Elektron announced that the SIDstation is about to come to an end. The stock of chips is running out. A stock of chips is kept on hold for eventual repairs "sufficient for the next 10 years". They will begin to sell the last 100 bunch with a decreasing serial number engraved on at the Frankfurt MusikMesse… Collectors item!

Elektron seem also to be working on something with KEYS… I wonder what it can be…

VERAX (German constructor) would prepared a Low Noise Power Mac G4 Fan kit to replace the noisy fan of the Powermac series (august 2002). For all musicians it should be a nice idea : the sound of silence with the Bi-Pro...

Tascam released a *public beta* version of its US-428 All-in-one device featuring Audio and MIDI I/O's as well as a surface controller. This driver is an update to the previous driver, which brings Jaguar compatibility. Users are recommended to use 10.2.3.

* US-428 download page
* US-224 download page

The Toaster is a captation system dedicated to real time applications.
Analog sensors can easily be connected to the Rack.
Most usefull are flexion, pressure, light, acceleration, magnetic field,
potentiometer, switch, etc... The Toaster is also MIDI compatible.
It can be connected to OSC (Open Sound Control) software (for exemple Max/MSP and Pure Data).

Sensors are connected to the box through stereo jack connectors.
The 1U Rack gets analogical information from sensors and transmits them to one computer or more, with a high band (Ethernet (10MB/s), UDP network protocol), with a precision of 16 bits by sensor.

The ProTools 6 release for Mac OS X will be available mid February. Prices for upgrades will be :
- 195 $ USD for any previous TDM version
- 75 $ USD for any previous LE version
- free upgrade for ProTools bought in october 1st 2002 or later
- and a special price for users who get the last upgrade (5.1.1 and 5.1.3) in october 1st or later

New features : an iLok USB Smart Key required for Pro Tools 6.0
and plug-in compatibilities (40 $)