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Sabian Memphis and Raw Bell Rides and Solid Hi-Hats
A mixed bunch here from Sabian, adding to previously well established categories. What they all have in common is the suffix 'X'. This is Sabian's code for 'modern'. AAX is modern bright, while HHX is modern dark. APX is modern cut, ie: ...
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Indie Music
Memphis
Andy Bell
Native Instruments Kontakt 4
For those unfamiliar with Kontakt, it's a plug-in and standalone sampler for PC and Mac with a bundled library (43GB in the latest release). Over time, it's developed into one of the most powerful programs of its kind, and can deliver everything ...
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Indie Music
Marshall MA50C
Marshall has been a hive of activity of late, with a string of high-profile releases including the new solid-state MG series, the low-cost Haze series and the Class 5 combo. Marshall's historical lifeblood is its 50- and 100-watt models, however, a ...
Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Producer
Cakewalk is nothing if not dependable. Every year, around Autumn, it releases a major upgrade to its flagship DAW, Sonar. In case you're unfamiliar, Sonar is a complete music production package, offering audio and MIDI recording, mixing, 15 ...
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Indie Music
Native Instruments The Finger
The humble MIDI keyboard doesn't get much love in this world of pads, knobs, and touchscreens. Maybe The Finger - borrowed from Warp artist Tim Exile's Reaktor-based setup - will remind us how darned useful a standard keyboard can really be. ...
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Indie Music
Violet Design Flamingo Junior
Violet Design makes some of the best large diaphragm mics you can buy. On the whole these are pretty keenly priced, although being European-made they're not as cheap as products made in the Far East. The Flamingo Junior offers an interesting ...
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Indie Music
Istanbul Agop Signature Cymbals
Home to the company's most personalised cymbals, Istanbul Agop's Signature Series includes a set of models used by their first ever endorsee Mel Lewis. An influx of name endorsees to Istanbul Agop in recent years has seen new cymbals joining the ...
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Indie Music
Zero-G Vocaloid Sonika
Yamaha's Vocaloid voice synthesizer software has been around for a few years now. Sonika is the latest offering from Zero-G, which has licensed the Vocaloid software engine and produced a series of vocal synthesis packages, each with a distinct ...
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Indie Music
Solid State Logic X-Desk
For anyone with the vaguest interest in audio production, the name Solid State Logic is synonymous with technical innovation and the very highest quality analogue and digital audio consoles. As audio production techniques have changed, its ...
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Indie Music
Synthogy Ivory Upright Pianos
When Synthogy launched the first version of Ivory, it set the standard for all subsequent sampled grand pianos. Since its release in 2004, we've also had the Ivory Italian Grand, and now Ivory Upright Pianos is here. As its name suggests, ...
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Indie Music
DDRUM Dios M Drum Kit
The Swedish company Clavia was in at the forefront of the digital music revolution in 1983 and its ddrum electronic drum gear became a byword for quality. So it was a surprise when the ddrum logo first appeared on acoustic kits in 2005, marketed by ...
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Indie Music
SoniqWare MT-1
It can be beneficial to split audio source material into separate frequency bands (eg, bass, midrange and treble) for processing purposes, and multiband effects are now commonplace in the computer musician's plug-in folder. While they can be ...
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Indie Music
Moog Moogerfooger MIDI MuRF
The Moogerfooger MuRF already comes in two flavours, the standard version and the bass version. This latest revision rolls these two variants into one unit with a switch to change the filter ranges between mids and bass, but the most important ...
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Indie Music
The Moog
Orange Dual Terror
When Orange introduced the Tiny Terror in 2006, the pint-sized 15-watter was received with rapturous applause. The only downside was that guitar players couldn't get enough of it. So, much like that bloke from the Halifax advert, the Dual Terror ...
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Indie Music
Intelligent Devices MegaDelayMass
MegaDelayMass is a plug-in that treads new ground, taking the standard multitap delay concept and running with it. In essence, it's a two-second multitap delay line with up to 100 taps. This is complemented by a host of clever features that ...
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Indie Music
Treeworks Chimes
The TreeWorks chimes company from Nashville, Tennessee is dedicated to creating every conceivable set-up you could possibly imagine. The design and build quality of its chimes is unprecedented and, whether you want that Rush intro or more ...
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Indie Music
112dB Redline Equalizer
We're big fans of 112dB's Redline Reverb, as it brings a lush, musical sound to a saturated market. Now the 112dB has released an EQ, Redline Equalizer, and most impressively, it lives up to the high standard that the company has set for itself. ...
