Your pocket is bulging with power.

Wait… okay, that sounded really wrong.

Anyway, the mobile software revolution continues. There’s so much stuff out there that it can actually be hard to track. Here’s a round-up to help you navigate everything that’s going on this week.

And even if you can’t stand another word about the iPhone, consider this: the explosion of iPhone software, more than just a fad, illustrates what happens when you give developers tools to make multimedia capabilities easier, then provide a distribution outlet. I don’t love everything about the iTunes approach, but those are lessons that could easily be learned in desktop and mobile development alike. The iPhone platform, if nothing else, is surprisingly uncompromising in the sound and visual interaction departments, especially for a mobile platform. And even desktop platforms could benefit from this kind of distribution mechanism (see also: Steam for games).

Also, we do have some of the first signs that the iPhone won’t be alone for long – new functionality on Google’s Android could take that platform in new directions. See my next story, Android/Linux/open source fans.

Disclaimer: don’t worry. I’m not giving up on desktop apps. Relax. In fact, even now as I look across these applications, while there are lots of cool ideas, it’s still clear this is a nascent area. The experience is nowhere near as rich as you get on the desktop. But it’s nonetheless worth exploring some of the ideas before we return to our (more powerful) desktop applications for music.

Field Recording, Microphones for iPhone + iPod touch

The big news this week was FiRe, which promises to be the “first professional field recorder” for the iPhone and iPod touch. The developer behind it is one of which we’re already big fans: Audiofile Engineering. AE make Wave Editor, which has rapidly become the secret weapon of choice for Mac audio producers and sound designers, as well as the batch-processing Sample Manager and adoptive parents of the excellent Rax plug-in host. Anything these guys do would get our attention, and then they go and add specs you wouldn’t expect to see on the iPhone:

• Accurate real-time waveform display
• Live, touch-controlled waveform navigation
• Audio markers
• Broadcast WAVE metadata
• Instant downloading in multiple formats – and easy sharing via FTP, Web server, or even a SoundCloud account
• Tag recordings with location data
• Overdub mode
• VU meters for input and output
• Configurable time units
• Mic flexibility: use Blue Mikey, Alesis ProTrack or even the internal mic

US$5.99, available now.

(Update) Hardware Requirements:
iPhone 3G
iPod Touch (second generation)
First Generation iPhone (headset ONLY)

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/

iTunes link (which is tricky to find otherwise)

Let’s just cut straight to it: this is, bar none, the most full-featured app out there. It’s the first one that would make me seriously consider using this platform for recording.

This, of course, raises the question of which mic you might want to use.

If you’re on the iPod touch, you don’t have even a built-in mono mic. (Don’t knock it: I’ve put together entire pieces based on simple mono mic samples. Creative sampling artists will use anything.)

Even on the first-generation iPod touch, you can use some simple solutions that will let you do basic sound.

The Smule blog has a terrific round-up of recommendations for touch owners wanting to use their Ocarina app. Their technical needs are much lighter than what you might need for FiRe, but this is still worth a look if you have any interest in recording at all:

Microphones for iPod Touch Ocarina

The Griffin SmartTalk wins out for 2G owners. I have Griffin’s TuneBuds mobile, which has worked well enough for applications like RjDj. (Note that Smule have managed to get their app working with the first-gen hardware; FiRe requires the newer generation.)

At the fancier end:

Blue Microphones’ Mikey is a slim-line stereo condenser capsule that plus into the iPod accessory port. It’s hinged so you can play with placement at least a little, and there’s basic gain control (3 settings). It runs about US$80 street, which means it doesn’t have to compete with standalone recorders. Update: Audiofile Engineering say they’ve seen some issues with FiRe and Blue Mikey, and can’t officially support the combination. Readers have had some issues themselves. If you’ve already got a Mikey, this might be worth a try, but otherwise, you can await updated information as Blue and Audiofile Engineering attempt to address the problem.

Specific update: The problem sounds as though it is the combination of the production Mikey with second-generation iPod touch units running the current OS. This is expected to be fixed with the next OS release. Stay tuned for more.

