Brad Linder is a blogger, freelance journalist, and producer for National Public Radio. If anyone loves mobile recorders, he sure does. He writes in with a great overview of what was happening in mobile recorders at the AES show here in New York, with plenty of detailed information on his blog.

How do you get new customers? How about filing lawsuits and taking a break-your-legs-style approach to busting recording studios via covert operatives? Yes, it’s Banpiracy.com, a new private business dedicated to threatening studios unless they “go legit.” Their efforts got started as part of Waves controversial sting operations in European studios. Now they’re coming for you Stateside, as an independent copyright police. First, they claim 50% (in the US) to 80% (in Europe) of studios pirate software, with no evidence to support that claim. Then, they plainly state their mission is to be a group of legal vigilantes, filing hundreds of legal actions around the country and taking on dozens of studios here in the US. (Great AES announcement; thanks.)

Let’s be clear: I’m absolutely opposed to piracy. It really has damaged the industry, and it really is often perpetrated by people can afford to pay. For people who can’t afford the software, we’ve been big advocates of cheap, freeware, and free/open source software that can be used legally. But making anti-piracy efforts look like brute thuggery is horribly damaging for an industry that’s been working for years to try to encourage positive relations with its customer base in order to compel them to buy software as choice, not out of fear. I’ve talked to many developers who, despite their concerns about piracy, have worked really hard to build that paying base of users, through mutual trust. And I can only see this nonsense having one effect: hurting the efforts of developers who have fought piracy by using sensible product authorization, providing great support, and taking an active role in the music community.

SonicState.com got a great interview, which is nice, as it means I didn’t have to talk to them:

AESNYC07: More On The Waves Antipiracy Campaign

And developers, please, we’re happy to help you sell more legit software; let’s stay away from these guys. They’re creepy. This isn’t really an anti-piracy effort; they plainly state they’re out to make more money for their clients. And that’s called extortion.

Updated: Amidst the roiling debate going on in our comments now, here’s an excellent and quite balanced article from Pro Sound News Europe. They detail the tactics used. In fact, what Waves/BanPiracy is doing is legal. Whether it’s good PR for existing, legitimate customers is another matter.
Waves tackles the cracks [Pro Sound News Europe]

Another observation, if I’ve got this right. Some readers do feel combating piracy may take this kind of strong-armed approach. But, so far, the only confirmed client of BanPiracy is still Waves. That means, whatever claims BanPiracy makes about the industry as a whole, it’s possible no one else is willing to take these kinds of measures. If you hear otherwise, let us know. But sticking to dongles, serials, authorization, and old-fashioned customer outreach may remain the solution for most developers.

What’s this new Max about, and why was it such a big deal at the AES trade show? To really understand, let’s turn to gaming for a moment. When Nintendo described their vision for the Wii, they talked about appealing to three groups of customers:

• The “hard-core” gamer; that is, their existing audience, of course
• “Lapsed” gamers: people who had done some gaming at some point but lost interest
• Entirely new gamers, across a variety of demographics

History will have to be the judge of Nintendo’s slim white box and controller-wagging interface, but I heard some similar development goals at the AES audio show this weekend. Nowhere was this more apparent than Cycling ’74’s upcoming Max 5. Substitute the word “patcher” for the word “gamer”, and you’ve got a snapshot of the new Max.

After all, whether you’ve touched Max before or not, you’ve likely got some needs in at least one of these categories. Beginners are easily intimidated by the “visual programming” metaphors of a blank-slate, modular tool like Max. Many others get through a couple of patches, often in a school course, but wind up having difficulty getting beyond that first work later on. And even advanced users (maybe especially advanced users) are always looking for ways of working faster.

The build I saw of Max wasn’t entirely complete, but I will say it’s tremendously promising. I talked to many for whom the chance to see Max 5 was the highlight of the entire AES show. It’s a tool you really need to see in action, so be sure to check out Cycling’s just-posted videos of the program:

A First Look at Max 5 [Cycling '74]

This is not the all-words, no-pictures manifesto we saw recently: now you actually get to see the tool in action. Highlights:

Sometimes it’s really hard to be rational and dispassionate about high-end audio gear. Some of it is just ridiculously pretty. And every time the AES show rolls around, you can be sure your right brain’s neurons are going to get all hot and bothered about Blue and Red Microphones and their lovely, vintage-style designs.

