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

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.

What qualifies as a dinosaur? “Not all synthesizers qualify for the Dinosaur Crossgrade offer. As the name implies, Dinosaur stands for a piece of musical hardware that has a certain vibe to it just when you say its name. It’s easy to imagine that such a piece of synthesizer history must have cost thousands of dollars back in the seventies or eighties. It certainly has a bunch of knobs on the panel and it certainly has a 3-5 octave keyboard. Well, maybe it has no integrated keyboard but a weird bunch of spaghetti hanging in front of it. Or patch cords, as they called it.”

Okay, let’s be honest. This is all supposed to be a marketing gimmick, and sending in a photo of the right kind of synth will earn you a US$50 coupon off of Zebra. Theoretically, the whole thing could be a statement about how software synthesizers allow richer sonic capabilities via a more programmable interface at a far cheaper price than pricey, bulky hardware synths once did — and that would be true.

But what you get, of course, is pages of gear pr0n:

Dinosaur Crossgrade Gallery

Hey, we can be software synth aficionados and still love that old hardware, right? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pull up a beach chair and sip a Cosmo with an old E-MU.

Software Ubersynth Shootout: It’s heating up a bit here, with Native’s just-announced Absynth4 and Massive, VirSyn’s TERA, Zebra2, and synths like Cakewalk’s Rapture. Each has a different take, but each seeks to redefine how synths work in software. Which synths would you want to see duke it out in this category?

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.

The RED Type A Tube Mic is one gorgeous microphone. It’s also a unique design: you can interchange different capsules for different recording situation, all without ever turning off the mic. (That’s right: you can actually hot-swap capsules.) There’s a serious tube inside: a “hand-selected” ECC88 vacuum tube.

This mic isn’t cheap at US$1345, but that’s nothing compared to what some similar mics can cost. Once you have the mic, the capsules are relatively affordable, starting at US$245. Now, I won’t make a recommendation on this kind of mic, but you have my permission to go seek out your local enabler — I mean, erm, audio expert — and ask him/her whether this is worth it. If you can afford a luxury mic like this, do send pictures and let us know how it treats you.

Pictured below: included accessories. Red says these are a “custom-built flight case, Red’s high-definition tube mic cable, a shock mount and the innovative PowerStream power supply, which not only insures ultra-stable performance but features a soft-start feature that maximizes tube life and minimizes startup time.” I see something that looks like a flask. (Yeah, I know, I know, it’s the power supply; maybe Red can introduce a specially-branded flask, which would be all I could afford.)

Vintagemicrophone.com

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