Tha Alesis ProTrack is even more impressive-looking, but at US$249 list, it does start to get into the realm of “you could just go buy a dedicated recorder.” The ProTrack extends the iPhone by adding a shell with an X/Y stereo mic pair – one that looks quite a lot like the Zoom H4 mics – and even has onboard XLR jacks and phantom power. You also get LED monitoring, a limiter, additional power (four AAA’s), a mic stand mount – basically, it turns your iPhone into a real mobile recorder.

The Alesis has its own app, but the Audiofile Engineering option is looking more powerful. Naturally, that’s the advantage of software – because the iPhone is essentially a computer, you can add whatever software you like.

I still think there’s a good place for a dedicated recorder. I’ve started testing the Zoom H4n, seen at right. (Not an iPhone hiding in a shell.) I’m already blown away – it corrects most of the navigation and quality issues with its predecessor, and unlike an iPod or iPhone, has fantastic battery life and onboard XLR input jacks. (Okay, the ProTrack does have XLR’s, so this is getting a little more interesting.) In other words, I’m not sure I’m giving up on dedicated recorders in favor of one of these yet. It’s still handy to have, though – and who says you can’t use both, given how essential it can be to have a backup recording in many situations?

Updated: Officially, here are the mics supported by FiRe:

• Alesis ProTrack – http://www.alesis.com/protrack
  (Requires iPhone 3G or 2nd gen. iPod Touch)
• Blue Mikey – http://www.bluemic.com/products/mikey
  (Requires iPhone 3G)

Thanks to Gaëtan Gravel and everyone else who sent this in.

Paul Van Dyk’s DJ Tools

This one was a bit of a surprise: Paul Van Dyk has released a DJ app, but it’s not just a quick, attention-grabbing, “DJ on your iPhone” gimmick. It’s more like a utility belt for DJs. I’m surprised to see that as a result it’s actually gotten some criticism. To me, finding some genuinely useful stuff you might want to have on your mobile device is the whole point.

What’s in there?

• BPM counter
• Frequency analyzer
• Noise level (the “NYPD Application”), with an oddly beautiful visualization
• Seismic reader (for testing your turntable, not for telling if there’s an earthquake happening – that you’ll probably figure for yourself)

And then some silly stuff, too – glow stick, anyone?

http://www.paulvandyk.com/

Not yet available – coming late May 2009

All interesting, but you know what this means: now we need Live PA Tools. (I can think of some ironic choices for that. Nominations welcome.)

Nine Inch Nails App

NIN, of course, had their app become available on 4/14. There’s been quite a lot written about it – so much, in fact, that I feel like the whole thing is a bit overhyped. The basic development here is that NIN is taking all their fan data and making it location specific. On the upside, this is a lot more than many high-profile bands have done with iPhone development. But then, these guys should be doing more – they have the budget to hire real developers. I do like the idea of fans being able to interact on their mobile device; that clearly makes a lot of sense. But few artists will inspire the kind of loyalty NIN does, which means the real question is, will someone be able to build a platform for everyone else? And if you are a more obscure artist, what should you be doing?

The app is free, so just a conduit for fans, really.

iTunes link

http://www.nin.com/

Gestural Beat Sharing, Celebrate Cinco De Mayo

ZoozBeat is the application I looked at in the fall: the idea is to make musical improvisation more accessible by allowing people to use fun gestures, taps, and the like to assemble beats. The software is not only for iPhone, but the powerful Nokia N95, too.

That story is worth checking out from the perspective of gestural music in general, not just iPhone or mobile apps:

Gestures, Mobile Music, and the “Low Floor” for Novices: ZooZBeat on iPhone, Nokia

The latest news: the guys have gotten funding, for one. More importantly to end users, ZOOZ Mobile is adding a sharing component, much like what we saw with Smule’s Leaf Trombone. New upgraded software adds a Latin component with Samba and Tejano rhythms and is ready-to-go for Cinco de Mayo. Sounds great to me – and the Latin market has been oddly ignored by a lot of musicians and developers. There are also new Pop, Hip-Hop, and Techno beats.

http://www.myzoozbeat.com/

Unusual Instruments

You’ve got plenty of faux-808 apps for the iPhone now. Our friend Henry Lowengard is taking a very different tack, with drone-friendly creations and detuned pianos. He describes this as well as I could, so here’s what he writes to tell us about.

