Tech News Roundup: October 10, 2008

Tech News Roundup: October 10, 2008

10 October, 2008 | 6.00AM

• Section: Music News Topics: Technology
• Written by: francispreve

In an ironic twist, this week’s tech news tidbits almost seemed a tad more interesting than all the hoopla that surrounded last week’s AES show in San Francisco.

What with the AES-related ProTools 8 announcement, Brian Eno’s new iPhone app, a sneak peak at Justice’s touring rig, and some tube-based exotica, it was a surprisingly fun week overall.

ProTools 8 Announced

While ProTools isn’t quite as ubiquitous as you-know-what in the electronica and club communities, it’s still the uncontested 800-pound gorilla for big league studios, post-production, and aficionados of bling.

So we appreciate Peter Kirn’s insightful synopsis of the latest upgrade to Digidesign’s ubiquitous DAW.

As with the majority of AES-related announcements, ProTools 8 gets filed under “coming soon,” but for fans of the luxury DAW that started it all, that probably won’t be soon enough.

Justice in Rio

Create Digital Music’s coverage of Justice’s live rig is worth a gander, if only to discover that there really ain’t that much to it.

A MacBook Pro, Ableton Live, a few Lemurs and a MicroKorg sum up the key gear in their rig.

In fact, if you eliminate the Marshall stacks and glowing cross, you’ve basically got a slightly larger version of Deadmau5’s DJ rig.

We’ll leave you to ponder the significance of that observation.

Speaking of Lemurs…

The Lemur’s creators, a company called Jazz Mutant, just announced the upcoming beta of firmware v2.

As control surfaces go, we think the Lemur is a slick little puppy, though it remains under the radar of many producers and DJs.

Fortunately, Create Digital Music’s coverage of the v2 upgrade helps demystify the technology for newcomers.

Hands on with Bloom

It was only a matter of hours before we got a hands-on report on Brian Eno’s new iPhone music app.

Yesterday, CDM posted a brief assessment of Bloom that’s worth a quick look.

iPhone softsynth edges closer to reality

As you know, we’re kind of into that iPhone thing that’s all the rage with the kids these days.

So it’s great to see that the oddly-named (but potentially quite powerful) Noise.io softsynth is progressing nicely.

Here’s a link to some YouTube deliciousness that clearly indicates that Noise.io is going to be making waves when it finally graduates from beta.

Tip of the hat to Synthtopia for staying on top of this.

Phantastron

We love affordability - especially nowadays.

So when we were causally perusing Music Thing, and came across this piece on a tube-based analog synth under $200, we dropped our Brawndo and fired up their array of YouTube demo videos.

After you’ve embraced the developers’ steampunk cowboy vibe, you’ll be faced with a tone generator that’s so raw and warm that it’s tempting to keep the obscure little tool hidden from the other kids.

But that wouldn’t be fair.

It’s called the Phantastron and we’re really into it.

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