January, 2006 archive

NAMM: Roland is tipping its hat to the past with the new Juno-G. But while its looks may be retro, its synth architecture has little to do with classic Juno synths.

Description:
Sharing the same high-powered processor as Roland’s famous Fantom-X series, the JUNO-G puts a world of first-class sound and performance features under musicians’ fingertips — [...]

NAMM Update: Roland has announced the second member of its HandSonic family: the HandSonic 10 (HPD-10).
More affordable and streamlined than its big brother, it offers the same pad response that made the original HandSonic popular, but with a specialized set of features and a fresh batch of sounds, rhythms, and effects.
An all-new collection of sounds [...]

NAMM Update: Roland released the new SR-G01 G-70 Upgrade kit for the the G-70 Music Workstation, shown at right..
The SR-G01 contains the G-70 Version 2.0 update which includes over 20 new features and 10 new Music Styles (plus 10 Music Assistant registrations).
With the release of Version 2, Roland expanded keyboard player’s horizons thanks to innovative [...]

At the 2006 Winter NAMM Show, Edirol introduced the UA-4FX portable USB audio/MIDI interface. The UA-4FX features low-latency audio and MIDI performance, 24/96 audio resolution, and built-in effects.
Route audio in and out of the UA-4FX via analog I/O or take advantage of its S/PDIF optical output. Windows XP users can use the optical output for [...]

NAMM Update: Edirol introduced a new hardware/software combination that they call “a breakthrough product that integrates the flexibility of software with the hands-on ease of hardware.”

Edirol’s “motion dive .tokyo performance package” consists of the visual software “motion dive .tokyo” bundled with Edirol’s MD-P1, a dedicated control console that connects via USB. Together, this package takes [...]

NAMM Update: A new looping unit from BOSS was turning heads at the recent Winter NAMM Show. BOSS calls it “the most feature-laded looper in the company’s history.” (We’ll take that as feature-laden!)

The RC-50 is housed in a seven-footswitch floor unit, and allows three stereo loop tracks to be manipulated simultaneously. Each loop track [...]

NAMM 2006 Winter Show: BOSS introduced a new Compact Pedal; the AC-3. This new-generation compact pedal employs COSM modeling technology to transform any electric guitar into a variety of acoustic guitar sounds.
BOSS’s COSM Acoustic-Modeling technology is showcased in this small but powerful pedal, which simulates an acoustic guitar much more precisely and realistically than previous [...]

At the recent 2006 NAMM Winter Show, iKEY-Audio, introduced the iKEY PLUS – a device that records live audio and converts it into high quality MP3 and WAV files and saves them directly to an iPod or another USB compatible storage device.
While incorporating the technology of the original iKEY, the new iKEY PLUS takes a [...]

The spirit of Dr. Robert Moog, father of the modern synthesizer, was all over NAMM. There were analog synthesizers galore, and the world of modular synths seemed to be healthier than ever.
Nowhere was his presence felt, though, more than the Moog Music booth. Moog Music had a special poster set up for Nammsters to sign [...]

At the NAMM 2006 Winter Show, held recently in Anaheim, California, Cycling ‘74 had its core apps, Max, MSP and Jitter, running on an Intel-based Macintosh OS X system.
We talked with Cycling’s Darwin Grosse about the new versions. He said that they were running on one of Apple’s Intel development boxes. He also noted that [...]