Gadgetoid

Akai have released another high end entry into the MIDI controller fray in the form of the MPK49 which boasts 12 MPC Drum Pads and a 49-key semi-weighted keyboard with aftertouch in addition to the usual combination of knobs and faders totaling up to 76 assignable controls.

It’s in the same ballpark as the Novation Remote SL series and those drum pads could just place it first for many musicians. The MPK49 also has an onboard arpeggiator which is handy if your sequencer either doesn’t have one or you find it complex or inconvenient to use.

The Akai MPK49 is currently in stock at Digital Village or you can check out Froogle for a range of prices/retailers.

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Due in March, Roland’s new RD-GX pianos are a sight for sore eyes. Adopting the design aesthetic of the Juno-D, V-Synth GT and Roland Fantom G series the RD-700GX and RD-300GX Digital Stage Pianos boast a stunning black aluminium surface.

Looks aren’t the only thing the new RD-GX has borrowed from the Fantom G series, however, as the pianos boast an electric-piano sound back derived from Roland’s new and unique SuperNATURAL technology. This allows for new depths of realism, expression and control.

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The little known TerraTec, producer of some pretty damned good products in my opinion, are now offering a USB edition of their popular 6Fire PCI audio board.

The unofficial successor to the DMX 6Fire 24/96 has been completely overhauled to deliver oodles more performance and pump out 96bits/192kHz via a USB 2.0 interface.

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The Terratec AXON MKII guitar to MIDI controller arrived at the desks of Gadgetoid yesterday. I spent some time testing it with an integrated pickup guitar and to my surprise immediately hit pickup issues. I suppose out-of-the-box justification was a bit of a pipe dream but I expected something a little more impressive from the get-go. It turns out that gaining accurate and responsive tracking requires some trial and error tweaking of the sensitivity levels for each individual string. After much fiddling I resolved that it would be easier to jack them up to 64.

Once the sensitivity is jacked up the AXON AX100 MKII sings and certainly demonstrates an impressively fast pickup that would almost have you believe the sound is coming from the guitar strings themselves. However as I’m not a guitarist I’m certainly not cut out to judge how it handles complex riffs- you’re going to have to wait for the full review to find out.

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Blue have bundled the Blue Snowball USB Microphone, a set of USB headphones, a stand and recording software together into the Blue Snowpack. It looks set to be an incredibly good value and easy to use portable recording kit, the USB connectivity ensures it will work with almost any PC or Mac whether desktop or laptop without relying on the internal audio card.

If you want to do some ametuer recording, podcasting or even some rough professional recording the Blue Snowpack contains everything you’ll need to get started. The bundled Tracktion 3 software from Mackie will give you easy access to powerful multi-track recording letting you layer up vocals and instruments and export to mp3.

Snowpack Features:
• Complete hardware/software package for USB recording in one box
• Blue’s Snowball professional USB mic, with renowned circuit and two-capsule design
• USB Headphones feature customizable sound settings and 5.1 surround sound
• Mackie’s Tracktion 3 multitrack recording software
• Ideal for music recording or podcasting
• Also includes mic stand and USB cable

Price and availability:
The Snowflake will be available November 1, 2007 for $199 MSRP. (Or just over £100 if we’re lucky)

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The Korg Pa2X Pro looks truly awe inspiring, borrows some design cues from the flagship Oasys (namely the tilting touch screen goodness which I can only dream of having on my Fantom X8), is packed with features and at £2,349 it has a price tag to match.

The Korg Pa2X Pro is the current in a long evolutionary line of professional arranger keyboards giving Korg a rich history to build upon and produce what can simply only be described as “a beast.” There’s so much to say that I’m only going to whet your appetite here and let Korg do the talking.

The official Korg Pa series website also has a wealth of information, pictures and more for the Pa2X Pro including complete specifications, audio demos and the 1.10 operating system upgrade and musical resources.

Expect a huge onboard hard drive, USB host, extensive backwards and cross-compatibility with other Korg synths, and an optional video interface that lets you display either karaoke-style lyrics or a duplicate of the onboard display and the ability to mix, speed up, slow down and cross fade two mp3, midi or karaoke files.

The Korg Pa2X Pro also has 4 Stereo Master Effects processors with 125 effects to choose from including a vocoder and an on top of that an entirely separate TC Helicon Voice Processor with professional quality effects like Compressor, Gate, Delay and Reverb all designed specifically for vocals. Suffice to say; let the keyboard envy begin! If I could somehow hybridize the Korg Pa2X Pro with my Roland Fantom X8 and toss in a bit of V-Synth to stir things up a machine of unimaginable sonic power would be born.

A little searching reveals the Pa2X Pro for sale at iMuso for the slightly lower price of £2,199.99. and at Digital Village for an even better £2,099.00

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If you’ve been eying the cute but powerful little microKORG for a while then this might be the deciding factor. This strangely alluring inverted-key limited edition version of the microKORG will not only produce the epic vocoded synth sound that makes the microKORG one of the best value synths on the market but will also give you a little more head-turning individuality in your stage presence. Expect to see the black microKORG in stores for a very tempting £349. You can get more information on the microKORG at, you guessed it, Korg UK.

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As a long time fan of nifty control surfaces like Rolands “Time-Trip Pad” and those on the Korg Kaos Pad and its smaller brother I am more than a little surprised and gleeful to find that Korg have created another baby Kaos Pad spin-off… only this time it has its own sound generator. It’s known as the Kaossilator.

“The next innovation in the highly acclaimed line of Korg DJ tools has arrived! The KAOSSILATOR is a new pocket sized instrument that packs Korg’s world-renowned synth sounds along with innovative performance features into an ultra-compact unit. Anyone can instantly play musical phrases by simply tapping or sliding their finger across the KAOSSILATOR’s touch pad – no previous skills required! The KAOSSILATOR is a portable, travel friendly device that runs on batteries, so you can have fun creating music anywhere your life takes you, with seemingly endless possibilities.”

The best thing about the Kaossilator has to be the price. At only £117 including VAT it’s a low priced, revolutionary and fun entry into music for amutuers and an absolutely essential addition to the gig bag of any professional.

Find out more at Korg UK.

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Over the past couple of weeks I have been playing with the Sennheiser HD280 Pro Headphones. These are some fairly heavy duty professional monitor headphones offering reasonable attenuation of background noise and a very visually uninspiring brick-outhouse build quality that boasts user-serviceable components. I’ll be posting a review soon, but suffice to say these are no-nonsense professional headphones with a strong emphasis on doing exactly what they say on the tin rather than looking pretty. They’ll resist a fair level of abuse and clamp securely onto my head like an… err… disgruntled giant crab. Alas they’re not as comfortable as I’d like for long listening sessions.

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After much searching for an ‘official’ way of mounting a keyboard above another on a desk I eventually all but gave up. Fortunately Homebase came to the rescue with a couple of heavy-duty tool-shed hooks designed to carry a miscellany of materials. Mounting them on the wall resulted in a less-than-ideal slanted keyboard mount that essentially relies on the Juno-D resting against the wall. The MIDI cable is a little pushed for space but everything else is fine and the keyboard itself is quite secure. I think I only got away with this due to the Juno’s skimpy 5kg weight.

Anyway. This all leads back to the fact I couldn’t for love nor money find a desktop second-tier keyboard stand or even anything wall mountable. There looks to be a gap in the market here *hint hint* and the sooner it’s filled the better. Surely I’m not the only one with this sort of requirement?

The image above was taken with Palringo on an MDA Vario III

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