When you review as much DJing, production, and performing gear as Crossfadr does, there are pieces that are good and serviceable and there are others that make you go “Wow, who invented this?!” – in a good way, obviously. Cerwin-Vega’s P-Series P1500X and P1800SX powered speakers fall into this latter [...]
Mastering is an important but over overlooked stage of production. Shaping the dynamics and optimizing the audio will give your tracks that professional sheen. It’ll also help them sound their best when played back on a wide variety of different speakers and headphones. If you want people to enjoy your [...]
If you’re a producer of any kind of electronic music, particularly Hip-Hop, the Akai MPC name will be instantly recognizable to you. The looming beige monolith has held pride of place on the desk of any notable producer you’d care to mention. But bulky and expensive hardware devices all took [...]
The Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, a USB 2.0 interface with eight mic preamps, is the latest in a new generation of audio interfaces designed to specifically work with computers. Focusrite claims it’s the USB 2.0 complement to the Saffire PRO 40; however, while the Scarlett 18i20 includes many decent features and [...]
The Vestax PBS-4 is a tool for broadcasting captured audio live onto internet streaming services. It’s ideal for producers of internet radio shows or for webcasting live performances online. Web-based video streaming sites like UStream and Justin.tv offer quick and easy video streaming services, but capturing those performances, editing them, [...]
In many cases, some of the new DJ and production tools featuring iProduct integration have been little more than a perfunctory capitalization on the popularity of the mobile market. It’s not too often that a product comes along which uses an iPod or iPad to do something not ordinarily possible [...]
The Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 is a compact and comparatively cheap mixing console and interface that packs a variety of well-considered features. The niche of the “Live mixer / DAW interface” device has not become so common that manufacturers are auto-piloting through and just copying their competitors. There’s still a lot [...]
The Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 is the flagship unit of the Saffire range, and is packed with high-end features and the widest variety of I/O options, including some that will really interest the audiophile! The case takes up two rack units, so all the controls are nicely spaced out, and [...]
The Focusrite Control 2802 is a 32 channel, Small-format analog mixing console with fully-integrated DAW controls. The console handles analog signals, just as a standard live mixer would, but it seamlessly integrates the Analog signals with your digital equipment. What you end up with is a mixer and a DAW [...]
The market for studio keyboards these days is so saturated with nearly identical products – keys, knobs, faders and pads, we’ve seen it all – that it’s hard to think of a way to truly revolutionize the modern MIDI keyboard and control surface while also retaining all of the familiar [...]