Hands on Reviews

Before I had a smartphone, I was never a "phone person." Now I won't travel from one room to the next without my iPhone. I've always had a similar attachment to my electric guitars. IK Multimedia's new iRig enables you to plug a guitar into an iPhone, iPod touch or an iPad and play virtual effects and amps. I tested out the iRig this week, and I may change my identity so I never have to give it back.

You can still buy stuff for 79¢ these days... a children's-sized burger from a fast-food chain, an MP3 from the Internet, even a 4.7GB blank DVD from B&H. But with $79, you can do even greater damage. You can pick up armloads of greasy burgers or score a pair of Technical Pro MRS-6 powered monitors. But how do these inexpensive speakers sound? In this post the B&H blog team puts them to the test.

I've always had trouble with the term "dolly." It's just far too wimpy of a word for a tool that enables you to move 500 pounds of equipment with ease. I've always gravitated toward the term "hand truck." The manufacturer Multicart went one step further by naming their dolly products "Rock N Rollers." It doesn't matter if you're a photographer, videographer, a lighting tech or an audio nerd; a good cart will improve your quality of life.

A lot of music is being made these days in bedrooms, living rooms, and garages. The sound quality you can achieve with minimal equipment is amazing, but the neutrality of your studio monitors is anything but. Treating a room properly for accurate monitoring isn't easy, but IK Multimedia's ARC promises to remedy this issue. I gave the ARC a test drive in my home studio, and was really surprised at how deeply flawed my system was, and how deeply afraid my cat became.

We all know who the big dogs are in the DAW world, and most of us can admit that for years there has been a virtual monopoly in the world of DAWs—doing as much to hinder the progress of DAWs as it has to establish a standard. As more and more great music is produced in project studios—users are opening their minds to new software and hardware options.  PreSonus has made a name for itself making project-studio-ready hardware that compromises little quality in the name of affordability. When I learned that PreSonus was behind Studio One Pro and Studio One Artist—the newest competitor in the DAW market—my skepticism was reduced.

Modern television is filled with shows about high-tech crime investigators, and the detectives in these shows almost always use touch screen computers. Often times their futuristic computers take the form of a large glass wall in the center of the room, where at the touch of a finger an officer can instantly display a suspect’s file. The entertainment world is fixated on predicting what touch screen technology will look like and how it will operate, even though it’s already here. Since 2007, gadgets like the iPod Touch have revolutionized how human beings interact with electronics.

Can a modern product like SSL’s X-Desk really compare with their classic large format consoles? If so, you may finally be able to mix through the same mix bus as the many of the best engineers in the world.  I put the X-Desk’s summing to the test against the 9000J, and also did some serious thinking about this seemingly stripped down mixer.  I’ll do my best to provide an accurate summary of its analog summing.