Sure enough, rumors are surfacing saying as much. (I’ve gotten at least one email, secondhand – no, Apple, no Apple employee has said anything to me; if they had, I wouldn’t even think of posting this story). For instance:
Apple Moving Toward Release of Logic Pro X? [MacRumors]

Now, of course, what I’ve heard even more than rumors is users of Logic in an absolute panic that Apple will muck around with their product. Putting it diplomatically, feedback to Final Cut Pro X has not been overwhelmingly positive. I have no idea what the next version of Logic will look like, so it’s very possible Apple will indeed screw around with Logic in a way that makes its existing user base unhappy. But, since I feel free to speculate idly simply because I really, truly don’t know anything and thus can’t get anyone fired / violate any NDAs (again, Apple, please, please, please don’t hurt me), I’ll say this:

Assuming Apple is “running away from pro users” is probably wrong. This was a widespread reading of Final Cut Pro X. I think it’s fair to say Apple hoped their adjustments would attract new users put off by previous versions and other pro non-linear editors. Otherwise, though, I have to disagree. Apple’s pro user base is hugely profitable, in direct sales and high-margin, high-end Mac sales, and there are a lot of those users out there – I’ve sat with that team at Apple as they talked video pro sales numbers, for actual sales from pros, not even including pirated copies. (Anyone who thinks Apple likes to see their product pirated so they can sell more Mac hardware? Highly unlikely, that, too.) There’s a big difference between wanting to alienate your pro user base, and doing it inadvertently. I think Apple’s reputation is such that people have come to believe that everything they do is part of a grand plan, even when it’s not.

Developers want to make changes. Big changes don’t always work as expected, or work right away. Users are resistant to changes, and far more resistant the more the use of software is part of their pro, up-against-deadlines, demanding workflows. That’s the bottom line. I’m not going to be terribly complimentary here, though: I think the problem with Final Cut isn’t that it was designed for non-pro users, but that it wasn’t finished or fully fleshed-out. Enough has been said about that – see The Internet – but I can imagine anything similar in Logic would cause some (rightfully) unhappy users. And quality and implementation are everything; there’s a reason I gave Motion a positive review in Macworld, and you haven’t heard similar complaints about it, even though it uses some of the same UX paradigms and underlying engine. I hope future updates to Final Cut are more like that version of Motion in terms of user experience. (This is not a Final Cut review; that’d be glib. Suffice to say I tried Final Cut Pro X and decided to do editing in another program, and that I do appreciate some of what I believe Apple was trying to do, and that I do hope future versions are more successful. This is the reality of using pro tools.)

That said –

Apple is probably not overhauling Logic as thoroughly as Final Cut. Final Cut’s code base, as of Final Cut Pro 7, was not 64-bit and was dependent on deprecated video frameworks; it’s not unreasonable to assume that Apple felt they had to start over from scratch. Logic already has 64-bit support, and is already built atop parallel audio frameworks like Core Audio and Core MIDI that haven’t changed so radically. So while file management, save and undo, and other Lion-style features would likely call for changes, that doesn’t mean you’ll lose the old Logic, necessarily. And Logic has already undergone one Apple-administered UI overhaul, which was able to preserve the way Logic users work with the tool. Part of what’s admirable about Logic is its longevity, love it or hate it, so while a UI reskin is almost certainly in the works, that doesn’t mean Logic Pro X will be like Logic Studio X.

Apple will probably try to do Mac App Store distribution and take out some bundled apps. You don’t need rumors to figure this one out. App Store distribution? Almost certain. Unbundling tools like Soundtrack Pro or the rarely-used WaveBurner, each of which has robust competition from other developers? Certainly not unlikely. The interesting question here will be how Apple handles the sheer size of things like bundled audio content, and whether Logic’s support for plug-ins will mean either adjusting App Store rules, or whether Logic will get a special exception because it’s Apple (fully within their rights).

