Today at NAMM, Apogee Electronics and Waves Audio announced a partnership that will connect the world’s most advanced multi-channel audio recording interface to the world’s most powerful DSP enabled audio network. Symphony I/O Mk II, Apogee’s new flagship converter, will offer optional SoundGrid connectivity, enabling it to connect to the Waves SoundGrid System for studio, live and post production audio networking with real-time digital signal processing of Waves and SoundGrid compatible third-party plugins.

This is a very interesting partnership. Apogee makes some terrific products—some of the best.

the Marshall JMP 2203 plug-in is an expert emulation of the legendary ultra-flexible 100-watt amplifier used by everyone from Iron Maiden and Slayer, to Jeff Beck and My Bloody Valentine.

I can’t wait to get home and try this plug-in. I love everything that UA does, but a rocking Marshall could be the best yet. UA also released the Sonnox Oxford Envolution and the Brainworx bx_digital V3 EQ Collection.

Either engaged automatically by just hitting a switch on the Profiler Remote or dynamically by using an expression pedal, all continuous parameters can be changed smoothly to take the tone from ultra dry clean rhythm to utmost distorted, FX soaked lead tones.

Kemper made a big splash a few years back with its amp profiling and while I haven’t had extensive experience with it, others I know have said they really like it.

Among the new shapes are 12-fret Grand Concerts (552ce 12-Fret, 562ce 12-Fret), Grand Orchestra guitar models (458e, 858e), along with a new 12-string Dreadnought (360e). Powers’ design philosophy is focused on giving players a broader spectrum of 12-string voices to enable them to find the right fit.

I’m heading up to Taylor’s booth to check these out today. Taylor is my favorite acoustic, but I don’t have a lot of experience with 12-strings, so it should be interesting.

I’m usually pretty excited when Apple updates its music software, but I was blown away when they showed me their newest app, Music Memos and the updates they did to GarageBand on iOS. […]

I love the Mac. I feel no need to replace it with one of Apple’s other devices, like iPad, nor would I think of replacing it with another type of Windows-based computer. While Apple has focused a lot of attention and resources on mobile over the past few years, it has also made quite a number of significant improvements to the Mac. That fact is often overlooked by many people in the industry. […]

Gardai responded to the scene and have confirmed that a number of plants have been evacuated.

It is understood that several threatening emails were received by the company.

There is nothing in the report to indicate what the threat was, but the plants were evacuated.

“We are making Beats 1 the premier free broadcast from Apple and phasing out the ad-supported stations at the end of January,” an Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “Additionally, with an Apple Music membership, listeners can access dozens of radio stations curated by our team of music experts, covering a range of genres, commercial-free with unlimited skips. The free three-month trial of Apple Music includes radio.”

Thanks to BusyMac for sponsoring The Loop this week. Take control of your calendar and contacts in 2016 with BusyMac’s Two-for-One New Year’s resolution offer. Get BusyCal and BusyContacts together for only $49.99 — that’s two award-winning apps for the price of one!

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Organize your calendar and contacts this new year and save $49.99 with this limited time Two-for-One offer from BusyMac!

Beta Monkey’s Jazz Essentials IV is a diverse downloadable set of live jazz drum tracks with over 3 GB of jazz drumming performances of essential jazz standards.

I love Beta Monkey’s products. I have too many of them to even count and use them all the time in my recordings.

Positive Grid teamed up the world’s brightest DSP engineers and component level modeling and profiling authorities, working with the world’s leading producers, world-class engineers, and mixing & mastering gurus to develop some breakthrough technologies to bring software plug-ins to the next level.

The video is really interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing more about this.

1 Password has become one of my must-have apps on Mac and iOS.

Apple Music has surpassed 10 million subscribers across iOS, Mac, PC, Android and Apple TV in just six months, a milestone that took its largest rival Spotify around six years to accomplish.

Yep, this sounds right to me.

While iAd itself isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s direct involvement in the selling and creation of iAd units is ending. “It’s just not something we’re good at,” one source told BuzzFeed News. And so Apple is leaving the creation, selling, and management of iAds to the folks who do it best: the publishers.

I think this is good news. Ads are just not where Apple’s focus should be.

After having a runaway hit with the Mo-Fi Headphones (check out our review here), Blue is back at it again with a new pair of passive, closed-back isolation headphones. The Lola headphones promise to deliver much of what is loved about the Mo-Fi model, but at a more budget-friendly price and without compromising on some of the forward-thinking design features. I used Lola for a few weeks to see if they were able to live up to the promise.

