Grooves Tubes was showing its all-tube Glory Comp at NAMM, a compressor with more tubes than it's healthy to have. As you can expect, the beast has a distinct character. Key features are entry levels -10dBV and +4dBu, Attack, Release and Compression Threshold controls, and ratios from 1:1 to 10:1. The unit uses ceramic multi-decked switches instead of potentiometers to provide long life and repeatable settings and a sidechain EQ. An additional touch is the Glory knob (must have something to do with the name ;) that works on the 2nd harmonics to bring more presence between the "Hearth" and "Heaven" settings.
The unit will be available in Spring for US$2999.

Ibanez has decided to reissue its mythic TS808, the other 808. The overdrive stompbox "Tube Screamer" is back this year and each one features the original hand-picked chip of the original stomp -- not a DSP model -- packed in a tough-on-the-job green box. Rumour says it's tough enough to resist laptops ;)
It will be available for US$240.

You can now download a demo of MidiBridge9X, a combo OMS Driver/Application that allows OMS applications running under Classic to communicate with CoreMidi devices.

Some of the programs that were tested with MidiBridge9X: Finale 2003, Band-in-a-Box, Nightingale, Reason, Applications created with MAX..
The one application that doesn't work right now is Opcode's Vision. Troika Tronix are investigating to see if there is a way to get Vision working with MidiBridge9X.

This version has a 15 minute time out. When the beta testers will have reported back on the current version, Troika Tronix will release a public beta for sale.

Yamaha has annouced its new portable 1 unit rack audio interface: the i88x. This new 24 Bit/96kHz audio interface works on the Yamaha mLAN (FireWire) protocol and features 2 instrument/mic phantom-powered inputs, 6 line inputs, ADAT I/O, S/PDIF I/O and MIDI I/O. The i88x ships with mLAN drivers for Mac OS 9 and drivers for Mac OS X are under development.

The i88x can be used as extension for 01x or MOTIF using mLAN16E due to mLAN support as well as a stand-alone Audio/MIDI interface.

Ed: Well, it's great to see Yamaha finally shipping some mLAN stuff, but with few products supporting the protocol and no OS X support, I think I'll stick with my plain-vanilla FireWire audio interfaces! -PK

At NAMM '04, M-Audio annouced a new FireWire audio interface, the FireWire 18/14, featuring 2 FireWire ports, a 24 bit/192 kHz AD/DA converter, 2 Neutrik phantom powered mic inputs, 6 line inputs and 4 line outputs. The FireWire 18/14 will manage 18 inputs channels (8 analog inputs, 8 ADAT and 2 S/PDIF) and 14 output channels (4 analog outputs, 8 ADAT and 2 S/PDIF).

The M-Audio FireWire 18/14 audio interface will be available in March '04 for EUR/US$700.