Imagine a piano in a summer home on a small lake, far in the north of the Northeastern United States. Imagine the piano sitting there for 60 or 70 years, untuned and unmaintained.
The naturally prepared timbres of the Lake Piano are now here for you, each missing felt, each individual nuance of the key action and character-filled tones. Briskly recorded one summer in lo-fi, these samples also contain sounds of children, cats, screen doors, and the summer breeze.

The first version of Lake Piano is relatively minimal, Henry says, played as a double row of scrolling piano keys and the ambient sounds stolen from a videotape he recorded. Henry promises more playability and more ambience in an upcoming upgrade, but you’ll get that automatically when it’s done, so you can always go play now.

And for droning on and on – literally:

Hi Droning fans:
I just sent in my new droning app Droneo to Apple for approval, so with luck, it’ll be in the store next week.
I’ll send a more widely distributed email when that happens, but I though you (pl.) might like to take a look at the Droneo "instruction site", http://www.jhhl.net/iPhone/Droneo/ and listen to this tantalizing demo:
http://www.jhhl.net/iPhone/Droneo/Audio%20Examples/Mp3/complex1.mp3
It’s basically my iPhone SrutiBox simplified to 8 oscillator voices, allowing a little more CPU time for complexity, and removing the preconceptions about Carnatic music and harmonium sounds that Sruti box engenders with its somewhat unpronounceable name.

For more on the SrutiBox, see our previous story.

Okay, I’m exhausted. Back to the desktop.

And of course, for the best source of up-to-the-minute mobile music creation news – well beyond just iPhone – be sure to read:

Palm Sounds

Drum machine lovers, you now have the beat gear equivalent of Matt Harding and Where the Hell is Matt?. Kamoni, aka sonic creator, composer, and experimenter Micah Frank, takes his favorite devices out on the road, piecing them together into an epic YouTubular jam.

Doepfer and Korg, Elektron and Akai, plus a lot of other devices make their way around New York and Brooklyn and other parts of the world. Ableton I think figured into editing the video clips in time — thank you, Live, for video. I could point out individual devices, but then I’d ruin your fun, wouldn’t I?

Of course, this could be both emulated and expanded. We could perform a single rhythm, played by MPC and Machinedrum owners around the planet. (You could even get that laptop running on battery.)

I can see it now. Internets, go!

And yes, this does demonstrate where puremagnetik gets all those beats for their line of sampled things. Micah gets his hands on a lot of gear.

Updated: Replaced with a Vimeo link. Google seems to be having a bad week. We like Vimeo better for videos, anyway.

Jay Smith of Livid Instruments may be in the business of making controller hardware himself, but that doesn’t stop him from appreciate the knob-laden goodness of the NAMM show floor. Jay’s own gear reveals a not-so-secret love of knobs and buttons and faders, and if you’re into that sort of thing, this year’s NAMM music trade show had plenty to love – Akai’s APC40 controller for Live, Akai’s MPK keyboard, the Alesis MasterControl, Arturia’s Factory Experience controller for their soft synth emulations, and even another brutish-looking computer-in-a-keyboard, now with pads, from Open Labs.

The shots give you a particularly good feel for what the Akai APC40 is like up close and personal. It’s no accident that Jay himself is a VJ. I really imagine that a number of these devices might be brilliant for running live visuals, though we still have yet to find out exactly how the APC works. I assume it’ll run as a standard MIDI controller outside Live, but I’m unclear on the specifics of what that will mean.

Thanks to Jay for sharing these photos with CDM.

Now I can’t wait to get another look at Livid’s own controller line and what may be next for it; see its wooden crossfader below. Previously:

Hands-On: Livid’s New Ohm Controller, Custom Control Geared for Visualists

The mobile recording space keeps rolling along. Alesis is the latest company to try to turn the iPod into a usable digital recorder. With up to 160 GB of storage, the fact that the iPod is a mobile hard drive you may already own certainly has some appeal. But what about quality?

