Updated: PreSonus burned the midnight oil to get ready. See bottom.

Word from developers confirms what I had suspected: developers were as surprised as we were to learn Apple was shipping a new operating system on August 30.

If you have to ask yourself whether you want to upgrade, then the simple answer is – don’t, not yet. And via Christopher Wimbrow on Twitter, here’s the first tool that we can confirm will outright break if you jump too soon – PreSonus hardware. From their forum, earlier today, PreSonus’ Nick RICK Naqvi tells a user (unofficially):

Right now, we are planning to have support for Snow Leopard by the end of October. We had originally heard they were going to release it in September, so our plan was to test it thoroughly and then release a new driver about 30 days later. They moved up the date to August 28 so it looks like we will be a little more than a week later than we expected.

Please note, if you update your OS, your PreSonus hardware will not work.

If you have to install it to play with, I’d recommend doing a partition. But leave Leopard on it so that you can continue to record.

Ouch. I’ll let you know if this gets fixed sooner. And remember, this is an operating system that is being tested under a Non-Disclosure Agreement; more incompatibilities are likely to appear next week.

This illustrates a problem, too. Shipping an application early is great news. Shipping an operating system early – with countless hardware and software vendors pulling time from other work (like new features) to keep their stuff working – not so great news.

Fortunately, you have power over your computer. Ignore that Apple email that appeared on Monday saying Snow Leopard is “In store or at your door Friday,” and consider it a bleeding-edge operating system. Assume that for most users, the current build of 10.5 represents the best compromise of Mac stability, compatibility, and features – at least for the time being.

UPDATE – PreSonus WILL have beta drivers. And like the vast majority of vendors, real stable versions are expected in a few weeks.

Earlier in the week, I was told that we weren’t going to have Snow Leopard driver until October, but our engineers worked overtime the last week or so to release a beta driver that is fully functional. We have tested it internally and it is working well and allows for daisychaining of interfaces and full feature functionality. This driver will work with all of our Firestudio Family Interfaces including:

Firestudio 2626
Firestudio Project
Firestudio Lightpipe
Firestudio Tube
Firestudio Mobile
StudioLive1642

Our other interfaces are class compliant and are going to be immediately supported on Snow Leopard:

Firebox
Inspire1394
FP10 / Firepod
AudioboxUSB

Lastly, our new recording software, StudioOne is also ready for Snow Leopard. Here’s a link to the StudioOne page: http://www.presonus.com/products/SoftwareDetail.aspx?SoftwareId=11

If you are an early adopter, let us know your experiences.

Trade shows are a funny thing, in that you tend to learn about stuff you can’t have yet – and that there’s a sudden, overwhelming load of new press releases. So, let’s try to keep things navigable with a walk through some of the most significant stuff coming out at the massive Messe trade show in Frankfurt, Germany this week.

I can’t say this was a mind-blowing week by any stretch – I’ve been perfectly happy to stay here in New York, thanks. (Germany, may I ask, why is that you don’t hold events in Berlin?) But there is some news, so let’s have a look:

Dark Energy is a standalone analog synth from Doepfer. For those of us who have looked enviously at big Doepfer racks, but couldn’t afford / find space for / lift them, this is huge news. It’s a monophonic, standalone synth with USB and MIDI (and, naturally, control voltage), weighing just over a kilogram. Once you get beyond the MIDI interface, everything is analog. VCO (triangle-based, FM, PWM control), VCF (24 dB low pass) with external audio input, VCA, LFO1 and LFO2, ADSR. It’s basically a standalone version of the A-111-5 module. As such, it’s a bit limited compared to what’s out there, but there’s still a lot you can do with it, and at EUR400 it’s a Doepfer you can more easily afford.

Dark Energy Product Page

I actually wish they hadn’t used the vintage-style look, because I like the distinctive, Cyberman-silver look of the Doepfer racks. (Maybe a Light Energy version for those who agree?) But that doesn’t make your credit card any less safe from this drool-inducing monster.

Speaking of drivers, PreSonus announced today that they’re allowing users to register for open beta drivers. They’re hardly the first to do this — M-Audio has done the same historically, even if I’m not thrilled with their pace at the moment. But this raises an interesting question: could opening a beta help improve driver quality and get updates in users’ hands faster? Do audio users really want to "beta-test" drivers in the first place? (I guess that depends on how mature the "beta" release is.) We’ll have to see how PreSonus fares.

How is PreSonus doing with released drivers? Reasonably well from what I can see — and what I’ve heard. But they do have some blips. There isn’t a Vista driver for their FaderPort or V-Fire, and there’s no Leopard driver for V-Fire though the rest of their product line is up-to-date with Vista and Leopard.

How have PreSonus drivers treated you? I see a number of improvements in terms of stability on Mac OS on their downloads page via recent releases.

