Apogee updated its $595 Duet audio interface for the Mac, switching from FireWire to USB and updating the interface, while keeping all of the things that made the device a favorite among musicians.
The Duet took on a new black-front design with the latest model, allowing the equally new OLED screen to be easily seen by the user. The screen shows you guitar and mic input levels, output volume and headphone volume, all at a glance.
The big volume wheel on the front of the Duet makes it easy to adjust on-the-fly without the need to go into software or your mixing panel. This I found to be especially handy when laying down quick tracks.
Unlike many of its competitors that have the I/O built into the box, Apogee uses a breakout cable with the Duet. You might think that this setup would get messy, but it doesn’t.
The cable features two combination mic/instrument connectors (XLR and 1/4-inch) built into a single connector, and two balanced 1/4-inch connectors for speakers. I usually plug in my monitors and shuffle the output connectors to the side, leaving the two inputs. Easy and not complicated at all.
The Duet also comes with Maestro 2, a software control panel that allows you to adjust and change a number of parameters of the device. If you use Apple’s Logic or GarageBand, the control panel is accessible directly from the Window menu.
Duet 2 has two configurable touchpads on the front of the device that can be changed through Maestro. The touchpads can do things like “Mute Outputs,” “Dim Outputs,” “Sum to Mono” and other functions.
With the design and software out of the way, it’s time to get to what makes Apogee gear so special. The real genius of the Duet is not its design, but the sound quality. Apogee is one of the best audio gear makers in the business. I would gladly outfit my entire studio with Apogee gear if I could and I know many others in the pro audio world that would do the same. With the Duet, Apogee gives you that high-quality sound, but at a lesser price.
Some audio companies try to take their pro products and make them for the consumer. Often times, these products lack the quality that customers are used to — not Apogee.
The same engineers that build products like Symphony I/O at Apogee, built the mic preamps and AD/DA converters for the Duet. this is top notch gear.
The biggest question about the Duet is “can you actually hear the difference?”
You can, without a doubt, hear the difference when using the Duet over other audio interfaces. The signal is so clean and clear from the Duet that I often have to reconfigure my amp software to account for the signal.
I have Apogee gear that’s years old and still works and sounds amazing. That’s what you can count on with the Duet 2.
Samsung’s SUR40 has been a long time coming. The 40-inch next-gen Surface was unveiled at CES 2011, but it’s only just now starting to ship, following the 2012 edition of that gadget show.
If you’ve never had a chance to play with a Surface, don’t dismiss it out of hand. It’s a very cool concept, and Microsoft and vendors like Samsung deserve credit for continuing to develop and refine the experience.
At $8,400, the SUR40 isn’t going to pop up in too many living rooms, but it’s well-suited for kiosks and other commercial applications.
“Though we still believe that we have not overstepped any legal boundaries, we have decided to completely stop the offer, production and sale of the Steve Jobs figurine out of our heartfelt sensitivity to the feelings of the Jobs family.”
Bullshit. If you had any “sensitivity” to the Jobs family, you wouldn’t have produced this ghoulish thing in the first place. It was their lawyers, and Apple’s lawyers, who put you in your place – you admit so yourself.
In a potential problem for the movie industry, the White House has issued a warning about the anti-piracy legislation in Congress.While agreeing that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem and requires a serious legislative response, it “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, claims that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) won’t be taken up by the House in its current incarnation. But given the lobbying power of the entertainment industry and others in their corner, don’t be surprised to see this legislation make it back under a different guise.
The site I want to read doesn’t churn out the same news and rumours that thousands of other sites have, the site I want to read doesn’t post fanatical rumours from idiotic sources. To make matters worse this churn effect often comes with a form of chinese whispers, led mainly by eccentric, traffic seeking asshole bloggers who are unable to distinguish fact and fiction, unable to pick up the phone to a public relations team to check a detail or more unbelievably spend the time to produce something thoughtful.
Which came first: Apple’s creative pro market shrinking, which might have led to dramatic changes in Final Cut Pro; or Apple’s cavalier attitude toward legacy features, which might have frightened video editors? According to the professionals we spoke to, there was already signs of an industry shift to Avid before FCPX came along, but Apple still had a very loyal and dedicated user base that it’s now turning away from.“The perception here is that Apple is more concerned with selling iPads and iPhones than they are with the people who have stuck with them since the 90’s, the professional editors and VFX people,” said Jude Mull, who works at a post-production facility in Hollywood that processes and digitizes some of your favorite TV shows.
There’s little debate that Final Cut Pro X soured many video professionals against Apple. The tide has turned a bit as open-minded videographers have dug into Final Cut Pro X’s feature set to discover a wealth of capabilities, but the damage may have been done.
