Black Friday, named originally for the day on which retailers typically broke even for the first time in the year (think black ink), has become a holiday for sales in the US. I’ve seen a handful of deals even in our world of music making tech; here are a few of the best.

Native Instruments has a sale through Monday that cuts prices in half on individual Komplete instruments and effects. Note that this is just for a la carte additions; the bundles are priced the same as always. But if there’s a particular tool you’ve had your eye on, this could be a great time to buy.

Twisted Tools have a 33% off sale on for their unusual sound-making creations.

Apple isn’t keen on sales, generally, so this is their one of the year: you get modest discounts on computers, an unusually-good iPad discount, and accessory sales. Some of these are decent if you’re in the market, though you’ll want to compare against academic pricing if you qualify for that:
Apple Black Friday

If you prefer Windows to Mac OS, Rain Computers have a deal through the weekend on all their machines through Best Buy, with discounts of up to $200 off:
2010 Holiday Savings Event

Our friends at Dijitalfix (who host our Handmade Music series in New York) have set up a discount for CDM readers for $50 off the Danish AiAiAi TMA-1 headphones. I’m writing this up soon. Through Sunday, just mention CDM at their stores in Brooklyn or Manhattan, or to make life easier, they’ve gone ahead and dropped the price to $149 online:
TMA-1 headphones @ Dijitalfix

Spotted some other good deals? Let us know in comments.

Rain Recording make audio-ready notebooks – that is, they’re pre-tested to function well with audio software, with Windows tweaks, driver selection, and configuration all chosen and tested for music and visual production, and no crapware installed. They’re one of a handful of music-friendly vendors that does that (see also: PCAudioLabs, etc.). Given that the PC music making experience can range from awesome to awful depending on which hardware and (particularly) drivers you’re on, that’s no small matter.

Rain has always styled themselves a premium brand. But the latest Diablo really does go to extremes spec-wise. It’ll cost you – base price starts at US$4000, though that’s not as high-end as these sort of desktop specs commanded more recently. Intel and AMD/ATI really are economizing, even at the high end. But cost aside, this machine really maxes out components. You have to admire the results:

• Quad CPUs: up to 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Quad 12MB/1066 MHz “Montevina” Centrino 2 — the most powerful brain you can put in a laptop right now
• Up to 8 GB DDR3 RAM (and if you boot a 64-bit operating system like Vista x64 or – cough – Linux, you can use all of it)
• ATI Radeon MR HD3870/512M DDR3 RAM — just about the most powerful GPU (and some people do prefer ATI to NVIDIA), giving you up to two discrete GPUs
• 17″ display at 1920×1200
• Optional dual 320GB 7200RPM SATA drives with 16MB cache
• 1x eSATA, 3X USB2, 3xFireWire (yeah, you read that right – one onboard FireWire, plus two more using a bundled, TI chipset PCI ExpressCard that pops into that slot, also standard on the lower-cost LiveBook)
• 1 x HDMI, 1 x VGA, card reader, headphone out, mic in, gigabit RJ45 Ethernet, fingerprint scanner

The key specs, of course, are the quad CPU, that ATI GPU, and the maxed-out-res 17″ display. Given those specs, the weight actually isn’t all that bad – 8 lbs. with the 12-cell battery (which you’re going to want, as this machine is likely to suck up electricity in a hurry).

You can put audio on a dedicated chipset (the TI, which isn’t currently available from Apple). You can run two drives in RAID-0, or opt for solid-state drives (which have been improving in performance and value at a pretty impressive rate). And the ATI chipset means this is a pretty powerful visualist / visual production workstation – that also happens to be faster than a lot of high-end gaming laptops, for your off-hour enjoyment..

This is usually the point where someone says, “but do I need all that power to –”

No. You don’t. This is a bit like buying a souped-up supercar — and likely to be about as fuel-efficient. You might “need” this if you want to play Crysis between Pro Tools sessions. (I’ll let you bend the definition of “need” there.) That’s not to say you won’t get a lot of performance out of this, though, and it’s nice to know you have this option if you want it. The GPU only really impacts visuals at the moment, but with the push to do more processing on the GPU, that could change soon even for audio.

Actually, maybe the reason Rain keeps misspelling the GPU as “discreet” is that you can “discreetly” buy one of these and hope your significant other / the IRS / your conscience doesn’t notice you just bought a killer gaming rig as your (ahem) pro audio machine.

