Music Technology Memo: It's Time For Linux
Friday, March 31st 2006 With Microsoft's delay of XP64 and the constant changes coming from Apple's OS X, it's time that music technology take charge of its own destinty and move to Linux. Read full review...
Mr. Mozart, I Presume
Wednesday, February 15th 2006 This editorial starts with an apology and belated birthday wishes to Mr. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who in January 2006, celebrated his 250th birthday. Wolfy, I apologize. And now a word of explanation as to why I'm late saying, "Happy Birthday." Read full review...
Now We Know, To a Degree, Where Tascam Goeth
Tuesday, January 31st 2006 We're delighted to see Tascam winning so many awards for GigaStudio 3.0. At NAMM, a VSTi version of GigaStudio was announced. This means that GS will function in a similar manner to other virtual samplers like HALion and Kontakt. This is great news since now older libraries are given an extended life, especially if GigaPulse is built into the VSTi version. But! Read full review...
Looking For Christmas In All the Wrong Places
Monday, December 26th 2005 It’s now December 26th and this year’s War on Christmas is over. If you’re not sure what’s meant by that, we are talking about at the risk of offending some people, the cultural eradication in the marketplace and schools of saying Merry Christmas. This year we hit new lows with one school calling the Christmas tree a Friendship Tree while Lowes started calling Christmas trees, Holiday Trees. A number of major retailers banned the use of the phrase, “Merry Christmas” in fear of offending some. These retailers included Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Target, WalMart and other heavyweights. Read full review...
Herb Tucmandl's Bold Moves
Monday, November 28th 2005 For the past few days, owners and friends of various Vienna Symphonic Library (www.vsl.co.at) products have been undergoing an agonizing countdown announcing a new product. The speculation has been endless as posts on the VSL forum mount. Read full review...
Prince of the City
Friday, October 7th 2005 Today begins the 110th AES show in New York City. Missing at this important industry event is a man I've come to know and respect over the past few years: Pete Snell, International Marketing Director for Tascam's GigaStudio. Read full review...
Whither Goest, Thou, GigaStudio?
Sunday, August 28th 2005 It’s been a year since Tascam released GigaStudio 3. It’s release marked a milestone in developing what was originally a virtual sample player, GigaSampler, into the software equivalent of a full production studio made so by the development of GigaPulse. With GigaPulse, using virtual reproductions, you can change mics (and thus, the sound of your production), mic positions, onstage seated arrangement of musicians, bring in an outside reverb. One of the most interesting applications is the ability to set up the orchestra (or any other ensemble) and have a singer or instrumentalist record directly into GS3. Read full review...
Neutrik Ad Sinks Below Mackie
Saturday, July 30th 2005 Recently, I was surprised to see a new 4-color Neutrik print ad displaying three saucy looking women, one of whom with the right set of ears could have been Romulan. Read full review...
Mackie Ads Hit New Lows Promoting Tracktion 2
Wednesday, June 1st 2005 In March 2005 we lamented over the poor taste displayed in Mackie's Weapons of Mass Production ads. Not to pick on Mackie (LTEC), but sadly, in the May issue of Electronic Musician (PRM), page 37, we are confronted with what may be remembered as one of the worst headlines in American advertising history: If your music sucks,it will still suck.You'll just make it a whole lot faster. Read full review...
Is Music Education Failing It's Customers - Err, Students?
Sunday, May 1st 2005 This statement hijacked our thinking making us wonder when music education once and for all is going to become results driven, producing graduates, especially composers, really capable of leaving campus and thriving in an increasingly electronic world that offers as many challenges as it does opportunities. Read full review...
The Challenge of Windows Longhorn For PC Software Manufacturers
Friday, April 1st 2005 Now that XP64, aka Windows
Longhorn, is released, the small club of developers of
PC musical software should be getting together to agree upon
some standards so that the PC will match, and potentially exceed,
the service the Mac is now delivering to music professionals
with its dual processor systems. Read full review...
Weapons of Mass Production? Oh Please.
Tuesday, March 1st 2005 Ever since George Washington became America's first president under the Constitution, political pundits have abounded. Read James Thomas Flexner's compelling Washington, The Indispensable Man (a single volume summary of his four-volume biography) and you'll meet Thomas Jefferson, the great leaker, who caused Washington no end of grief. Read full review...
Changer of the Status Quo
Tuesday, February 1st 2005 Most people have never heard of his name, but I'm going to tell you what it is: Don Williams. And a lot of people have never heard about his program called Overture which once was a part of the Cakewalk family until they sold it back to Don. Now in case you don't know, Overture is a notation program. It competes with Finale and Sibelius. One guy vs. the big guys. Read full review...
The Pinnacle Sale of Steinberg to Yamaha: Some Pre-NAMM Lessons to Consider
Saturday, January 1st 2005 Well, no sooner did we do an editorial about publicly owned companies in the music business and get their stock prices up, than Pinnacle (PCLE) up and sells Steinberg (which they purchased in January 2003) for $28.5 million to Yamaha. The Pinnacle web site didn't tell us too much other than they're great, we're great, and after the divorce we're going to be great friends (sort of like Brad and Jen, and Ben and Jen, but fortunately, not like Ben and Jerry's). But interestingly enough it was the Yamaha web site in Japan that told a much more complete story in their press release, which is why we posted it on Sonic Control in its entirety. There are some key sentences in the Yamaha release worth looking. Read full review...
Sonic Control Means Business
Wednesday, December 1st 2004 If you’ve seen the home page recently, you’ve noticed a new feature on Sonic Control called Music Stock Watch. I’m proud to announce that Sonic Control is the first music publication, trade or consumer, on or off the web, that identifies and writes about those publicly traded companies that either make the products we use, or in the case of the Guitar Center, sells them. We really couldn’t have done this effectively a few years ago, because many of the key players, notably the music software companies, were privately held. Then something happened. Despite the PR hoopla that gave the impression that these companies were right behind Microsoft in size and profitability, several of them, for one reason or another, found themselves on the verge of financial bankruptcy, and were snapped up by larger companies for a song (sorry for the pun, it just seemed so appropriate). At least, that’s what, “sources close to the administration” tell us. Read full review...