Native Instruments, maker of the leading Traktor DJ software (now part of their DJ line, have quietly announced they’re ending their relationship with Stanton, the company that makes the vinyl-to-computer interface Final Scratch. Given that the Traktor/Final Scratch combination has been dominant in the DJ club world, that’s big news. Here’s what Native had to say announcing the “mutual” decision. (I cut the part where Stanton said “we’ve been together for several years now — where is this relationship going?” and Native said something about how they “really liked Stanton” but things had been getting a little “too hot and heavy” and that “maybe the best thing would be a break.”)

The successful partnership with Stanton Magnetics based on the pioneering FinalScratch digital DJ system will mutually expire in 2006, with both companies focusing on their respective product lines from that date on. Native Instruments will continue to maintain the FinalScratch user forum on its website until December 31st 2006.

I was planning on calling on my secret informant deep inside NI’s Berlin headquarters to find out what was going on, but it turns out it’s in black and white right in the press release:

In the future, the DJ Division of Native Instruments will completely concentrate its operations on the TRAKTOR platform, and will also develop integrated solutions for the DJ market based on its own internal hardware engineering capabilities and expertise.

Correction: I incorrectly stated that Euphonix themselves collaborated with UA; instead it is Euphonix co-founders and veterans of the company Scott and Rob Silfvast. I apologize for the error. In a way, this is even better; they represent some of the individual design vision behind Euphonix. See Scott Silfvast’s ideas at the end.

This weekend is the high-end AES audio show in San Francisco, meaning we get to ogle beautiful gear with serious-looking VU meters and drool-worthy audio quality. Universal’s new modular “desktop console system” is at the top of the list on both counts, and it’s actually geared at the project-sized computer music studio.

Cakewalk has a major upgrade to their flagship audio software, SONAR, not very long after the release of SONAR 5 last year:

Cakewalk SONAR 6 Producer Edition: New Feature Highlights [Cakewalk.com]

The banner feature is a new “audio quantize” feature. All the major DAWs have been toying with various takes on beat-synced audio warping, not necessarily copying software like Ableton Live, but trying to appeal to those who use those techniques with something different. It makes sense, given that MIDI has long had this rhythmic flexibility. In the case of SONAR 6, the new features include non-destructive audio quantize, the ability to combine different tracks into a single groove, “audio beats to MIDI” conversion, “slip-stretch”, and tempo changes. Some of those are available elsewhere, but it sounds like Cakewalk has taken a unique approach to actual editing. Like Logic Pro, SONAR is also integrating high-quality stretching algorithms from iZotope Radius (with one important difference — Radius is an a la carte extra for Logic; here it’s included in the box).

There’s no one enormous feature or deluge of plug-ins, but taken together, lots of improvements add up to a big upgrade.

At long last, Universal Audio’s UAD-1e DSP platform brings Universal’s retro-styled mixing and mastering plug-ins to the increasingly popular PCI-Express (PCIe) bus. Why is that cool? Well, for starters, it lets you run effects like perfect emulations of the retro Roland effects shown here.

Now, some readers here have been skeptical of the performance improvements of PCIe (though, compatibility-wise, many computers make it a necessity). But Universal says the new cards deliver a quantifiable improvement over PCI and PCI-X. Joe Bryan, VP of technology, says PCIe provides lower system overhead, more reliable low-latency operation, and more tracks (up to 254 per card). That’s consistent with what we’ve heard from other vendors like Digidesign. (Of course, the advantage of Universal is, unlike the Pro Tools platform, you can add Universal’s plug-ins to any Mac or Windows DAW you like.)

Bryan also mentions the ExpressCard bus included on recent PC laptops and Apple’s MacBook Pro, which I hope means Universal is considering a mobile-ready product.