The perfect Christmas accessory for your iPod-owning hyperactive siblings, the IXOS DIsco Cube, has returned with a vengeance. Last year it sported the lofty price tag of £75 and was available only in Debenhams. This year it’s trimmed that down to a slightly more reasonably £60 and is available at PC World and John Lewis.
See over the fold for specifications.
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Sony’s marketing machine is at it again. Not wanting to be beaten at the game of creating the most elaborate live action advertisements (Skoda, we’re looking at you) they have unveiled a new project to promote the latest and greatest in their WALKMAN brand line-up.
Unsurprisingly the ad is centered entirely around music and sees 128 musicians each contributing single notes and beats to what ultimately will become a sweeping score- of course I’ve no idea what it’s going to sound like but once again those wiley marketing coyotes have convinced me that I must actually watch their advertising. Blast.
Still, I can’t help but like Sony for steering away from the norm- advertisements can be a form of entertainment too and I much prefer them to be entertaining than simply a pack of thinly veiled lies conveyed through not-quite-so-subtle imagery… Lynx I’m looking at you.
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Cubase 4.1 is now available for download absolutely free for users of Cubase 4 and Cubase Studio 4. Many areas of Cubase have been re-engineered and updated to offer more speed and flexibility for musicians, producers and composers and there are additional features as detailed over the fold.
You can head on over to the Cubase 4 downloads page and grab the 4.1 update now.
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Well I said “Potentially crushing the BOSE QuietComfort headphones like a bug” when I first posted about the Sennheiser PXC and I wasn’t far off the mark.
This October What HiFi? have given the Sennheiser PXC 450 “Cloak of Silence” headphones the 2007 award for ‘Best Noise Cancelling Headphone’. Sennheiser are delighted but, of course, were confident that their product was the best before us journalists even got our greasy paws on one.
The PXC 450 retail for about £300, but a little bit of searching can get the price a few beer-rounds under this mark.
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With every purchase of an Xbox 360 HD-DVD player you can now get not one, not two, not even three or four, but a staggering five free HD-DVDs.
From the 1st of October right up to the 31st of January next year anyone who purchases the HD-DVD player for their Xbox 360 will be able to choose 5 of 13 film titles from studios including Warner Brothers, Universal, Dreamworks and Paramount. To claim your movies you need to send in a form along with the barcode of the HD-DVD player and Microsoft should have your selections with you within 28 working days. For more information you can hit the Microsoft promotion page.
In a nutshell that means you’d better damned well hurry if you want to get that special someone an HD-DVD player for Christmas.. *hint *hint*. 5 HD-DVDs and the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player for about £110 is money well spent and should tide the family through those cold winter evenings with some quality cinematic entertainment.
So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to Play.com now and get your HD-DVD player in time for Christmas. See overleaf for the choices.
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Yahtzee is at it again with a diatrabe on the shiny new Orange Box from Valve. You know… Half Life 2! Portal seems to go down well, and I don’t blame him; the portal idea is nothing new but in combination with Half Life 2s superb physics engine what can possibly go wrong? Watch Yahtzee’s hilarious “rant” on Half Life 2: Orange Box below:
I haven’t bought it yet, but looking at those prices when I do it’s going to have to be for the PC. There’s some things that just aren’t worth paying almost double to play on the Xbox 360.
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As if there aren’t enough portable speakers crowding the market IXOS are continuing their line of value brand lifestyle accessories and have released the First Cube Travel Speaker. It boasts a staggering 2watts of stereo audio grunt… okay so that’s not much but this is a portable speaker. A supplied 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio cable will hook you up to iPods, laptops and pretty much any portable audio player. The USB power cabl will alow you to power the XMM238 from a USB port instead of wasting batteries.
The Cube is now available at Play.com for just £11.99. A perfect stocking filler just in time for Christmas!
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Crucial’s fantastic Memory Advistor tool now includes upgrade information for some 35 thousand systems. As always all you need to do is fill out your computer manufacturer, product line and model which should be easily attainable information for any consumer and you will be presented with well priced upgrades that are absolutely guaranteed to work with your system.
Even computer literate users like myself will find this tool useful for sourcing compatible RAM upgrades for friends and family without any fuss whatsoever.
The only difficulty remaining for any computer-illiterate upgrader is actually inserting the RAM itself, fortunately Crucial offer a few guides on this and, in reality, it isn’t at all difficult or complicated.
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As SoundControl.co.uk are offering Cubase 4 at £379.00 and it currently represents the cutting edge of music production software I have sourced a copy from Steinberg to review at Gadgetoid and let you know if it’s worth your hard-earned-almost-£400.
I’m sure that, if you don’t have a big budget, you think of all the lovely synths or tangible hardware products you could get for the money and might be a little put off with making the splash for Cubase 4. Alas with piracy being so rampant this is the growing attitude toward software.
Watch this space for the skinny on Cubase 4 including the lowdown on the new VST3 instruments and effects, SoundFrame, Control Room and more.
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This is the first of a series of articles covering Roland’s flagship synthesizer workstation the Fantom X series (which includes the X6, X7 and X8 in addition to a rack-mountable version of the synth). In particular I will be referring to the behemoth cream of the Fantom crop; the X8.
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