The Alesis ProTrack attempts to bridge that input divide with internal mics and XLR inputs:

• XY pattern stereo condenser mics (they look a lot like the mics on the Zoom H4)
• XLR and 1/4″ inputs (line/mic) with 48V phantom power
• 1/4″ stereo output, making this interesting as a playback device, too
• LEDs onboard (nice!), limiter
• Tripod mount, universal iPod dock

Recording is limited to 16-bit, 44.1kHz; the lack of 48kHz means a big downside for anyone doing video production. Our friend and roving podcaster / NPR reporter Brad Linder has the full story on his blog:
Alesis ProTrack turns your iPod into a pro audio recorder [Brad Linder's blog]

This does look quite like the Belkin Podcast Studio. I’m not totally sold on Alesis’ quality control of late, but I’m more sold on them than on Belkin, so we’ll see.

Edirol R-09 with more storage

If there’s one mobile recorder to rule them all, it may be Edirol’s trusty R-09. The big news there: support for bigger storage, in the form of firmware updates for the R-09 and new, higher-quality R-09HR. The updates add support for Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) cards, for up to 32GB in storage. The 32GB drives are still mighty pricey, but 16GB isn’t a bad sweet spot.

I hadn’t actually paid attention to the HR model, but it has some nice extras: dedicated analog input control, low-cut filter, limiter/AGC (Auto Gain Control), gain boost, and even a remote.

R-09 HR Product Page [Roland/Edirol]

The Edirol has only an 1/8″ mic jack, but I know people who’ve been very happy with it. It may not work as a primary recorder — for that you may be willing to sacrifice something bigger and pricier. But for quick and dirty jobs and internal mic use, it does look quite nice. I sometimes think I should’ve gotten it instead of the Zoom H4 I bought, but I’ll just save up for a real mic pre for the Zoom and go home happy.

Review: Tascam DR-1

The last bit of news from Brad: a quick review of Tascam’s entry to the increasingly-overcrowded handheld recorder market. Brad writes us:

Seems like a decent, but not great device for recording music and interviews. A friend of mine took one for a spin for a little while and ultimately decided to return it and get an Marantz PMD660. I’ve heard good things about the Olympus LS-10 though, and I might pick one up myself eventually as a backup for my trusty Sony PCM-D50.

Got all those models straight, kids?

The DR-1 does have a 1/4″ jack, though no XLR. Downsides: preamps sound a little disappointing (weak levels), there’s no real mono recording, and, well, a lot of competition. Here’s Brad’s review with sound samples:

A short review of the Tascam DR-1 [Brad Linder's blog]

US distributor Keyfax NewMedia reports that it has Yamaha’s Tenori-On in stock and shipping out now. (Pre-orders began at the beginning of May, but this is apparently the first the US unit has made it to our shows — unless you happened to win one from createdigitalmusic.com, that is, in April, in which case you know who you are.)

Every time I mention Tenori-On, despite the awe and lust it inspires in some musicians, someone raises the point of its somewhat retro-styled, simple sound bank. Fair enough: the minimal sounds are fantastic in the hands of creator Toshio Iwai and were specifically programmed and voiced to match his aesthetic. Other people, perhaps, not so much. So it’s interesting that reader Steven aka Nomad Cinema sends along this video (seen at top) of the Tenori-On paired with the absurdly deep luxury modular synth Kyma, along with a couple of beloved new analog synths. He writes:

In order to tap the real power of Yamaha’s new Tenori-on, it helps to pair it with external equipment capable of producing more satisfying sounds than the somewhat lackluster soundset included with the Tenori-on itself. In this video, no internal Tenori-on sounds were used whatsoever. Tenori-on is functioning purely as a sequencer with external equipment, including advanced sound-shaping from Kyma and analog synthesis from Alesis Andromeda and Dave Smith’s Prophet ‘08. Sequencer data coming from Tenori-on is processed in Ableton Live (utilizing midi scale and chord filters, as well as injecting some generative randomness) before reaching Kyma, Andromeda, and Prophet ‘08.

That to me remains the Tenori-On’s unique strength: to me it’s really an alternative step sequencer, exploded into an array of flashing lights and animated with game-like motion. This is to me also another way in which it isn’t a Monome, which feels more like an intelligent, programmable set of pads an an extension of your software, in comparison to the Tenori-On which seems to be re-imagining a giant pixel as a controller. I will be getting around to showing off some hands-on applications very soon, at long last.