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Indie Music
Fender Bassman TV 15 Fifteen
While guitar players are bombarded with reissued classic amps, we humble bassists are seldom offered such vintage-inspired choices. Our interest was piqued, then, at the news that Fender is revisiting one of the most famous amp models in history: ...
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Indie Music
Cakewalk V-Studio 100
For the modern musician, the computer often fulfils multiple audio roles, and if your musical activities extend beyond the studio, that usually means carting around not just your computer, but a suitable audio interface and perhaps a controller, ...
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Indie Music
M-Audio Studiophile CX5
As if the mid-range monitor market wasn't competitive enough already, M-Audio has revamped its line-up with the introduction of two new designs which it claims work particularly well in difficult acoustic environments. These CX5s are the smaller ...
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Indie Music
Roland SP-404SX
The SP-404 was launched in 2005 and quickly gained fans for its no-nonsense, portable approach to sampling. However, there were also many users and potential buyers that found the SP-404 frustrating to use for a wide range of different reasons. ...
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Indie Music
Electro-Harmonix 22 Caliber
We need to clear a few things up before we get into the 22 Caliber. It's not an effects pedal, a DI box, or a booster; nor is it even a preamp. It is, in fact, a 22-watt power amp that's been squeezed into a chassis measuring a mere 110mm by 55mm ...
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Indie Music
Meinl Samba Series Percussion
Meinl offers staggering choices for drummers and percussionists and its attention to detail is highly lauded. Brazilian samba instruments are, by their nature, hugely diverse and traditionally have been produced from a great many materials. Meinl ...
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Indie Music
Native Instruments Absynth 5
Ever since its debut in 2002, Absynth has been lauded as one of the most versatile and powerful soft synths on the market. Native Instruments' semi-modular beast is truly feature-packed, boasting oscillators into which you can draw your own ...
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Indie Music
Line 6 Spider IV 75
As Line 6's Spider amp range is among the bestselling all around the whole world, the launch of the fourth series is big news. The range comprises smaller 15- and 30-watt combos, as well as larger, more advanced items, such as a 150-watt head and ...
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Indie Music
Image-Line FL Studio 9
At the time of its launch way back in 1998, FruityLoops (as it was then called) was a primitive drum machine, but as the program involved into something considerably more complex (eventually earning full DAW status), it quickly gained popularity ...
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Indie Music
Novation Launchpad
Ableton Live has been steadily gaining popularity over the last four or five years, going from an 'outside DAW' to the trendy software that everybody wants to say they use - no matter how much it actually figures in their productions and live work. ...
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Indie Music
AKG Perception 820
AKG's Perception range, which was launched in 2005 and includes the sub-£100 Perception 120, has just gained a new flagship model in the form of the 820. The two standout features are that the microphone has a tube design and that its polar ...
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Indie Music
Peavey Kosmos V2
Getting more bottom end in the mix has been the holy grail for many producers and there are various ways to do it. One way is to use a hardware enhancer specifically designed for the job. dbx, Waves and Aphex all have products that spring to mind. ...
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Indie Music
Fender Classic Telecaster Deluxe with Black Dove Pickups
Why has Fender chosen to revisit the Telecaster Deluxe? "For many years the Stratocaster was more dominant," confirms Fender's marketing director Justin Norvell, "but the Tele has been gaining for several years now - all the more ...
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Indie Music
M-Audio Studiophile DSM1
M-Audio's DSM1s represent the smallest (and cheapest) model in M-Audio's new 'middle' range of monitors. Built in collaboration with Digidesign, they have 'bigger brothers' in the form of the DSM2 and DSM3. The DSM1's appearance is clean and ...
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Indie Music
Zildjian A Custom ReZo Cymbals
ReZo cymbals are part of Zildjian's A Custom range and were introduced - in crash form only - in 2008. For 2009 ( announced at Winter NAMM ), Zildjian has expanded the choice of ReZo models to include hi-hats, splashes, pangs and a ride. Build ...
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Indie Music
Custom
SE Electronics RNR1
The recent partnership of sE and Rupert Neve has created a new range of high spec microphones of which the RNR1 ribbon mic is the first to be released. With Siwei Zou and the sE team taking care of the physical design, Rupert Neve has created ...
