The Mindprint TRIO is reviewed by Remix magazine. “The T.R.I.O. Total Recording Solution is designed to be the nerve center of your studio, as well as to eliminate multiple pieces of outboard gear, wall warts and a slew of messy cables. Essentially, it replaces a mixer’s input and monitoring section and adds EQ and dynamics.” The device under review is the original TRIO; Mindprint have since announced the TRIO USB, which goes one step further by using a convenient USB 2 interface instead of an audio interface. (more…)

Electronic Musician review the Edirol PCR-M1 USB/MIDI keyboard controller and are impressed by its compactness: “The beauty of this unit is its compact size: at just less than 18 inches wide, 9 inches high, and 1.12 inches deep, it is slightly wider than a notebook computer and incorporates 25 standard-width keys. Though they are shorter in height and have a shallower action compared with full-size keys, they feel surprisingly sturdy, as do all the front-panel controls.” (That’s 45cm wide, 22cm high and 3cm deep, for all you Metricians out there.) (more…)

Computer Music magazine reviews Pro Tools M-Powered, the new hardware/software combo DAW from Digidesign. Pro Tools is already legendary in the digital audio workstation world, and this version comes with an M-Audio interface instead of their proprietary audio interface. The version of Pro Tools included is a cut-down version of the full product. In fact, it’s almost identical to Pro Tools LE, the standard “lite” version of Pro Tools.) Still, the limitations aren’t too severe — the review points out that this version handles 32 audio tracks instead of 96, and does not include the TDM system for eliminating latency when processing sounds in real time. (more…)

The Roland CD-2 is a CD recorder on steroids. It can record from the inbuilt microphone or line inputs directly to CD or CompactFlash card. When recording, you can apply effects and even carry out basic editing operations on your audio. When playing back, you can adjust speed and pitch independently. It would be a good musical sketch book for those times when inspiration strikes, there’s a record label A&R person next to you on the bus, and you’ve foolishly left your laptop studio at home. You can pull out your harmonica and your CD-2 and produce your demo masterpiece on the spot. (more…)

The PCR-M1 MIDI keyboard controller from Edirol looks like a nice complement to the laptop studio musician. The thing I really like is its compactness. I prefer 25-key keyboards for this reason, and this one is very thin and light too. The assignable rotary encoder would be useful too — especially if you don’t already have another MIDI control surface. (more…)

Digidesign have announced the Mbox 2, the new version of their original Mbox bundle. This looks pretty good — it’s a Pro Tools system you can actually afford. The hardware handles the connections (including analog, digital, and MIDI), and the included software handles the editing. (more…)

The TRIO USB, a do-everything audio box, will be released next month by MindPrint. The original TRIO was announced some months ago, but because of its super S/PDIF interface, most users would already need extra hardware (e.g. a sound card) to use it. This new version uses a plain old USB interface instead, so it really is more of an all-in-one device. (more…)

Sound on Sound reviews the Ta Horng iSmart roll-up keyboard. Essentially, they say it works about as well as you would expect — what you see is what you get. “As a MIDI data-entry device, the iSmart works fine, triggering notes reliably when the keyboard is on a hard surface.” However, of course the keys offer no feedback, and it’s hard to play accurately when all keys — including the black keys — are on the same level. (more…)

The iKey is a press releease from Gemini with “artist’s impressions” of a new device and some excited hyperbole about what the device can do. Despite their liberal use of words like “revolutionary”, “incredible”, and “take the DJ industry by storm”, the iKey seems to be nothing more than a box that converts analog audio input (via stereo RCA jacks) to digital output (via a USB port). Useful? Perhaps. Incredible? No. And more importantly, it doesn’t seem to exist yet — information from the press releease is on various websites (such as Remix magazine) but not on Gemini’s own website. (more…)

Mix reviews the Omega Studio Recording System from Lexicon. The Omega actually came out last year, but the Mix review only appeared recently. Besides, I like this product because it looks like R2-D2. Actually, the R2-D2-alike box is just part of the system. The Omega studio recording system consists of three pieces: the Omega USB audio interface, Steinberg’s Cubase LE DAW software, and Lexicon’s Pantheon VST reverb plugin. (more…)