For mere mortals, I like the $1999-base-price LiveBook from Rain. It actually gives you a fair amount of this performance, all of the same I/O specs, and compares favorably on specs against Apple’s rival (including offering some serious FireWire and expansion the Apple lacks). And, incidentally, it isn’t a bad gaming machine, either, in case you want to join some of the CDMers the next time they fire up Left 4 Dead.

I do find all of this interesting, though, on two points. One, if any had doubts that you could buy a pre-configured PC and know that it’ll work reliably on audio tasks, Rain ought to put those doubts to rest. I’ve tested the previous Diablo and LiveBook, and out of the box they were ideal audio machines – no tweaks required. It’s absolutely possible to build or buy a mainstream PC that does that, but the luxury of knowing someone at the other end has actually tried running Ableton Live and SONAR sure is nice. (Heck, that’s not necessarily true of Apple – as people found out the hard way during some buggy early releases of Leopard, happily since fixed.)

This also demonstrates that said PC vendors don’t have to fall behind the “enthusiast” custom builders who cater to gamers – if you want to push the envelope on your laptop for audio and visuals and not just games, you can do that, too.

I certainly know not everyone can — or should — spend $4 grand and up on this particular machine. But just like that supercar, it’s sort of nice to know it’s there. And hopefully it can start to serve as a wake-up all that there are communities pushing their PC to the bleeding edge who aren’t primarily gamers.

Diablo Product Page [Rain Recording]

Diablos don’t hang around long, but I do hope to get my hands on a current-generation Rain soon; stay tuned.

Speaking of Rain Recording, Rain is about the only vendor I’ve found that offers a 2-port FireWire ExpressCard known to work well with audio interfaces. Now, your mileage may vary depending on the chipset in your laptop, but based on what I’ve been hearing, this looks like a good option. I’ve also seen a cheap (US$30) card floating around some random Internet vendors; it’s so cheap, I’m probably going to buy one just to see if it works. I’ll report back.

2 Port FireWire Express Card (formerly ADS Tech PYRO1394a) [Rain Recording]

I get nothing out of this, for the record; Rain actually hopes you’ll get this card with one of their laptops, but I’m just as curious to hear how it works on other machines. Of course, this would be a nice add-on not only for PCs, but also potentially for MacBook Pro users wanting dedicated FW400 ports and the TI controller – theoretically, at least. Let us know what happens if you take the plunge.

If you’ve had experience with different chipsets and ExpressCard slots on Mac or PC, we’d love to hear it. And I hope to offer my own tests soon.

Updated: The StarTech EC13942 also shares the TI chipset and is available from a number of vendors if that’s a vendor you prefer. It’s the only one endorsed by PreSonus aside from this former ADS Tech card that Rain sells — and may give you better results with other, non-PreSonus hardware, based on reports I’ve read. See PreSonus’ official word on the matter:

Presonus Hardware Compatibility: Approved Chipsets [PDF]

One of the things that attracts me to computers: choice. So it’s worth noting that you do have choices when looking to laptops, PCs included. (This sounds like those lame “We know you have a choice in your travel plans” announcements you get on airplanes. Unlike those choices, though, these are genuinely different – thankfully.)

So let’s cut straight to the chase: there is a choice between Mac and PC, and there are choices on PC that keep it competitive (to say nothing of Linux). If you’re looking for a rig that runs PC-only tools like FL Studio, and you want more hardware choice to get there without being locked into a Mac, Boot Camp, and an extra Windows license, you have options.

Rain Recording has just introduced a revised pro laptop offering. You may have seen the announcement around, but I did get to talk to them while they were developing this, so I want to offer my own, semi-biased reflections. Rain is a custom system builder focused on music and audio applications. They and a handful of vendors like them do test their configurations with actual audio software, which isn’t generally the case with bigger PC laptop makers. And they offer music and audio-specific support, beyond even what Apple can offer.

Now, that said, I have to say I haven’t actually been that blown away by what custom builders have been able to do in the laptop space. The problem is, builders don’t have the kinds of options with laptops that they do with desktops; traditionally, you’ve needed huge manufacturing scale to get many choices. Even a lot of big brands get someone else to make their machines, so custom builders really face an uphill battle with limited barebones systems. Rain and others have put together some interesting systems, but at a price premium and generally lagging some of the hardware options on the mainstream laptops. For that reason, many PC users have chosen to stick it out with “commodity” machines and try to navigate to the ones that do music well.

