If you know about JoMoX (XBase, Airbase, Sunsyn), you know about the brain behind the great designs: Juergen Michaelis. When he's alone at night, he does thing on his own (he's the boss anyway) and what did he finished at last? His Resonator Neuronium.

A unique synth, analogue, based on neural networks (remember Hartman Neuron? it's a digital implementation of the basic ideas leading to something different). Unique because it was a private project, and finally, Juergen is going to make a small series of 10 machines at least to be able to lower the towering price to a more reasonable 2499€. Building will start once 10 firm buys are secured with a provision. This is a very unique thing, it's rare to see new stuff in synthesis, this is one!

After design some cute preamps in their german laboratories, Mindprint comes along with a desktop interface, TRIO. First point, you don't need a computer, second, it's a one button/pot-one function box and it's 24 bits/96 kHz.

It offers as inputs: 1 Mic XLR In Class A with phantom power, 1 instrument in (HiZ by Hugues&Kettner) and 2 Line In on jacks, 2 aux In and 2 DAW analog In in RCA, 1 Insert send and one Insert return in jack. Out: 2 direct Out and 2 DAW analog Out in RCA, 2 Headphones out in stereo jack, 3 pairs of speakers out (3 pairs: 2 Jack, 4 RCA), S/PDIF optical In/Out (2 TOSlink) at 44, 48, 88 and 96 kHz in 24 bit linear, sync: master or slave. It runs on an external PSU.

Nomad Factory has announced a new plugins bundle, the Essential Studio Suite, which contains 9 essential plug-ins : Multiband Compressor, Essential Channel, Essential Graphic EQ, Essential Compressor, Essential Gate Expander, Multiband Loudness Maximizer, Loudness Maximizer, Tube/Tape Warmer, and Retro-Vox.

This bundle will help you to "create professional projects from tracking to mixing to mastering", and costs $300.

EastWest has announced a new set of upgrades to all versions of Symphonic Orchestra.These updates will approximately double the size of the original editions Platinum, Gold and Silver. Upgrades will cost $2,995 for Platinium Pro, $995 for Gold Pro, and $295 for Sliver Pro.

The Pro Edition Upgrades will be available in March 2005.

Blue Mic débuts the Kickball, a new dynamic spherical mic designed for low frequency applications. It can be used on any instrument: kick drum, snare drum, tom toms, electric bass, bass and more. We note that the Kickball is the world's second phantom-powered dynamic microphone.

The Kickball is shipping at $149.