I’m pleased to announce the first-ever CDM Giveaway. We’ve got over US$4,000 of hardware and software tools for music creation, and we’d like to give you the chance to win them. To do that, we’re holding a good, old-fashioned prize drawing — I’ve been warming up my true random number generator — so that all you have to do is enter for a chance to win. To better your odds, each prize will get a different winner.

CDM Giveaway Info Page; official rules (no purchase necessary).

Here’s what we’ve got:

Akai MPC500 mobile music workstation
Ableton Live 6 music production software
Alesis ControlPad drum pad controller
Glyph GT 050Q 250GB eSATA/USB/FW400/FW800 hard drive
Moog Music Moogerfooger FreqBox VCO effects box
Native Instruments Absynth 4 soft synth
Native Instruments Elektrik Piano soft synth
Numark Total Control DJ control surface
PreSonus FaderPort

…plus boxes of Ableton beanies and AudioMIDI.com Synth Legends DVDs. You can check everything out on the giveaway page.

And get some link love, too: Eligible residents of the United States can enter to win any one of these prizes. Unfortunately, for legal reasons we can’t extend the whole sweepstakes to international readers. To make up for it, we’ll be watching international entries for the best blogs, project pages, and music websites to feature on CDM, and we’ll send out Ableton beanies and/or DVDs to our favorite entries. (American readers, we’ll be watching your pages, too, so be sure to include your URLs when you enter.)

We’ve been putting this together for a while now and it’s been a lot of work, so I’m excited to be able to roll it out. We’ve hand-picked some of our favorite gear and software makers to partner with, or we wouldn’t be doing this.

Full details on the giveaway page. Enter now, because at the stroke of midnight following Monday, June 11, the contest is over. And I really want to get these boxes of gear and swag shipped. It’ll be a lot more fun out of the brown cardboard boxes, I’m sure.

Update: If you’re not from the US – please do fill out the form, if you include nothing other than your URL (so we can check out your site) and your country. (Nothing else is required.)

We’re really sorry we weren’t able to go global on this one for legal reasons (I try to explain why in comments). But that’s all the more reason to find out where you’re from. Server stats provide a very incomplete picture of what country people are from, and we would like to know. And if you include contact info, I might at least be able to get some of you some swag.

Few manufacturers are willing to invest in the development of a new hardware sequencer these days. That’s what makes Akai’s MPC500 special — it’s the latest (and smallest) incarnation of Akai’s renowned rhythm sequencer family.

Alas, it has several notable flaws. The baby MPC’s compact size forced Akai to remove 4 touch sensitive drum pads, leaving us with only 12 sounds per bank. That’s not a showstopper, but it will have an impact on the complexity of your grooves. Second, it has a minuscule old-school (and not in the good sense) 16 x 2 character LCD display. This means that the front panel had to be tweaked to “dumb it down.” There’s no reason to cheap out on something as important as the user interface, especially when off-the-shelf graphic LCD displays can be had for around $30 wholesale, even in relatively small quantities.

And while we’re at it, why not move beyond the “rhythm sampling” paradigm and include some serious synthesis and sample-looping capability under the hood? The sound generation hardware is already in the box, the sequencer is already there, and its not like Akai would be taking sales away from their (now deceased) line of hardware samplers.

But — when all is said and done — the biggest roadblock for potential purchasers looks to be the price. Harmony Central reports a list of $1299, and the street price seems to be around $800. That’s laptop territory, guys.

Akai MPC500 Music Production Center, Yo! (via Tom at Musicthing)

Novation is hoping you’ll bring their new Xiosynth mini-synth keyboard home, and to help give you an additional push, they’ve got a new online sampler keyboard plus lessons for learning synthesis techniques.

Have a listen to the patches on the Xiosynth with the Flash player below; try the z, x, and c keys on your QWERTY keyboard:

The Xiosynth mini-site has a series of synthesis “tutorial” podcasts that purport to teach you synthesis. Novation PR (who sent links along with banner ads that it apparently hopes us blogs will run in stories — fat chance) hopefully describe these thusly: “The renowned technicians from the longstanding Museum of Techno have taken up the challenge of producing a series of comprehensive tutorials on synthesis. Included in this thorough analysis is a comparison with other cutting edge products on the market, such as the RS2000, and consultation from highly acclaimed industry professionals.”