Apple probably won’t dump support for plug-ins. Apple continues to actively develop its Audio Unit plug-in format and push validation, and if they didn’t support plug-ins, they’d disrupt users and the entire vendor ecosystem. I’ll be stunned if that goes away. One thing they almost certainly will dump is technologies like Pro Tools interface compatibility – Avid has been moving toward Core Audio support, anyway – and possibly even ReWire. But while any change anywhere in a DAW will impact someone, neither of those would be likely to radically change user relationships to the tool.

Also, as a reader points out, Final Cut Pro X supports plug-ins.

The most interesting thing to me about all of this is whether the appearance of Logic on the Mac App Store, if it happens, will impact other audio apps. So far, it’s been a desert there, as I and some others (read: developers) predicted, partly because music software is so dependent on the plug-in ecosystem and sales to users through direct channels or music stores.

Additional evidence: GarageBand is already in the App Store, and supports plug-ins (AU). So the real question here is more the question of whether other hosts would try to / be allowed to follow the same model, and whether even plug-in distribution, using approved Apple frameworks, were allowed. (The former seems more likely than the latter: you can run a host without a plug-in, but not visa versa.)

What I’m interested in is whether other software follows suit at all. Aperture, Motion, and Final Cut haven’t necessarily produced an onslaught of other pro tools for visual Mac users – at least, not so many high-end or flagship tools, though there are many really useful smaller ones. Will audio be different?

Disclaimer: I know nothing. All of the above is purely speculative, based on things that to me seem pretty obvious. I’m not divulging secret, privileged information, my brain isn’t under an NDA, and all of that means I could be completely wrong. Take with a box of salt.

Updated: I neglected to link, by way of contrast, this editorial from around the time of the most heated Final Cut followup:
The End Is Night…

In it, Chris Randall (himself a plug-in developer tasked with supporting Logic and AU validation) argues basically the exact opposite of what I do here.

In review, my entire analysis above could be summed up as this: Logic will be on the App Store. It’ll still be more or less the Logic you love, or don’t love, as the case may be, but it’s unlikely to introduce radically new feelings even if you aren’t getting a stack of DVDs.

With Germany’s Messe trade show just a week away, buzz is pretty well focused on Swedish boutique machine maker Elektron, that beloved manufacturer of the Machinedrum. They’re about to launch something, and it’s a product with “octa” in the name, but that’s about all that’s known. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the Elektron fanbase from getting well worked up in an increasingly hilarious set of message threads. (Bless you, fora.)

First, the rampant speculation:
Are we expecting a new Elektron product at Musikmesse?

User Atiko, however, notes in a video of Elektron assembly a button labeled “Octatrack.” (That’s “button” as in “the kind you wear on your shirt at Messe.”)

http://vimeo.com/9879569

That in turn leads to another crazy thread:
Re:Mistery [sic] OCTATRACK: new from Elektron?

Elektron, for their part, hints at the upcoming launch with the text: “SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: THE OCTASHARK BITES” in the corner of their site. (Octashark?) They’ve also emblazoned their site with a Messe banner that reads, in text that suggests they’re about to release a prog rock album, “The New Dawn.”

Konkrete predicts this site will somehow enter the fray. What to do… do I fulfill the prophecy?