The current LiveBook, though, is the first that I think really makes a custom builder competitive – and it’s the first I’ve started to covet for my own desk. It’s pricier than some mass-market machines out there, but it is competitive, and with far more of a guarantee for audio performance and reliability.

• Processors are now available up to 3.06GHz on the Centrino 2 “Montevina” – so it’s about as current as you can get architecturally
• Prices start at US$1999 – and that’s already a pretty fully-loaded machine
• The body is all-aluminum and offers a laser-etched case
• The GPU is no slouch: NVIDIA 9600M GT 512M standard, with a healthy 1680×1050 resolution on the 15.4” monitor (which I think is about perfect – any higher is hard to see, any lower cuts down on real estate)
• Lots of ports: three FireWire 400 ports (with the standard ExpressCard plugged in), one eSATA, a card reader, HDMI and VGA out, and two USB 2.0 ports
• Fast, audio-ready drives: up to 320GB 7200RPM (there’s also now a solid-state option, but I prefer conventional hard drives for their price/performance/capacity ratio)

This issue of specs has already started a debate, even among Mac users. And that’s the world we live in: PC buyers are considering Macs, and at least a handful of Mac users are seriously considering PCs. (At the very least, it’s not uncommon to find people with both.)

From the angry thread about FireWire missing in the (non-Pro) MacBooks, one MacRumors reader points to this very Rain LiveBook. Here’s what I’d put in the pros column:

• eSATA is very useful for high-speed storage (you could add it to the MacBook Pro, admittedly)
• The Rain has a TI chipset for its ExpressCard-provided FireWire, which has been more stable for audio performance – even on Mac OS
• Rain has up to 8 GB RAM, and with 64-bit Windows you can use it
• Blu-ray is an option
• You get a dedicated numeric keypad, which is a big boon for shortcuts – think Sibelius on the road, for instance (the notation editor relies on the numeric keypad for quick input)
• For some, Mac OS is the big draw – but for others, Windows is, depending I think largely on the apps you want to run if not everything you use is cross-platform

Don’t get me wrong: I think the Apple machines stay really competitive. The I/O gripes aside, the new machines are pretty remarkable. And you lose a lot going to Windows from Mac OS – Core Audio and built-in inter-app and over-network MIDI, for instance. On the other hand, I’m perfectly happy running FL Studio, SynthMaker, SONAR, Vegas, and Sound Forge on my Windows laptop and not having to use Boot Camp on a Mac to get there, and with solid ASIO drivers, I can get terrific performance from Windows. I don’t personally agree with the conventional wisdom that makes people just “default” to either choice – I think the choices are interesting.

Specs aside, Rain really does test every configuration with audio software, and they think about the impact of specific drivers and components. That’s not so much of an issue on the Mac, but part of the variability of quality on the PC has absolutely been about certain configurations and driver issues causing problems. You can get audio software pre-installed from Rain, you can call Rain about audio questions, and they’ll even install Windows XP for you, if you like. (I’ve been to New Jersey and seen Rain’s facility and talked to their testers. Another vendor offering similar services is California-based PCAudioLabs – they’re also worth checking out; I’ve heard nothing but good things from people using machines from both makers, which says something, too.)

This comes back to the question of what your ideal configuration would be. If I had my dream machine on this LiveBook, I’d have a couple more USB2 ports on the LiveBook, and DVI or mini-DisplayPort plus TV out for video. But it is a nice-looking system. Rain will certainly be hearing my feedback, and they do offer a fair number of custom options.

Interestingly, ASUS and Intel have teamed up to do a site where they get communities voting on what they want from a laptop, called WePC.com. It’s the opposite of Apple’s design process – though I suppose, arguably, it could result in The Homer Effect. (Episode of the Simpsons in which Homer designs a car and gets something … well, overdesigned. But Homer didn’t know anything about cars. Odds are, as a computer musician, you actually do know what you want and need.) Anyway, just so we’re heard, do go vote for audio stuff.

The bottom line for me: I don’t think we always benefit from someone else choosing what we need.

It’s really not worth debating which laptop choice is better, because there’s not an answer to that question. Laptops – even Macs – are bundles of literally thousands of detailed hardware decisions, and I’ve never seen two users doing exactly the same thing with their machines. That means it’s almost impossible to get a machine that’s absolutely perfect, anyway; it’s more about finding the right compromise. And OS arguments tend to devolve into meaningless debates. The actual internals of what makes operating systems work is so technical and involved, it would take a lot more than a few lines to talk about with any accuracy.