I’m hoping they’re being ironic. Let me translate: a couple of tripped-out blokes get drunk on sherry and fiddle around with a homebrew synth before calling up an international DJ/producer who tells them to just use cheezy presets instead. (What, you expected something else from a techno DJ?) Watch the amusing, if less than instructive, videos for yourself.

There’s only one problem. This video makes me far less interested in the Xiosynth as that ridiculous home-built box. I want the “most analog synth since World War I” with “one oscillator made out of fish.” It does make me wonder what sort of instructive synthesis how-tos I would make drunk.

Back to the … ahem … synthesizer, there’s now a fair range of “starter” synths at around US$600 or less. For beginners, these could make a great first syntheszier. For the rest of us, they could be a fun addition to the studio, especially if you’re like me and have neglected the hardware side of things while focusing on software. (Yes, I still prefer the flexibility of software, but having a tweakable instrument around that doesn’t require booting the computer has a certain amount of appeal, especially if it’s portable.) Your options are:

1. Novation Xiosynth: It’s ironic that Novation would push the Xiosynth on the basis of its presets, because some commenters have been disappointed by their somewhat generic sound. Program your own sounds, though, and this compact 8-voice polyphonic synth with arpeggiators and step sequencing and nicely laid-out controls looks tempting. It has a new synth engine descended from Novation’s excellent KS synth (as found on the X-Station), built-in arpeggiator, and a nice, portable design. Build quality on Novation has also been consistently superb (readers here have complained about the Korg MicroKorg, in contrast). The downside: no vocoder or external audio-input processing. But this is a great deal price-wise, particularly for Novation: US$329 for 25 keys, $399 for 49 keys, with an unusually powerful step sequencer not equaled elsewhere in this bunch.
2. Roland SH-201: Team CDM liked this synth from the moment it came out at NAMM in January. James of Retro Thing took to it even when no one else did. It’s considerably larger than the other options here, but with a huge payoff: it’s one of the first major synths in years that can be programmed entirely from onboard controls. Not so much as an LED display. There’s a phrase recorder, external audio input, and arpeggiator. (The arpeggiator also doubles as a psuedo-step sequencer.) It’s big, and there’s no vocoder as on the Alesis and Korg, but if physical control is what you want, it’s undoubtedly the best choice. (I’ve got one here; you’ll hear more about it soon.)
3. Korg MicroKorg: The Korg really launched this category, with a hugely-successful synth that sounds great and has a built-in vocoder with mic to boot. I talked to Jesse of Maroon5 about his when I interviewed him for Keyboard, and his was able to stand up to a brutal international tour and 30,000-person venues alongside a Moog Voyager. Readers here seem divided, though, between the Korg and Alesis synths. [Correction: I originally said the Korg lacked an arpeggiator/step sequencer, but it has a basic 8-step sequencer; thanks, BassTooth!]
4. Alesis Micron: Lee Sherman fell for this compact Alesis synth when he reviewed it for CDM: it’s got all the features you could want, and sounds terrific. I’m a little disappointed by the lack of onboard controls, though, which to me is the main reason to buy hardware instead of software. But on the basis of synth engine alone, the Micron is the one to beat (and the lack of controls was specifically to give this more portability than its larger sibling, the Ion). Check out Lee’s CDM hands-on, plus the Sound on Sound review from 1/05.
5. Korg microX: The most digitally-minded here, the microX is worth mentioning as it fits the low-cost, small-size mold of the others. The microX borrows the Triton’s HI synth engine, and includes the most sophisticated phrase-generating / polyphonic arpeggiator features of the lot here. You won’t get the emphasis on virtual analog programming or vocoders and the like, but that’s not the point; if a pattern-sequencing digital synth is more to your liking, this may be your best bet. It’s also the prettiest of these models, though weirdly Korg ships it with a construction pylon-orange carry case that looks like a cheap toolbox.

So there’s a quick overview of your options. As you can see, it’s not necessarily a question of which is best, but which is best for you. My personal favorite at the moment is the Roland SH-201 just because all of its programming features are exposed. Even for us software lovers, the occasional hardware can be a good change of pace when our eyes get tired of looking at the screen. But the Xiosynth may be the best bargain, in terms of its step sequencer, build quality, and sounds.