Final Cut Pro X’s biggest impact may not be on the professional video market at all, it may be on the hobbyist and “prosumer” market. Apple’s been accused of abandoning video pros, but if they’re reaching a larger potential market with Final Cut Pro X, isn’t that the smarter thing to do?
The “real” Guitar Apprentice takes hit guitar songs and breaks them down into 15 different levels of playing. From the very start, the user is playing great guitar songs with a full band, supplying only a chord or two at first. The user can then work on songs at any desired speed and when it is completed will be playing 100% of the song – including solos. At every level, Guitar Apprentice shows the user visually, exactly what and when to play at the pace he or she desires. Guitar Apprentice includes such iconic songs as “Hey Jude,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Get Back,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “You Really Got Me,” “Shine,” “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and many others.
I suck at games like Guitar Hero because I’m always trying to play the real chords. I’m looking forward to trying this out at NAMM next week.
We’ve just hit our 6 millionth sale for everyone’s favorite iPhone photo app, Camera+. It’s been a while since I’ve done a sales figures post with all the number/charts/etc. But after taking a look at Camera+ sales over time, I found it interesting to see how much they’ve increased over the past several months, with the bulk of this being attributed to the success of the iPhone 4S.The app has earned us a grand total of $5,125,844 to date.
On all calls, the same script is followed – A Google Kenya employee calls a Mocality business and tries to deceive them into signing up for their competing product, by claiming that we are working together.
Google publicly apologized to Mocality for using their data.
Customers, employees, shareholders and taxpayers hate large corporations for many reasons. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed a lengthy list of corporations for which there is substantial research data to choose the 10 most hated in America.
There’s no doubt that some companies bug us more than others. Whether it’s your bank or your cell provider or your ISP, we all have a corporation or two we hate.
Boardwalk Empire is an Emmy nominated HBO show about the life and times of Nucky Thompson, a fictional Atlantic City gangster. Watching the show, you don’t realize just how much of it is computer generated special effects. The people at Brainstorm Digital have a reel of before and after footage from the show that will blow your mind when you see how much of 1920s Atlantic City is all in the computer.
Well that about does it for CES. We managed to escape Las Vegas with our lives, most of our belongings, and almost none of our dignity intact. But for all our bellyaching, CES is fun. We saw some amazing things out in the desert this year.
The Loop was smart enough to avoid CES. Congrats to those who survived it for another year.
For the full year, HP saw its shipments fall by nearly 5 percent; Dell’s fell by more than 8 percent; and Acer’s fell 30 percent in the U.S.So who grew? Apple. It saw its shipments grow by 18 percent in the quarter, according to IDC, and by 21 percent in the Gartner report. As of the end of the year, IDC said, Apple’s share of the U.S. market amounted to 10.7 percent, which is up from 8.8 percent a year ago.
It’s also important to consider the Mac sales are, at this point, smaller than the contribution iOS devices make to Apple’s bottom line. Yet by making products that consumers actually want, Apple’s been able to expand and improve its position in the PC market.
A complete Velvet Revolver – Fender signature artist Duff McKagan, Slash, Scott Weiland, Matt Sorum and Dave Kushner – got back together this week for a one-off performance in support of the “Love You Madly” event, a benefit concert for the late John O’Brien, a longtime friend of Kushner.
You can read more about the show on the official Fender blog. Here’s a video of the band from last night’s show.
Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Progress Report details our efforts to improve worker protections and factory conditions. This report also includes results from our 2011 audits.
One of the great things about Apple’s iOS devices for musicians is having the ability to play and record our guitar while on the go. When the hardware and software allowing us to do this was first introduced, we gave the companies a little leeway on the quality just so we could play, but that’s changing.
Personally, I think that was a fair trade-off. But being able to play and record guitar on an iPad or iPhone has gone beyond a novelty, and like most things, users are demanding more quality.
For the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with GuitarJack 2, a new $149 device from Sonoma Wire Works. GuitarJack, unlike many of its competitors, plugs into the iPad and iPhone’s dock connector, so it’s a digital signal.
What this means for you is a clean, clear signal for your guitar. There is nothing worse than having a noisy signal even before you start adding amps and effects to your guitar. You end up spending more time trying to cut out the noise than you do playing.
The GuitarJack has a 1/4-inch instrument input that has configurable Pad, Lo-Z and Hi-Z modes. There is also a 1/8-inch headphone jack and a 1/8-inch mic/line input with Pad, Normal and Boost modes.