what I’m hoping for is a XXXCSHDRRT but we’re probably going to get a FFFRPPPI!!ING and then everyone who was right will be like ZZZWWWAARRW and all thoze who were wrong will be like OH ACTUALLY I’M REALLY DISAPPOINTED. Then there’ll be lots of BWWAWAWAWAWA maybe even on peter kirn’s ‘ELECTRONIC CABBAGE SPROGGIT PSEUD’S CORNER’ where the ‘a new butter based USB massage enables DIY multiple dorkgasms’ hook will lead into many a DEEP PENETRATIVE INSIGHT into the Oktospastik Cyclotron everyone’s all be waiting for and lathered up about. BUT I WANTED A FSFSSRRRGGRLL, and I’ve been saying that since 2004 when the first… they moan nonetheless. Then someone will complain that it’s too expensive and that anyway therez a plug wot can do all that anyway like. Cue nuclear flame festival and rotten tomato in the stocks hurling, bunion scraping, cheese rolling, caber tossing, frollicking Glastonbury mud orgy of a thread while we all save up the quids for DA TING with its 8 TRAXX of SEXX, which we can’t really justify to the better halves anyway cos it’s just a BOX THAT SEZ “MOOO!” (albeit repetitively), and it seems that there’s no way that that could possibly be worth more than a hair sandwich, EVEN if it’s set off in glorious brushed aluminium, COMEZ WITH STICKAZ and says moo REALLY LOUDLY when plugged into those expensive expansive high end tweeters in our sound proofed cave. But one thing is for certain. When we have TURBO MIDI, there ain’t gonna be no USB, especially not without no stinking Sepia Officinalis CONNEXION, dig?

Thanks, Konkrete. I’m … uh … flattered?

elektron.se

Serato announced yesterday that they’ll be joining Ableton in a “creative partnership.” It’s not too hard to parse what this means from the announcement, which notes that Ableton Live’s strength is production and real-time remixing and beats, and Serato Scratch Live is about digital vinyl control, library management, and scratching. (Or, to say it even more simply: Serato is built around digital vinyl metaphors, and Live around remixable digital clips.)

Serato and Ableton announce a creative partnership [Serato News]
Ableton and Serato to work together [musicradar.com]

In fact, Ableton CEO Gerhard Behles spells out what this will mean fairly explicitly:

“Ableton and Serato take different approaches to modern musical performance”

Okay, so, Ableton fans worried that Live is going to just become a DJ tool, or Serato lovers who don’t want Scratch Live assimilated into Ableton, fear not.

Ableton has never had an answer for the DJ who wants vinyl control, and rather than try to emulate what Serato do so well, we simply make sure that our products work well together.

Got that? We hear DJs regularly complain about Ableton Live, that there’s not proper scratching control over waveforms, that you can’t see more than one audio waveform (“deck”) at one time, that it lacks vinyl control, and so on. But obviously, at least some of those metaphors don’t jive terribly well with Live’s clean, signature interface, which wasn’t built to do these things in a traditional way.

Sounds to me like the most likely result is some kind of Serato deck that runs inside Ableton. I feel safe in speculating about this because I haven’t heard anything from Ableton about this. And there’s cause for that, as well, as many Ableton Live users do Live PA, laptop sets with Live, and then turn elsewhere (often to Serato, if not to rival Traktor) for more conventional DJ sets. Regardless, those of you who could care less about conventional DJ features are likely to find this comforting news: Ableton probably isn’t going to muck around with your software to graft them in.

I think this could amp up the NI – Ableton rivalry; Native’s DJ division has been further beefing up their Traktor Scratch options. This comes right on the heels of NI’s own Traktor Scratch Pro offerings, but since I’ll be in Berlin by this time tomorrow and that’s a released product, I expect to talk to NI directly about that. (Of course, I’m horribly biased in that I’d personally rather hear sets with people doing strange things with Live and Reaktor, but that’s me.)

That said, clearly only Serato and not Native could partnership with Ableton, because Serato had “Live” in the name of their product. (Perhaps that was an early sign of Ableton envy?)

All of this probably reminds some of you of another strategic Ableton partnership, with Cycling ’74, makers of Max/MSP. When announced some time ago, the expectation was that some product would come of that. We haven’t seen that product yet, but sometimes these relationships take time to bear fruit. I wonder.

Incidentally, what gets us most excited about Serato round these parts? Visual vinyl. See the Create Digital Motion hands-on review.