As for the Xiosynth, here’s more (see discussion in comments on each):
Xiosynth First Look
More Novation Xiosynth Details: Bargain Mono Synth/Controller

And one highlighted comment, from Nikolai:

The XioSynth has the same specs Synth-wise as the X-Station and KS-Rack series. They’re still sticking by the same old system of 3 oscillators with 17 waveforms each (Sine, Saw, Triangle, Square, White Noise, BP Noise, HP Noise, HBP Noise, Organ, Harpsichord, Electric Piano, Slap Bass, Rhodes Piano, Rhodes Tine, Clavinet, Whurly EP, and Analog Bass). It is 8 notes polyphonic and monotimbral, but most of the stuff you hear on Novation’s patch player are patches made in unison rather than mono or polyphonic in an attempt to make fatter sounds. The only new features they have are the Hybrid Mode (previously mentioned – split between MIDI controller and the onboard synth) and the X-Gator (which acts as a 16 or 32 step sequencer that allows you to control the volume of each arpeggiator step). The only catch-22 is that it does not have the ability to put the signal from Audio In through effects like the X-Station did. If it could, then this thing would probably be the ultimate synth for that price range. If they wanted to they could’ve thrown in a vocoder ability like the KS-Rack and they could seriously level the competition with Korg and Alesis in the mini-keys market.

Of course, who ever said this was the only competition? You can find plenty of affordable vintage synths on eBay with good sounds and hardware controls. CDM forum regular Michael Luna of Chicago just scored a Yamaha TX-7; see that thread for advice on starting with an FM synth. (And arguably, you can spend a lot more time digging deep into FM synthesis, which isn’t really covered by the synths here.)

Which is the best way to go? Discuss. (Chat here in comments or on CDM’s hardware forum.)

The Trigger iO is a trigger-to-MIDI percussion interface for drum triggers. It will go head to head with Roland’s TMC-6. There’s no predicting how good this will be until we see it, but from a marketing standpoint, it looks like a smart direction: whereas Roland modestly markets its MIDI trigger interface as a way of expanding a set of Roland V-Drum electronic drums, Alesis looks like it’s going after everyone. The package even includes the “lite” edition of the excellent BFD drum set from fxpansion. There’s an optional drum stand mount and lots of customization for presets, trigger settings and assignments, and so on. If the quality is there, the feature set looks great for performing digital drummers.

In the category of “things you hit,” Alesis has the ControlPad, a compact MIDI percussion pad. Note that you can really hit these with sticks, as opposed to the finger-trigger pads like M-Audio’s Trigger Finger. Again, Alesis’ strategy seems to be to remake Roland products so they’re less ugly, as Roland has an entire line of similar products. (Sorry, Roland, but you do have to admit, they are kind of ugly.) Other than offering a different color, though, I’ll be curious to see if Alesis can really diferentiate themselves here.

Updated from comments: these pieces have “was that a misprint?” low prices. US$199 for ControlPad and US$149 for Trigger iO (though you’ll of course need triggers to go with the latter). The low prices could definitely make these devices a player.

Alesis has just dropped the list price of the Fusion to US$999 for the 30-lb. 6HD model, and people are snapping them up quick. Steve Fortner’s extensive test on Keyboard. Executive summary: it ain’t no cheap OASYS killer, but “the value is downright dramatic” even without considering the hard disk multitrack recorder. Great piano sounds, great analog modeling, and cheap, though the sampled sounds are lackluster (that’s not been an Alesis strong suit), and the “physical modeling” section is just winds and reeds, though interesting ones.

Also worth reading: Keyboard did a deep behind-the-scenes tour of how the Fusion was designed. So for all of you wondering about the unusual, curved design, now you can see the design sketches and hear the original story. (Here’s a tip, though: don’t judge until you’ve seen the Fusion in person. You might still hate it, but the effect of its looks are very different in the flesh than on the Web.)

Personally, I’ll spend my cash on a spectacular controller keyboard and stick to soft synths (I’m already replacing an Alesis QS-8), but this is worth a look.