, most notably is the new MPC5000 and the MPD32. They also announced a new drum machine with internal sounds but we’ll leave that out in this update.
The MPC5000 is neat cause it shows that they’re willing to keep expanding on their ever so popular MPC line by adding a synth and more editing features, as well as an eight-track harddisk recorder. List is $3500 but i’ve seen $2500 reported in other places which makes no sense.
The MPD32 is interesting cause it’s acknowledging that many users are just after the MPCs for their feel and the way they sequence, so this hardware controller is offering the ability to send master clock sequences to other devices, giving the user the the freedom of the MPC without the built-in sample engine. List for this is $499 but i’ve seen reports of it going to cost $299.
I think both products are going to do well, and they’re going to be hitting both ends of the market here. The 5000 is sort of a niche market for diehard MPC users though, so I have a feeling the MPD32s are going to sell like hotcakes amongst the average consumer.
Prediction: we’re going to see a lot of mpc1000s and 2500s hit the used market. 2500 users are going to want the 5000 while many 1000 users are going to go after the MPD32.