Musical Instruments

If, like most home or project studio owners, you’ve opted to use a computer as the center of your studio, then you’ll most likely be hearing a lot about audio interfaces.    For the typical home user, the sound card on your computer is just fine. Unfortunately, for a studio owner, you’ll very quickly find that the onboard sound system is inadequate for your needs. They’re typically noisy, they lack inputs and outputs you’ll most likely need and they can be inefficient in the way they translate analog and digital audio.   That’s where audio interfaces come into the picture. An audio interface is a piece of dedicated hardware that you connect to your computer. In the most basic sense, the interface is the audio middleman between you (the real world) and the computer. 

For the vast majority of home studio owners, the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software is the control center of their studio. The DAW is the program that allows you to create, record, edit and arrange audio.   Picking one that fits your needs can be a confusing tornado of options, features and opinion. Which one do you chose? 

Casio recently revived its Casiotone series. Keep reading to find out if these keyboards are the ideal product for you.

It never hurts to model a new guitar offering after a classic played by one of the instrument’s greatest heroes. And so it is with Fender’s new Hendrix Stratocaster. Based on the guitar used by the game changing innovator of the six-string, this may just be the Fender you’ve always been waiting for.

I review the AKAI Professional MPK Mini Play MKIII for Best Buy's blog. This portable midi controller impresses with its size and features the awesome MPC drum pads!

Saturday is always the busiest day (and night) at NAMM – as you can see by the crowd waiting to get in. The weekend brings out a lot of local people who couldn’t make it the last two days and/or folks looking to spot artists roaming the floors. We didn’t have any specific appointments to hit today, so I took the opportunity to just walk around and see what I could find.

The DJ2GO2 Touch DJ Controller from Numark packs classic features in a portable DJ controller at an affordable price.

If you have ever been in a DJ booth at a club chances are you would have seen a DJM-900NXS and some CDJ-2000NXS’s. This mixer and CDJs respectively have become industry standards and have rocked numerous clubs and some of the largest musical festivals in the world. This year Pioneer has launched at NAMM 2016, the remastered version of their flagship products with the CDJ-2000NXS2 Professional Multi Player & DJM-900NXS2 profession mixer.

The Roland CUBE GX20 is a compact 20 watt guitar amplifier with an 8” speaker and an attitude that aggressively snarls in your face metal. It features independent Clean, Lead, and Solo channels as well as modelling for 6 different amp types. This ensures that whether you’re sitting in your room shredding or running a line out from your GX20 to do some home recording, your needs are met with this lightweight, solidly constructed, and versatile bad boy.

Guitarists are always on the lookout for additional pieces of gear or accessories. The holidays are the perfect occasion to bring the joy and happiness!