Updated: I should add, it is possible to add DJ capabilities to Live now by using a DJ host that functions in plug-in mode, as a couple of commenters note. Pinko’s Max/MSP-based “Pinky Pluggo” is one option; another is Image Line’s Deckadance. Both allow you to do vinyl control, too; Deckadance will work with any controller. I’m particularly fond of Deckadance’s absurd-sounding effects, which I think could add the sort of digital grunge to a DJ set or loop that will appeal to a lot of the Ableton-using crowd. And these sorts of tools are shipping now.

But of course, we really have no idea what it is exactly that Ableton and Serato are planning, whether it’ll be a new Live instrument or some other form of integration.

1. Cosmetic changes, under-the-hood tweaks, don’t care that much. Hey, a pretty, new Apple laptop is all fine and good, don’t get me wrong. But PC notebook makers have in recent months rolled out new hardware improvements a lot faster than Apple, and often at a much lower price. That’s not to say the Apple don’t make a very good or even better deal … just that what generally happens is, looking at Apple’s lineup, improvements tend to get bundled together. Maybe I just hate the MacBook Air because it’s beautiful, I don’t know. So, I think this could be big news in the sense that people waiting to upgrade could be very happy, just not earthshaking news. Then again, what we could see is…

2. Multi-touch screens on the whole line. Now that could be interesting. Commodity touchscreens on laptops already appear imminent on PCs in general, so it’s not hard to see Apple getting into the game. And while many people rightfully point out that touch in a laptop form factor isn’t all that practical, for musical applications and live onstage use, it’s a dream.

All bets are off Tuesday.

Updated: Okay, so what we got was basically (1) — except that I missed the “and critical FireWire ports get Steved” part:

… on Create Digital Motion: New GPUs, Connectors; Non-Pro Changes and Did Apple Just Eliminate All S-Video, Composite Video Output?

… on Create Digital Music: Whither, FireWire? What the New Apple Laptop Port Changes Mean for Audio

For anyone who thinks Mac users are superficial and care only about form factor, ahem, we’re going to be talking about jacks. Got it?

Des collectors Emagic : ça vous intéresse ?
Logic 8 : Une nouvelle pièce au puzzle !

An excited French reader on Gearslutz.com’s message forum sums it up this way:

There will be no Logic 8!!!!!

The new app will have a new name.
They are working on it for 5 years and it will be out this year.
It will be a “Pro Tools Killer” with a Logic feel but in a new user interface and take advantage of OSX.5 (it will need it and don’t work on X.4 or prior) and new Apple hardware (touch screen display!).

More info: no more xskey and no more envirronement [sic]

Whoo, and it’ll make cappuccino! And it’ll have support for a new, high-definition replacement for MIDI that Apple will push to become an industry standard! (Not sure which of those is less likely, actually.)

Before you rule this out, though, there’s a well-reasoned argument for it at Barbarism Begins at Home:

Will There Be No Logic 8?

Fortunately, I happen to know absolutely nothing about future versions of Logic, so I think I can safely speculate, secure in the knowledge that anything I say that does happen to be true is entirely coincidental. A “Pro Tools killer” says more about the sales of the resulting product than the product itself, though I’m sure Apple would like to make some bigger inroads in Digidesign’s market the way Final Cut did with Avid. (Though there are plenty of Avid editors out there, still.)

I know enough to say this: the successor to Logic may be a huge upgrade, and may even have a new name, but it’ll still be aimed at musicians and will likely remain connected to the core of Logic and GarageBand. Beyond that, we can say anything we like and amuse the people at Apple (a number of whom read this site); they know more than we do.

Completely Uninformed Speculation Begins!

Does Apple still care about music? Apple has expressed real commitment to me to the music market — and by music market, I mean musicians, not just the nebulous “pro audio” or people doing audio post for its more lucrative video market. I do expect them to go after this audience more aggressively in an upcoming release. I also know Apple knows that its users haven’t been entirely happy with elements of Logic’s interface and design; long-time users master and love it, but some tasks are harder to perform than they should be. Logic 7 made big steps to making this app more Apple-like, but it’s obvious they’ll continue to work on that.