But it’s not about which is better; it’s which is better for you. So, instead, I’ll ask: got a laptop you love, Mac or PC? In the market for a new machine, economic downturn be damned? Which one are you thinking? And what would your perfect machine look like – within the realm of possibility?

Disclosure: I recently bought a cheap ASUS (pronounced ah-SOOS) laptop to replace a sudden failure of a machine. (I got an M51Sn-C1; more on that later.) I own a MacBook which I use pretty heavily, too. I’m writing stories for Rain. Heck, I just generally like computers – and I’ve got some gripes for every OS and hardware maker out there. So, like you, I’m biased about everything because I live and create on these machines – more hours than I sleep, I think.

Despite its quirks, Windows can be a wildly underrated OS for music. Of course, that has little to do with the way it works out of the box. It’s a matter of tweaking your setup so you reshape it into a finely-tuned musical tool. And I believe in sharing that info, because ultimately you should be able to make music on whichever OS you choose.

Rain Recording, a custom PC vendor that specializes in building systems for music and creative work, asked me to write up some of my favorite tools for just that job. For the first part, I looked at the unpleasant stuff — tools for troubleshooting your system and keeping it operating at maximum efficiency.

Part 2 is more fun — the goodies that actually help your musical workflow. I kept this entirely to utilities for MIDI and control, but thanks to the effort of some passionate musician-programmers, that winds up being an impressive toolkit. Quite a few items are Windows-only. (I do actually intend to cover Mac OS and Linux, too, but Windows stacked up pretty well.)

My picks, all free, donationware (and do donate and support these tools!), or relatively cheap:

1. MIDI-OX: This is usually the first utility I install on any PC — it’s a do-everything MIDI monitor and MIDI-processing utility, for watching messages, troubleshooting, and performing various processing tasks. Donationware.

2. MIDI-Yoke: Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t have built-in inter-app communication between apps using MIDI, but MIDI-Yoke performs the task elegantly. (Note, Processing lovers: it also works with Java, so this can allow you to build wild interfaces for music in Processing that control other apps.) Donationware.

3. Bome MIDI Translator: A fantastic tool for creating custom MIDI mappings, translating MIDI to QWERTY keystrokes (and back again), and building rules for performance. Prices range from free to EUR59 for end-user releases, but this is one spending money on.

4. SendSX from Bome sends System Exclusive data. Free.

5. Bome’s Mouse Keyboard gives you an on-screen, clickable interface for controlling synths — essential for when you’re doing some last-minute synth programming and set editing on the go. (Yes, like if you decide to make a last-second tweak in the hotel room before a gig.) Free.

6. Edrum Monitor This tool is useful enough for drums alone, with powerful features for adapting input from electronic drum kits and drum sensors for better accuracy. But they didn’t stop there: with deep data monitoring tools, visual meters for calibration, and support for keyboard, mouse, and joystick inputs, this is just an insane do-everything tool that deserves its own category. Donationware.

7. Jack for Windows An inter-app or even inter-computer audio server, ported from Linux. Linux does Jack better, but if you can’t bear to part with your Windows software, it’s worth testing this – and hopefully someone can help the talented Jack team support and develop it further on the Windows OS. Free.

8. Wormhole2: Think Portal for your host of choice: insert this VST plug-in, and you can route audio to and from different apps, different PCs, or even between Macs and PCs easily. Finally, you can bridge the platform divide and the Mac can lie down with the Windows PC happily. This began as commercial software from Plasq, but it’s now free and open source.

9. MCmu: Emulate Mackie Control with devices that don’t support it. Make devices that do support Mackie Control better. Get the controller power you need with apps like Ableton Live and SONAR. Brilliant stuff. EUR39.

10. OSCGlue: Broadcast OpenSoundControl messages from within a host, ideal for gluing together music software and live visuals. Free, from the vvvv community.

11. WMIDI: Transmit MIDI from Wacom (or other brand) tablet input, complete with tilt and pressure, to turn your graphics tablet into an expressive musical controller. Free.

12. GlovePIE: Somehow I left this out of my original round-up. Take joysticks, gamepads, mice, keyboards, MIDI input devices, Wiimotes, and other devices, output MIDI, keystrokes, and other forms of control (even OSC). It’s my favorite software for control input/output. Requires some scripting, but there are some good sample scripts; hope to post more soon. Free.

