TC-Helicon Vocal Technologies announced two new vocal harmony processors, the TC-Helicon VoiceWorks and the TC-Helicon Quintet. Both products debuted at Winter NAMM 2003 in Anaheim, California.

PMI Audio Group announced that they have taken over Joemeek, enabling the company to stay in business after the demise of Fletcher Electro-Acoustics, which is out of business.

Musicians consider absolute ear as an invaluable gift. What is its origin ? Is it acquirable ? Can we say that what's increased in efficiency is lost in musical pleasure ? Answers elements... Isn't it unsettling to be confronted with a sort of walking frequency-meter which instantly names the key, or even the chord that you've just played on your instrument ? Isn't it annoying to be said "you're a quarter of a tone too low", and to see this peremptory verdict confirmed by your electronic tuner ? In the same way, isn't it humiliating, while sweating blood over a four pitches dictation, to observe some gifted pupils of the music class retranscribing it in one go ? But first of all, what on earth is this nearly- mythical perfect pitch, which some people even refute the existence?

The translation from the original article by F. Ernould, translated from french by Simple Cel.

Akai Professional has started shipping the HV-10 DecaBuddy, a rack-mount version of their DecaBuddy VST plug-in, a multi-part harmonies for your vocals. By adding 9 harmony parts to the original vocal, up to 10 voice harmonies can be played: 5 parts (Original + 4 transposed Harmonies) x 2 (Voice Doubler). Harmony can be selected using any one of the many Preset Scales, programmable User Scales or via MIDI. In addition to generating harmonies, pitch correction can be applied to the harmony parts and the Formant parameter can change female voices to male and vice versa. For a more natural performance, apply random pitch-shift and/or random delay to each harmony part independently. The DecaBuddy provides 50 banks, with each bank containing 2 Programs. All 100 programs can be edited, stored and/or overwritten in memory.

At the Winter NAMM show, Apogee introduced Big Ben, a 192 kHz Master Word Clock that offers some innovation. For example, using proprietary Apogee technologies, the all digital C777 clock and "Adaptive Loop Filtering", Big Ben is able to intelligently minimize jitter to previously unattainable levels. With other features such as real-time format conversion, fail safe lock to external sources, termination sensing, an optional Firewire card and a wide range of I/O choices including 6 word clock outs, Big Ben is poised to create a new standard for studio digital clocking in the industry.