What about release dates? Why are Logic — and iLife ’07 — delayed? Well, I heard from Apple developers — as from everyone else — that porting Logic to Intel Macs required some effort. It makes sense that that would have delayed the rest of the development pipeline. And it’s a safe bet to assume that Apple began looking at the big picture plans for Logic at the time of the acquisition of the software.

All of us were speculating at Macworld Expo that the absence of iLife ’07 meant Apple would have its consumer app upgrades coincide with Leopard, to take advantage of new graphics features. That makes sense for iPhoto and iMovie, but it’s unclear what it would mean for something like Logic. I do know something about the graphics developments in OS X 10.5, and Core Animation and Quartz Composer integration look like they will impact a lot of applications from Apple and many third-party developers, as well. Anything with eye candy in it will get a huge boost. But as for music, that’s less clear.

Is Apple readying a new app? Maybe they’ll change the name; “Logic” sounds German and electronic music-related. (Doesn’t it just make you want to make some minimal techno? And Vulcans dig it.) But I seriously, seriously doubt this will be an entirely new application. Look at it this way: GarageBand is an entirely new application, but it’s also based entirely on the underpinnings of Logic, from its notation facility to looping to EXS24 sampler support, GarageBand is Logic Pro 7 with a different face. This proves two things: first, it’s possible to radically change Logic without altering its core or backwards-compatibility, and second, Apple would be unlikely to abandon that core because it would hurt both Logic and GarageBand.

Will it have a touchscreen? This seems like wishful thinking, but there’s one reason to believe it might be true. Apple’s iPhone turned out to be just a phone/iPod/browser, so I doubt you’ll be integrating it with Logic, much as we might like. But remember Apple’s multi-touch tablet patent? It specifically showed a music mixer application. This could mean one of two things: one, it was a research idea that got abandoned, but spread through the grapevine starting this rumor. Or, two, maybe we will see a multi-touch music controller from Apple. It’s an extremely unlikely possibility, but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely, especially with multi-touch tech getting used on the iPhone.

(Again, I can say this because I know nothing. If someone connected to Apple had told me something, I’d be saying nothing. Maybe there’s still time for them to add that cappuccino feature.)

Does this rumor hold weight? There’s really no way of telling. Apple has, bar none, the tightest ship in the industry as far as information leaks, so usually if you hear information from a non-official source, chances are it’s wrong. Moreover, a lot of rumors are based on real information that’s outdated or distorted. But you knew that.

There will be an upcoming pro music app from Apple — that’s for sure — and when we hear something real, we’ll pass it along. In the meantime, feel free to join the idle speculation. Speaking of which …

How about that music touch screen / hardware rumor?

More Apple Patents Suggest New Music App, Musical Instrument?

Multi-touch Apple music interface? Non-Apple music keyboard as a pet project of Emagic founder Dr. Lengeling’s? Nothing at all? Hard to say. Rumor mull, anyone?

Remember patent 0060026536? It’s the multi-touch, gestural patent Apple filed that was clearly the precursor of the Apple iPhone. Here’s the curious thing: the iPhone, as demonstrated at the Macworld keynote, isn’t all that focused on multi-touch. With the exception of Apple’s clever zooming gesture, most gestures are single-touch. Most are horizontal and vertical strokes similar to what you can already do on laptop touchpads.

A lot of what gets put into patents never shows up in shipping products, but I would be very surprised if Apple’s multi-touch abilities didn’t start to spread to new stuff. Touchscreens and eventually multi-touchscreens are likely to appear on more computers, PC and Mac alike. And other devices have likely lacked touchscreens only because the digitizer hardware — and the processors to deal with tracking multiple touches — hadn’t yet reached the right economy of scale, something that’s likely to happen soon (the iPhone in June being a good indicator). Phones have the advantage of subsidies from the phone carriers — the iPhone would presumably cost hundreds more if it didn’t have Cingular reducing the cost to get you on a 2-year plan. But the touch trend is likely to continue.