Full details and more commentary (plus some additional picks):

Essential Toolkit for Windows – Part 2: (Mostly) Free Musical Utilities for Power Users [Rain Recording Pro]

Previously:
10 Free Non-Musical Windows Software Every Musician Should Use

Of course, this is just a short list of my personal favorites. Any I left out, Windows users?

Any computer – Mac, Windows, and Linux – can experience degraded audio experience pretty fast if a background task starts stealing CPU or a driver is misbehaving. In contrast, a fully-tweaked Windows machine, equipped with a set of tools to diagnose potential problems, can be rock-solid for audio performance. That’s an especially big deal for those of us using computers for live music.

I think a lot of people’s Windows experience is especially colored by bad drivers, overzealous antivirus and security software they don’t actually need, and the crapware installed by many PC vendors. I know I had that experience when I came back to Windows a few years ago, following a long hiatus. (I’m now cross-platform.) I did what many people do: installed some ridiculous, bloated security suite from Symantec. I was blown away by how fast Windows was when I just turned the darned thing off. Linux and Mac OS are happily not cursed by these beasts, but any computer music setup, regardless of platform, can benefit from tuning what’s running and making sure music software comes first.

I recently put together a list of essential Windows tools for Rain Recording, one of a handful of custom PC builders that focus on music and audio customers. The first part of the list doesn’t include any music software per se – these are just essential parts of my PC tool belt to keep things running smoothly.

All of these tools are free, so they’re well worth a download.

The quick list:

1. Microsoft Process Explorer, at SysInternals: This should be your first stop for keeping an eye on CPU activity, watching what processes are active, and keeping your CPU fully free to focus on audio processing. The whole SysInternals site is an essential resource for Windows troubleshooting and information, too.

2. DPC Latency Checker: Getting unexplained audio glitches and dropouts on your PC? A lot of the time, hardware problems with other hardware may actually be the culprit. DPC Latency Checker performs a metric on Deferred Procedure Calls, a symptom of misbehaving hardware and drivers. Even a slightly-unseated PCI card can cause issues, so software isn’t always to blame.

3. Enabled/disabled VST folders: For VST plug-ins, I maintain an “experimental” folder of everything I’m playing with and then a “known safe” configuration. Then I keep a stable, installed directory I can point my hosts at.

4/5. Revo Uninstaller, Absolute Uninstaller: Getting rid of software is always a liberating experience. Revo wins points for being insanely thorough; Absolute has a nice batch-installer for quickly removing a lot of stuff.

6. Comodo Firewall Pro: This free firewall is well-behaved, light on your CPU, has powerful features, and can actually be more effective than traditional antivirus and anti-spyware software at protecting you from online threats. (And since, unlike those products, it doesn’t do resource-intensive scans, it has less of an impact on performance.)

7. Not Problematic Antivirus: The most important advice here is what you don’t run — namely, overaggressive security suites set to consume more resources than they should. If you must run antivirus, AVG8 Free is a good way to go — that is, after you turn some features off; see TweakGuides.com’s tweaked install configuration). See comments for some discussion on this point, and I think I may in fact revise my advice to go back to Avast. See also: avast! Home Edition, the free version. I’ll be testing this resource-wise versus my mostly turned-off AVG8 Free and will let you know how it goes.

8. Quick Startup: While removing software, you’ll also want to keep an eye on annoying processes that launch when you boot – or, alternatively, add stuff you do want to load. Quick Startup is an especially friendly way to do this.

9. Microsoft Management Console: Not all services have an impact on performance, but I have found some that do. services.msc can help you run a lean, mean system setup.

10. TweakUAC (Vista only): User Account Control does have some security benefits – or it can be one of the major annoyances in Vista. With TweakUAC, you can remove annoying (and audio glitch-causing) prompts while still retaining some of those security benefits, or temporarily switch off UAC for compatibility with certain tools (like old installers that haven’t been updated).

I’ve got some other tips and usage ideas in the story for Rain. Let me know what you think of this

advice. Got favorite tools of your own I missed?

Essential Toolkit for Windows – Part 1: Non-Music Tools You’ll Want for Music [Rain Recording]

More installments are planned in this series – next up will be (finally) actual music tools, so getting into the fun stuff. And I’ll have some configuration tips, as well. I think parallel lists for Mac OS X and Linux may also be in order, although the needs are a bit different on those platforms.