This is the new Steinberg control surface. (See the hands-on video at SonicState.) It’s built to integrate out of the box with Cubase 4, which if you’re a Cubase 4 user should be good. You or I might give it a name like “CubaseControl” or something, but Steinberg has seen fit to call it the CC 121, which sounds like it was lifted off of a MIDI specification. No matter — they can call it Eustice if it’s a good controller.

But that’s not the only odd thing about the CC 121. There’s a little light that goes on to say it’s “Cubase Ready.” (The marketing materials say this gives it “instant plug and play.” I’m not entirely sure why you need an LED for that, but I guess it’s comforting or something.) Then there’s the control layout, which has so much blank space that it looks a little like someone dropped a stack of encoders and buttons on a piece of paper and glued everything where it fell.

But the oddest thing about the CC 121 is the controller choices themselves. The whole point of previous single-fader control surfaces — at least, so I thought — was creating a compact device that can sit by your mouse. The point of the CC 121 seems to be, well, EQ. There are a full twelve dedicated EQ encoders. For everything else, there’s … uh … one knob. (It’s the one that says “VALUE” on the right side.) It is supposed to be a really smart knob, at least. Here’s how Steinberg describes it:

“Ultra-precision Advanced Integration controller knob with ‘point and control’ support: controls any visual Cubase 4 parameter, internal FX setting or VSTi parameter using mouse pointer selection”

Translation: you can click on any setting in Cubase and control it with our encoder, one setting at a time. Want to control more than one setting at a time? Say, delay time and wet/dry mix? Sorry. There are four buttons so you can change the function of the one value knob, but not the obvious solution of having any more than one knob. I know what you’re thinking. There’s blank space all over this unit, so why couldn’t you just have four “Advanced Integration Controller Knobs”? I think I have the answer: if you did that, you wouldn’t have room for the “Cubase Ready” light.

You may think I’m just using this opportunity to beat up on Steinberg and be snarky, but I’m not.

The Magic of Third Parties and Broad Compatibility

No, on the contrary, this illustrates something I’ve suspected for a long time. Just as most screenwriters shouldn’t direct their own films, software developers shouldn’t necessarily make hardware controllers for their own software. Sometimes the magic works; sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, having choices beyond those the software vendor chose is a good thing. Third-party hardware can work with more than one app (in case you ever use something other than Cubase), it can provide more choices (in case your needs are different than someone else), and it provides the much-needed perspective beyond the folks who built the software. You may not get the brand name of your DAW on the unit, but smart software can still make the out-of-box experience just as integrated. That doesn’t mean I think the software vendors shouldn’t try — as Alan Kay is often attributed as saying, “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” But, even assuming he did actually say that, and assuming we should all listen to him, he didn’t say that you had to make that hardware for your own software, or that you’d be successful all of the time.

Someone out there I’m sure really, really loves tweaking EQ. Congratulations: the CC 121 is for you. For everyone else, you have not one but four excellent choices: Novation’s SL line, Frontier’s AlphaTrack and TranzPort, and PreSonus’ FaderPort. They all integrate fairly automatically with Cubase (even older versions which are incompatible with the CC 121), and give you lots of control. And that’s just compact control surfaces.

Not only that, but Novation, Frontier, and PreSonus all make hardware that works with other stuff not from Steinberg. The AlphaTrack, for instance, just added extensive support for GarageBand 4 (adding to a long list of other supported software), plus software you probably haven’t even heard of — SAWStudio by RML Labs and MultitrackStudio from Bremmers Audio Design. SAWStudio support didn’t grab the Messe headlines the way a Steinberg control surface did, but I’ll bet if you’re a SAWStudio user, you’re really excited. And that’s the point: we choose our software personally, so we should choose our hardware the same way.

Here’s a quick review of the other compact control surfaces available — not only for Cubase, but a lot of other software, as well:

Some of my favorite audio interfaces are now available for Windows Vista. The INSPIRE 1394, FireBox, FP10 and FirePod are now all available for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista. A bit late? Yes, but at this point, I care more about quality than punctuality. Anybody with the PreSonus boxes and Vista, we’d love to know how they’re working.

PreSonus Vista Downloads

Note that when you’re talking about FireWire, you’re talking ASIO and the new driver model under Vista. “WaveRT”, technology that allows greater audio performance of some hardware under Vista, is a feature that’s not supported by any FireWire or USB devices. (GearWire posted a splashy headline saying Native Instruments wasn’t supporting WaveRT, when really that just translated to “NI Only Makes USB Interfaces.” I can forgive the confusion, given the various Vista driver complexities, but let’s just say — look for Vista-compatible and leave it at that.)

I still can’t see running 64-bit Vista, even for a marginal performance gain, as it knocks out some significant hardware and software compatibility. But, as Craig Anderton just observed in his preview of Cakewalk SONAR 7 for EQ, one advantage of the new SONAR is that it’s basically a complete 64-bit music toolkit, with some decent bundled instruments and the awesome Z3ta+ synth.