And that brings us back to the original patent. Could Apple in fact be working on a music mixer or other touch-enabled music interface? Or was this just a demonstration of an idea they had, and not a working product? Time will tell. I’ll repeat my concerns: touch is great in its flexibility, but losing tactile feedback is not — maybe something Apple themselves have discovered. But that’s unlikely to stop manufacturers from integrating touch into products for musicians in the near future, whether it’s Apple or someone else. And it won’t just be the Lemur.

Okay, no remaining stories this week will have headlines in the form of a question; I promise. “NAMM: New DJ Hardware????”

Music makers think that if they leak some teaser photos of upcoming devices, we’ll write it up. They’re right.

Native Instruments has released to CDM a small image of what appears to be an upcoming Traktor hardware device, as posted originally to the NI Traktor Forum. (Well, actually, I’m assuming that it’s part of Traktor: months after Native Instruments announces it’s dumping its long-term relationship with Stanton and Final Scratch, it posts what’s obviously part of a computer audio interface to its Traktor forum. You do the math.) Most interesting here is that it’s got 8 audio output channels. And a … hook. I’m too tired to analyze this, but I do hope I get invited to parties with 7.1 surround mixes.

See the post from “native girl” on the NI Forum.

NI isn’t alone. M-Audio is also teasing hardware … also for DJs … though bizarrely on MySpace. (That’s apparently where all the cool kids hang out, except Team CDM, because burns! It burns!)

Sneak Peek from M-Audio

Tom at Music thing got the jump on the upcoming controller, first decided it was for Ableton Live, then decided M-Audio has divorced Ableton and it’s not for Live.

There’s an easy answer to this question: the upcoming controller will probably be both. M-Audio’s X-Session Pro works just fine with both Torq and (via MIDI) Ableton Live; it even says as much in the docs. M-Audio is still bundling Live Lite with their gear. And the more copies Ableton sells of Live, the more potential customers M-Audio has for Oxygen, Ozone, Trigger Finger, X-Session, and so on. Finally, despite the fact that Live is a great DJ app, the kind of DJs who would primarily use Torq and those who would primarily use Live seem to be a pretty different demographic.

Nor is the hardware much of a mystery in this “teaser”: glowing Jolly Rancher color scheme, crossfader, EQ, effects (or whatever you happen to want to assign), and what appears to be clip triggers. I happen to like using DJ-style control schemes for Ableton Live even in non-DJ music sets, so I’ll be interested to see how this works out. And this fills a hole left by the X-Session Pro, which doesn’t have enough dedicated controls for some users. The only real mystery is what to call it. X-Session Pro Pro? Torqtroller? Or M-Audio could continue their gaseous theme (Ozone, Oxygen) with Carbon Dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life.

KORE, patch librarian: A lot of people have focused on KORE’s role as a way of easily finding preset sounds. But by “universal,” Native isn’t necessarily claiming that every third-party soft synth developer is going to do what NI did and painstakingly come up with keywords for every single preset. For an example of one developer who won’t, check out a thread on KVR by star Mac plug-in developer Urs Heckmann. (Thanks to velocipede, in comments!) Urs rightfully points out why most developers simply won’t bother, since KORE is really NI’s creature, and NI already has a leg up with their own sounds. He also has some excellent points about why finding keywords for sounds is problematic, though that’s an issue with any catalog of anything. I still think having a catalog is better than having none.

So, will you see any sounds cataloged in KORE other than Native’s? I think so: remember, a lot of sampled soundware is distributed in formats based on Native’s sampler, Kontakt. Watch for big sample houses like East/West to start releasing KORE data for their sounds. Anyway, that’s the kind of content you’ll really need this for.