I enjoyed this review by Matt Vanacoro.

Jim an Merlin discuss finding new music, using an iPad for ‘real work’, and rock star cameos.

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Links:

• Yo La Tengo – Fakebook
• Canvas Podcast from RelayFM
• Yo la Tengo – Fakebook (1990) Full album – YouTube
• The Plimsouls – A Million Miles Away (Valley Girl – 1983) – YouTube
• Drew Carey Show – Guest Musicians – YouTube
• Guns N’ Roses – Paradise City – YouTube
• Cat Stevens – “Here Comes My Baby”

Looks like I’ll need to pick up a Ferrari this weekend.

A great look at iTunes over the years by Kirk McElhearn.

The function will now be restricted on residential roads or roads without a center divider, meaning the car cannot drive faster than the speed limit maximum plus five miles (8 km) per hour.

I don’t know how I feel about this whole thing. On one hand they are keeping if off the freeways, but the residential areas is where kids play, right?

When Autopilot launched in October, Musk cautioned the hotly anticipated function was in beta mode, or a test phase of development, with full ‘hands-off’ driving not recommended.

Is this really the type of technology we want to launch in beta mode?

Take control of your calendar and contacts in 2016 with BusyMac’s Two-for-One New Year’s resolution offer. Get BusyCal and BusyContacts together for only $49.99 — that’s two award-winning apps for the price of one!

BusyCal and BusyContacts are ideal for those who want more power and flexibility than the built-in Calendar and Contacts apps on OS X have to offer. BusyCal and BusyContacts are compatible with iCloud, Google and Exchange, and integrate seamlessly to form an easy to use solution for managing all of your contacts and activities.

Organize your calendar and contacts this new year and save $49.99 with this limited time Two-for-One offer from BusyMac!

Peter Kirn writing for Create Digital Media:

There are two common misunderstandings of the news. One reading (from Apple critics) assumes this locks you into proprietary Apple headphones. It doesn’t. The other (from Apple fans who don’t know that much about audio) assumes higher audio fidelity from “digital” headphones. It probably doesn’t mean that, either (there are some benefits to putting the digital-to-analog converters off the device, but no indication yet that will necessarily mean better sound). First, let’s consider why Apple would do such a thing.

I still don’t see the downside to making this change.

Thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring The Loop this week.

What if you could get 5% of your day back? What would you do?

You already have enough work to do today and shouldn’t have to waste time looking for the things you need to do your job.

Igloo makes it easy to find what you need, when you need it. And it’s not just for locating your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It also helps you find experts, talk about problems and share content with your team. So stop digging through your inbox for that file from 3 months back and give yourself the tools you need to do your best work.

Try it yourself or send your IT guy to investigate Igloo, an intranet you’ll actually like.

Ars Technica:

It’s that time of the year again—welcome to the Google Tracker! This is a bi-annual series where we recap every ongoing project (that we know about, at least) inside of Google’s sprawling empire.

This is a long, long list.

The National Football League is planning to live-stream all three games scheduled to be played in London next season, and Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc subsidiary Google are among the technology companies in talks to buy the rights to conduct the streams, said two sources familiar with the situation.

This will be a big win for whoever gets the streaming rights. It’s interesting that the NFL deemed streaming this year with Yahoo a success, but Yahoo isn’t mentioned anywhere as being a contender for next year’s games.

Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday its fourth-quarter operating profit likely rose 15 percent from a year earlier, missing expectations and fuelling concerns the tech industry may be in for a tough year of slack gadget sales.

Not a big surprise. Samsung warned employees on Monday that it was going to be a tough year.

The maker of the Onewheel electric skateboard called in federal marshals to shut down the booth of a company making a similar product.

The guy tried to deal with the company and ask them to stop stealing his product—they wouldn’t even respond. I think they’re listening now.

This week, Jim and Merlin talk Apple nostalgia.

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Links:

• Boston
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Steve Jobs unveiled the “Fastest Web Browser Ever Created for the Mac” this day back in 2003, introducing the Safari web browser that four years later would power a new kind of mobile browsing experience on iPhone.

I was there when Safari was introduced. It’s been quite a run for Safari on Mac and iOS.

There have been a lot of rumors surrounding a change to the headphone jack in an upcoming version of the iPhone. Basically, Apple is working with its supplier to use the iPhone’s Lightning port for audio and get rid of the traditional headphone jack. […]

There is just nothing better than hearing someone like Pete talk about how he uses his console to write and record.