Our friend Scott Shepard has gotten Apple's Pro Audio Training Authors Mary Plummer and Robert Brock to chat on Inside Mac Radio about Apple's latest offerings, Garage Band, Soundtrack, and the newly-streamlined Logic 6 lineup. As usual, you can download an MP3 of the show for listening via iTunes or your iPod. MacMusic will be back with Inside Mac Radio later this week with our Musik Messe wrap-up, but if you're still hungry for audio, check out my 3/23 chat with Scott.

Bitstream 3X is the new MIDI controller from Wave Idea, available in July/August 2004. A short preview here: "3X" stands for "3 Axis"; the controller features full control over X, Y and Z dimensions. A joystick allows control of X and Y, while an infrared controller is used for the Z axis. That's just the beginning, though, with 35 knobs, 8 sliders, 16 buttons, an arpeggiator, motion sampler, curve models and programmability, and graphic display. We've got the impressive full specs.

Apple's entry-level eMacs keep getting better for the value conscious with today's price break / speed bump. The US$799 eMac now features a 1.25 GHz G4, 333 MHz DDR SDRAM, three out of five USB ports making the leap to USB 2.0, and faster ATI Radeon 9200 graphics. The US$999 model replaces the combo drive with a SuperDrive and double the hard drive from 40GB to 80GB. The machines got the upgrade to USB 2.0 instead of FireWire 800, but that makes sense: many consumer devices now use USB 2.0, particularly those aimed at the PC market, but consumers should be perfectly happy with the speed of FireWire 400.

This week begins MacMusic's exclusive wrap-up / closer look at Musik Messe. Tune in all week for a look back at the deluge of new products out of Frankfurt!

One favorite from Musik Messe has to be the new Native Elektrik Piano, due in stores 22 April, just one of a number of new products from Native alone. Given an unlimited budget, a larger apartment, and new muscle tone, I'd be more than happy to lug around a Fender Rhodes MK ITM and MK IITM, a Hohner Clavinet E7TM, and a Wurlitzer A 200TM. Until I've bulked up and bought a pickup truck, though, the Native plugin looks like the best alternative: all four of these classics packed into one piece of software.