The design of the GuitarJack is stunning. It’s sleek, attractive and something you would be proud to carry around with your Apple device. But this is a guitar device, so the proof is in the sound.
I tested GuitarJack with Ampkit to dial in some high-gain tones and it worked beautifully. Ampkit recognized the hardware right away and the quality of the signal was evident. I also tried it with AmpliTube, but that software requires an iRig connector and would not recognize the GuitarJack.
I also used Sonoma Wire Works FourTrack software on the iPhone. When you open the software with the GuitarJack installed, you get a window allowing you to adjust preferences of the devices inputs. FourTrack also has amp and effects modeling built-in, so you can build a guitar tone without using apps like Ampkit if you prefer.
Of course, FourTrack allows you to record four tracks of audio as well. The app basically gives you everything you need to take advantage of every aspect of the GuitarJack.
I always worry a bit about connecting anything to the bottom of my devices and leaving it there. I wonder if it could break off or damage the dock connector, but in my experience, the GuitarJack was just fine. I held up my iPhone and the GuitarJack didn’t pull or drop, so it’s balanced really well. Plugging a guitar cable in does add some pull, but it still wasn’t a problem for me.
I’ve been a fan of Sonoma Wire Works for many years. They are a company that cares about its users and they make very high-quality software and hardware products. If you’re looking for a device to play your guitar on the iPhone or iPad, I highly recommend GuitarJack 2.
Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common — personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, taste, and a love for technology. As Apple fans we love to hang out in cafés with our Macbooks and iPhones. Cupidtino is like that neighborhood café where the people are hip, decor is classy, conversation is intelligent and prices are reasonable. But it’s open at your convenience, folks are from around the world, and it’s less awkward to talk to someone.
If you’re going to meet someone with common interests, why not start off with an Apple fan.
Taito has announced the release of Rayforce, the classic arcade game shooter, now available for the iPhone and iPod touch. It costs $11.99.
Rayforce firs appeared in coin-op arcades in 1993 and spawned two sequels. It’s a fast and frantic top-down scrolling shooter in which you try to save humanity from a murderous artificial intelligence, flying high above the ground in your “X-Lay” fighter.
The game features optimizations for the iPhone and iPod touch, with support for sliding gestures and customizable options. You can play the game in its original arcade aspect ratio or in a mode better suited for full-screen display on the iOS device. Manual weapon controls or automatic firing are options, and Game Center support has been incorporated, with stage-specific global rankings and unlockable achievements.
Textures are used in web design to avoid the cold/fake/digital appearance of flat solid colours, to instead add an element of realism and that sense of something real.
I’m a fan of subtle textures. Some people take it too far for my tastes though.
Apple said in a statement that it had temporarily suspended sales of all iPhones at its five mainland China stores for the safety of customers and employees. The phones will still be offered online, through Apple’s official partner, Unicom, and at authorized resellers. The statement did not say when Apple stores would resume selling the iPhone 4S.
The crowd threw eggs at the store when it didn’t open. Who goes to buy a phone with a pocket full of eggs?
I just switched the default search engine in my browser from Google to Bing. And if you care about working efficiently, or getting the right results when you search, then maybe you should too.
Join iTunes expert Kirk McElhearn as he helps you think like an iTunes power user so you can get the most out of your audio, video, and book collections in iTunes 10. You’ll also learn the best ways to transfer media to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod.
Published by Adam and Tonya Engst, and written by Kirk McElhearn. Hard to go wrong with that combination for an ebook.
There are already huge queues outside of China’s five official Apple stores in readiness for tomorrow’s launch of the iPhone 4S. At the two stores in Beijing, and the three in Shanghai, there are clearly lines stretching hundreds of meters, with reports of hundreds of queuers at each, snaking around city blocks.
The iPhone 4S will be available online, but that hasn’t deterred many Chinese from braving the sub-zero temperatures to line up at Apple Retail Stores.
If you think iPhone sales in the US are huge, wait until Apple fully breaks into a market of one billion people.
We all know Apple will have an “education based” announcement next week in New York City. But care to lay a fiver on what they will announce? Well, Paddy Power, Ireland’s largest bookmaker, is laying odds on what hardware will be revealed.
The easy money is on eTextbooks at 1-6 odds with a new Apple HDTV going off at 8-1. Your best bet might be for a new “Apple Teacher Robot.” Forty to one odds? Might be worth it!
Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph was at CES this week challenging all comers to take the “Smoked by a Windows Phone $100 challenge.” According to The Verge, Microsoft had 30 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw.
Too bad I wasn’t there to take the challenge. Ben is a good friend, but I’d still beat him.
Here are two videos — one win, one loss for Microsoft.