Other meanings of “universal”: I don’t think finding sounds is the only major feature of KORE. The key is the KORE hardware, which will let you switch sounds, navigate sounds and presets, and control plug-in parameters with high-resolution data. None of this has been easy to do without grabbing your computer mouse. Some of KORE’s other features aren’t so new, like setting up splits and layers and hosting plug-ins. But even there, other hosts don’t necessarily run as plug-ins; they either require standalone operation or at best run as ReWire. Ironically, a lot of the criticisms I’ve heard of KORE come from people who don’t want the preset librarian features. KORE certainly promises to do more than that, and while preset management is important, those other features will be at the top of my list when I finally get to test it myself.

Enter the user communities: It’s funny, everyone is assuming KORE will be snapped up by soft synth newcomers to make it easier to find the right organ preset. I think it’s far more likely that KORE will appeal to soft synth mavens, at least initially. Already, I’m hearing rumblings from would-be KORE users that they’re planning to immediately start programming KORE for their favorite soft synth. So, I think one of the first things we’ll see when KORE ships is pre-programmed libraries coming from users. Which brings me to my next point:

Reaktor KORE: For anyone who doubts a “niche” product at a reasonably high price point can attract a cult following, look no further than Reaktor. The Reaktor user community is nothing short of incredible: hit Native’s site, and you’ll find hundreds of user-built synths and a heavily-used forum. Reaktor users are some of the most passionate I’ve seen anywhere, and they’re proud of the content they create.

I think the Reaktor crowd could be the first to heavily adopt KORE. One major feature missing in Reaktor, in fact, is the ability to easily combine lots of home-built instruments and effects. Reaktor ensembles sort of do this, but in a really inflexible way. And while Reaktor has a plug-in, it’s dependent on your host, and navigating patches you’ve created can be tricky. I’m more excited about combining Reaktor and KORE than I am about NI’s other products, to be honest.

The competition: What’s nice about KORE is that it runs all your plug-ins, inside any host or in a standalone mode, and lets you easily move around files created in it. That makes it basically peerless. But many users are loyal to one given host, meaning KORE has plenty of competition. We’ve seen that already in feedback. NI might not think of Logic’s Environment, or Reason’s Combinator and Refill format, or Novation’s Remote SL keyboard, or lightweight hosts like Energy-XT on Windows, as competition. But to users, they are, because the major killer feature for many users remains playability and control, not necessarily preset management.

Want to weigh in?

Now, I’d really like to hear from you, whether you’re a developer or a user. What questions do you have about KORE? What would you like to see tested? What’s your personal take on it, and what are you planning to use?

The heated debate around this product suggests to me that it is raising some questions worth discussing, and might really be a new product category, particularly as soft synths start to reach maturity and computers onstage become more commonplace. I can’t wait to hear what you think . . . and I can’t wait to get my KORE, hopefully next month.

Previously:

Messe: KORE Pricing, Availability Official — US$579, May 8

NAMM: Why KORE Could Change How You Play Software Instruments

Case in point: the Moog Solar, which sites like Gearjunkies have been declaring “the new Moog”. Calm down; it’s not. Long-time followers of Moog Music’s differently-colored special editions of their flagship Voyager synth know that this is just their special electric blue Voyager (shown) re-released in electric . . . orange. Looks damn cool, but it costs US$3200 in an exclusive deal from Nova Musik. The free Moog Movie DVD they’re throwing in doesn’t really make up for the hundreds you’re paying for the color. Stick with blue and buy a nice Moogerfooger for yourself. Unless you’re, like, Herbie Hancock, in which case, buy a dozen.

No, hopes remain high that what Moog is planning is a “Moog for the rest of us” mini-Voyager or Voyager Lite. All bets are off next Wednesday.

In the meantime, Tom Whitwell is trying to explain to the general tech crowd why we’re so passionate about this story. You already know, of course, but check the link for a fantastic album cover, Country Moog.

My personal favorite, from Vintage Synth Explorer, is Amos’ Femto-Moog, with ultra-simplified design and a one-octave keyboard. You know, for DJs.