No matter how many music tech toys you have, no matter how many music tech toys you’ve ever seen, Nine Inch Nails still has more. Michael Hetrick writes to point us to his latest post over on KVR:

Total Gear-Porn on new NIN site [KVR Audio Forums]

It’s especially nice to see some of the no-prisoners, raunchy, tube beauty of Metasonix in there.

Of course, we’ve seen Trent and NIN deliver the gear lust before:

Hotel Room Studio: NIN’s Rack-Mounted Dual G5s

Inside NIN’s Studio on Audiohead

Zebra 2.0 is the deep, rich “everything, plus the kitchen sink”, “next-generation” synth. It was a wildly powerful subtractive + additive synth when it first came out, and version 2.0 adds FM capabilities, basic modeling, and wavetable, plus a mini-synth for learning and quickie programming called the Zebralette. All of this is packaged into a truly attractive and innovative UI from one of the masters of musical UI design. Now out of beta, the full-blown Mac/Windows instrument (AU, VST, Universal Binary for Mac) is just US$199.

The result is a powerful “modular synth without wires.”

Here’s CDM’s Adrian Anders’ take: “I tried out the demo during its beta period. All I have to say is wow. It sounds great, and at $199 it carries alot of bang for the buck when compared to other semi-modulars like Tera and Absynth.”

Or, as BT says: “the new Zebra s*** looks aaaaaamazing!”

Throw out that old synth?

Adrian points out that Urs Heckmann is doing something a bit unorthodox: featuring a gallery of vintage, synth hardware that’s supposedly been retired by Zebra2.

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.

Watch a behind the scenes video of film/TV composer, producer, and electronic musician James L Venable as he’s working on the final touches to the score for “Clerks 2″, in theaters now:

“Music Lessons” with James Venable, via Train Wreck: Video Chronicle of Clerks II Production

Venable is best known for the D&B inspired theme for “Powerpuff Girls”, as well as various Kevin Smith/View Askew scores starting with “Clerks: The Series”.

Pretty phat pad, check out special apperances by the JP-8080, Pod XT, [Logic Pro], and racks upon racks of gear.

Not to mention Scott “Snowball” Moser rockin’ the kalimba (thumb piano).

Check out this studio:

Ed: Brilliant composer, dream gig, dream studio, gear p-rn — what could make us happier? Adrian thought the software was Cubase SX, but it’s definitely Logic Pro 7. (I have to get that right; it’s my primary DAW aside from Ableton Live.) Logic looks like it’s primarily being used just to track external MIDI gear, from what I can see, and Venable appears to be checking scored ideas against both a paper manuscript and (in some instances) the notation view in Logic.

Any more gear spotting? (You know you want to.) -PK