Today at NAMM, Apogee Electronics Corporation (booth 6428) unveiled Symphony, a multi-channel PCI Express card designed specifically for use with Apple's Macintosh computers. Apogee's Symphony PCI Express card is a digital computer interface that is based on the PCI-Express architecture in Apple's PowerMac G5 computers. Controlled by Apogee's Maestro software, Symphony features 32 channels of digital I/O on a single PCI-Express card format. With support for sample rates up to 192 kHz, Symphony can be used as a digital router or patch-bay when connected to external converters or other digital outboard equipment.

Software drivers for Symphony will feature extensive routing capabilities and very low latency performance. Symphony connects directly to Apogee's Rosetta and AD-16X and DA-16X ...

Intel-based iMac and MacBook Pro can be happy. Roland, BOSS, EDIROL have prepared drivers for Intel based Macs. Roland drivers are in the final stages of qualification on iMacs and MacBooks and will be available as soon as they are polished. Firewire audio class drivers for EDIROL FA-66 and FA-101, along with USB mass storage drivers used for Fantom-x and other Roland, BOSS and EDIROL products are already included and fully compatible with the new macs.

Cycling '74 today announced revision software 1.3 for the JazzMutant Lemur Multi-touch control surface. New software features in version 1.3 allow the Lemur to be reconfigured in powerful ways from a host computer via the OSC (Open Sound Control) protocol. The Lemur is a hardware controller for new media applications featuring a proprietary LCD touch screen for which users create their own user interfaces. The Lemur sends OSC messages to a host computer over 100-base T Ethernet. The new version 1.3 software expands the repertoire of OSC commands the host computer can send back to the Lemur, allowing any of the eight types of user interface objects to be changed on the fly. This allows the Lemur to be used both as a controller and a status monitor.

The forthcoming update will be available via download for all current Lemur customers.

In less than 24 hours, the winter NAMM will open at the Convention Centre in Anaheim, California. The prestigious NAMM Show will gather over 1,400 exhibitors from 19-22 January, they will undoubtedly be very keen to unveil their lastest items to a public made of musicians and visitors growing more and more avid for innovations. As usual, the whole MacMusic team will take it in turns to cover this event, in real time or so this year with our team on the spot.

The major news will be available as soon as the show opens, both in the News section, and in our "special Namm report".

In this report, we will try to gather all information about audio software compatible with the new Intel based macintosh. Indeed, software need to be recompiled as Universal Binaries, to support both PPC and Intel processors.

Don't hesitate to comment or post a news article if you are aware of something we missed! ;-)