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Indie Music
Sherman Rodec Restyler
Sherman has become a cult name in studio gear circles, owing largely to the wildly chaotic power of its Filterbank units. The Restyler is the company's second product and a collaboration with Rodec, which is well respected for the quality of its ...
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Indie Music
MFB Kraftzwerg
MFB is the brainchild of Manfred Fricke, boutique analogue designer who has been running out of his Berlin HQ for many years now. This is his latest and greatest synth design, and it follows the MFB tradition of offering powerful but tiny synths ...
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Indie Music
Zoom G1u
Zoom's G1u, packs a load of features for not a lot of money. It's an amp modeller/multi-FX unit that's also a USB audio interface. It features an onboard tuner, a footswitchable five-second looper and a bunch of drum rhythms to play to, plus it ...
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Indie Music
Universal Audio EMT 250
German plate reverb meisters EMT unveiled the world's first digital reverb device, the EMT 250 Electronic Reverberator, way back in 1976. This mighty chunk of hardware had 16KB of RAM, now-comical control levers to set parameters, three fans and a ...
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Indie Music
Vienna Symphonic Library Vienna Imperial
The Bösendorfer Imperial virtual piano from VSL has been a popular choice for a couple of years, but the company's latest, Vienna Imperial, aims to improve on it as well as blitz the competition. Based again on the Bösendorfer 290 piano ...
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Indie Music
112dB Redline Reverb
While many reverbs opt for convolution-charged ultra-realism or offer separate plate, hall and room algorithms, 112dB claims that its Redline Reverb takes a slightly different approach, with a single core algorithm that you can shape in a variety ...
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Indie Music
Vengeance Multiband Sidechain
"How do I do sidechain compression?" – this has to be one of the most common production-related queries there is. The technique in question often involves tricky routing and the use of a sidechain-capable compressor to give an effect ...
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Indie Music
RME Fireface UC
The Fireface UC is ostensibly the same as RME's Fireface 400, providing 36 channels of analogue and digital I/O with only the interface format changed from FireWire to USB 2.0. The analogue inputs are split across the unit with two mic/line and ...
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Indie Music
Spaun TL Series Drum Kit
Since its inception in 1996, Spaun has been a strictly custom drum manufacturer. In that time it has brought some memorably original designs and extroverted finishes to the market. The new TL Series is the Californian company's first project away ...
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Indie Music
DW
Sugar Bytes Thesys
Many DAWs offer standard arpeggiators and chord generators to 'bring life' to your MIDI sequences, but often these plug-ins are lacking on the usability and flexibility fronts. This is where Sugar Bytes' Thesys comes in - here we have an ...
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Indie Music
Peavey 3120
With players such as Soulfly's Max Cavalera ensconced in ads for this new head, you can bet a decent jazz tone isn't top of the agenda here. It's hardly Peavey's first attempt at a 120-watt three-channel head either. But where the 6505, for ...
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Indie Music
DigiTech Vocalist VL3D
The DigiTech Vocalist Live 2, was purely for processing vocals and adding two-part harmonies, triggered by guitar and intelligently following the chords played. DigiTech has now come up with the Vocalist VL3D, a desktop processor with an expanded ...
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Indie Music
Modartt Pianoteq 3
When the first version of Pianoteq arrived in 2006, it broke the conventional mould. At that time, all of the high-spec virtual grands were sample-based, but Modartt's software generated its sounds in real-time, giving it several distinct ...
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Indie Music
Bosphorus Stanton Moore Cymbals
Like many New Orleans musicians Stanton Moore has been shaped by the melting pot that is his home city. Now recognised as a leading contemporary second line drummer, his CV details an astonishing variety of gigs, from marching bands to heavy metal. ...
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Indie Music
Stanton Moore
Dave Smith Tetra
Fact: Dave Smith is a synth design legend. He designed the Prophet 5, 10, T8, Pro One, and VS under the Sequential Circuits name and also changed the way we all make music forever with his huge contribution to the invention of MIDI itself. His ...
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Indie Music
Jimmy Smith
Medeli Electronic Drum Kit
With Yamaha and Roland dominating the high street as far as electronic drum kits are concerned, it's always something of a novelty when another brand pitches in to the market. Given the two biggies' dominance in the middle and top-end sectors, it ...
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Indie Music
Korg microSampler
Judging by the runaway success of the microKorg, it seems like the world really was looking for a small synth with a big sound. So what's next? How can Korg take the fun and portable music machine to the next level? By basing a new micro around the ...
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