Monome is a US collective. These girls and guys are busy producing the first batch of 200 units of the Monome 40h. This is a USB controller, with 8 rows of 8 illuminated silicone buttons powered with the mapd software (drum machines, loopers, 1bit video transformers, physics models, virtual sliders, math games, etc.) The controller receives and sends MIDI and OSC thru mapd. The video is more explicit in the uses that can be done than a long listing. The firmware is under GNU/GPL so anyone can add his little stone… And last, there's brewing a Monome 100h with a matrix of 16x16… Oh, and they bike in Philadelphia too.

Availability, as fast as they can finish and ship them… price $500

Disc Cover is a vey new, slick and intuitive Mac OS X software to create labels and covers for CDs, DVDs and more. Variety of professionally made designs are just fine for a quick start. The program imports data and images from iTunes, iPhoto, Finder, iDVD and many other sources. You can easily experiment with styles and graphic tools. Disc Cover will fairly serve to bring you more and more design ideas. Disc Cover will help you to arrange music collection in a creative way, create beautiful-looking family photo albums, make convenient data Backup archives, label your presentations or clients portfolio and personalize DVD movies and home video.

Disc Cover is Universal Binary compatible for both Intel-based and PowerPC-based Macs and ships for $34,95.

The TRM-6 is a move into the ribbon mic, it integrates a tube preamp using the ubiquitous 12XA7A. It's a classic 2 x 45 mm long aluminium ribbon figure of 8 design (2 micron thick), handling 135 dB SPL at least. The integrated preamp simplifies the ribbon mic handling though removes the preamp choice. The Nady TRM-6 come with a carrying bag, shockmount, foam windscreen, the TMPS-6 power supply, a 33' XLR cable and a padded lockable aluminium flight case.

Price TBA, available this spring.

Metric Halo has released ChannelStrip for GarageBand. This package includes the GarageBand-specific AU plug-in, more than 120 general presets, and the GarageBand specific "channel strip file" presets to optimize both software instruments and entire mixes. ChannelStrip is the recognized leader in console-style channel strip audio processing for digital audio workstations. As the first plug-in to offer the combination of audio quality, DSP efficiency and a comprehensive user interface, ChannelStrip lets users work as efficiently and interactively as they would with a dedicated, world-class mixing console.

ChannelStrip for GarageBand is the complete ChannelStrip signal processor plugin with all the presets included in the ChannelStrip TDM version, but ChannelStrip for GarageBand will only run within GarageBand. It costs $89 and a fully operational 12-day demo is available.

Steinberg has updated its audio sequencing software Cubase LE to version 3.0.3.658. This new release corrects the input and output port limitation on the first eight inputs and outputs of the audio interface. So it's now possible to access all ports of the interface and assign them to the eight buses of Cubase SE 3.0.3.