Brian Monroney, musical director for Tom Jones, writes to us about serious mobile audio solutions that are just around the corner for Macs:
Jason,
I thought you might find these products interesting…I just spent 4 Days at the NAMM show in Anaheim, and although I didn’t actually see any of these items, they all claim to be shipping in the near future (Metric Halo wasn’t at the NAMM show due to an illness, but I saw the prototype of their box back in September at the AES convention). Up until recently the only pro-audio solutions for PowerBooks have been the Digigram VX Pocket, a 2-channel 24-bit PC card , and the Magma (www.magma.com) PCI expansion chassis for Wallstreet expansion bay (discontinued) and Pismo/Ti CardBus. The Magma chassis allows you to use any PCI audio card such as Pro Tools Mix or a Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU) 2408 system.
MOTU 828: a firewire audio interface with 2 built-in Mic Preamps and 8 channels of audio I/O – see the attached PDF press release. $795 list price, ship date Q1/01.
Metric Halo Mobile I/O: similar to the MOTU box, this product was announced a few months back and looks really cool – PDF attached. $1495 list price, ship date Q1/01
RME: the Cardbus Multiface box uses a proprietary version of 1394 with a Cardbus Host connector, and it handles 24 channels of ADAT litepipe I/O. This is the serious box for someone who wants to interface their PowerBook with a digital mixer or other litepipe-based recording devices. RME’s Hammerfall PCI cards have a great reputation. $936 list, ships in March.
Tascam US-428: USB product with 4 in/2 out and a nice control surface that supports a variety of software. This would be a great choice for use with an iBook. This product is already shipping, and it lists for $599.
Emagic, Midiman, Roland and Aardvark also have USB audio interfaces.
Things are really getting exciting for audio and music professionals with PowerBooks! I noticed that Apple interviewed producer/artist BT (Brian Transeau) for part of the marketing video that accompanied the Titanium product launch…
cheers,
Brian
