The big music labels find their sales dropping as more and more people have the means to burn CDs. Microsoft proposes a solution: Windows Media Data Session Toolkit, which was unveiled at the 37th Phonographic Industry Show on the Côte d'Azur, France.

RME just released the final version of its MacOS drivers for the Hammerfall cards.

Elemental Audio Systems announced that Firium, Eqium, and Inspector will add support for Digidesign's RTAS plug-in format on the Macintosh. They had previously jumped into the OSX AudioUnits. All plug-in versions are included with purchase (VST Mac OS 9/X, AudioUnit, Mac RTAS, Windows VST). Well… Add MAS for me ;)

The Mac RTAS will be a free upgrade to owners of version 1.x of Firium and Eqium. Remember that Inspector full version is free for the moment!

Yamaha has expanded the line of Mini-YGDAI expansion cards that include the MY8 Series, the 96kHz Series and several third party models: the MY16 Series Digital I/O cards. Each card is capable of supporting up to 16 channels of simultaneous ADAT, AES/EBU and TDIF formats via a single expansion slot located on the Yamaha 02R96, 01V96, DM2000 and DM1000 digital audio consoles.

All 16 channels can be used independently at sample rates up to 48kHz. The MY16 Series can also be used for "double channel" connection (using two tracks to create one) to 96kHz recorders, providing eight channels of I/O at 88.2 or 96kHz. Audio processing is supported with 48-bit internal precision on a 24-bit I/O

The MY16-AT (ADAT) card is available, the MY16-TD (TDIF) and MY16-AE (AES/EBU) cards are planned for March 2003.

Presonus announced their partnership with ADL Anthony Demaria Labs, the second one to design high-end products, the first to distribute them. And if you look at the current crop coming from ADL with tubes all over, it's going to be of some interest. :) At first, the planned products (maybe a preamp at Frankfurt Musikmesse 03?) will stay all analogue, but who knows?

Presonus presented new stuff too, a line of 1/3 rack space comleting their TubePre:
- Comp16, a compressor, mono, with 16 presets (I/O 1/4" and XLR)
- EQ3B, an eq fully parametric, mono, 3 bands (I/O 1/4" and XLR)
- HP4, a 4 separe amps for headphones, individual volume control and ...