Blog
Software Tech: Is Inexpensive Pro Audio Software Over?
By Craig Anderton. Before the turn of the century, keyboards were on a race to the bottom in terms of cost, before they managed...
Musician/author Craig Anderton is an internationally recognized authority on music and technology. His onstage career spans from the 1960s with the group Mandrake, through the 2000s with electronic groups Air Liquide and Rei$$dorf Force, to the “power duo” EV2 with Public Enemy’s Brian Hardgroove, and EDM-oriented solo performances. He has played on, produced or mastered more than 20 major label recordings and hundreds of tracks, authored over 45 books, toured extensively, played Carnegie Hall, worked as a studio musician in the 70s, written over a thousand articles, lectured on technology and the arts (in 10 countries, 38 U.S. states, and three languages), and done sound design and consulting work for numerous music companies. He is a former President of The MIDI Association, and holds two patents related to audio technology. For free access to over 200 articles and more information, please visit craiganderton.org. For music and instructional videos, go to youtube.com/thecraiganderton.
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Software Tech: The Services Industry?
Craig Anderton ponders whether the music software industry will take the services route to offset maturing sales.
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Software Tech: The New Mac Pro
By Craig Anderton. Deep dive into the new Mac Pro and discover what it means for audio pros.
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Software Tech: Will Podcasts Elevate the Small Studio?
By Craig Anderton. While podcasting started out with homegrown audio, listeners’ expectations are rising fast—creating a new opportunity for audio pros.
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Software Tech: Recovering from OS Meltdowns
Craig Anderton explores the changing ways to recover from OS meltdowns.
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Software Tech: Remote Possibilities
By Craig Anderton. Smartphones and tablets have fostered a veritable explosion in DAW remote control options.
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Software Tech: New Trends in Plug-Ins
By Craig Anderton. With over a quarter-century of development, plug-ins are exploring worlds that go way beyond analog emulation.
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Software Tech: The Latest DAW Updates Serve Up Compatibility, Parity, Completeness
Craig Anderton serves up insights on the latest DAW updates.
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Software Tech: How the Cloud Changed Music Software
By Craig Anderton. Digital downloads turned the software sales model completely on its head. Once Apple started the trend, momentum increased for companies selling...
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Software Tech: Last Year Meets Next Year
By Craig Anderton. 2018 laid the groundwork for what might be the dominant computer experience of the future for pros.
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The 145th AES Convention Anderton Awards
Duck and Cover, because the Anderton Awards are back. You've been warned.
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Software Tech: Can Studios Live in the Cloud?
Craig Anderton isn’t daydreaming as he looks at the future of recording studios...
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Software Tech: 96 kHz vs. 44.1 kHz—Let’s Settle This
By Craig Anderton. Ever since we’ve had a choice of sample rates, there’s been controversy over whether higher sample rates sound better.
Recording
Software Tech: The NKS 2.0 Spec—Controller Salvation?
By Craig Anderton. Whether NKS has value depends on how you plan to use it, and what updates may be forthcoming.
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Pro Audio and Machine Learning: Ready for Prime Time?
By Craig Anderton. Will machine learning make audio engineers obsolete?
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Software Tech: Apple Drops Intel? What Does It Mean for Us?
By Craig Anderton. The latest Apple rumor is that the company is going to replace Intel’s chips with their own starting in 2020.
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Software Tech: Can Pro Audio Software Sustain?
By Craig Anderton. The lessons of Cakewalk, Emagic, Steinberg, Digidesign and Syntrillium are instructive because each presents possibly sustainable economic models for pro audio...
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MIDI-CI Makes Its Debut
Craig Anderton digs into the MIDI Capability Inquiry specification—and digs it.
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Is Thunderbolt 3 the Data Savior?
By Craig Anderton. Thunderbolt 3 looks poised to become the breakthrough protocol its originators always hoped it would be.
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Software Tech: The Year of the Platform
By Craig Anderton. Given the pro audio and music industry’s relatively small slice of the economic pie, a platform makes sense. Products need staying...
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Software Tech: Is Modular Software the Future?
By Craig Anderton. Software’s “next big thing” could be modular software that allows mixing and matching elements from various programs.
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Lessons We Can Learn from Cakewalk’s Demise
The sudden death of Cakewalk was a cautionary tale for companies—and customers. Here's the take-aways.
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The 143rd AES Convention Anderton Awards
With the restraining order from last year’s Anderton Awards still in effect (but c’mon—no one actually died from the food), this year the world’s...
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Yes, Even Guitars
Guitars are more likely to be associated with tubes and retro technology than cutting-edge software, but that’s changing in everything from recording...
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The Calm Before the Storm—12 Years Later
If you look at “new product” introductions at trade shows, often they’re more about reminding people of what was a new product a...
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Advances in Archiving
Recently, I ran across a family photo that was taken in 1890, affixed to a cardboard backing—and was as good as the day...
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Digital Audio Formats: What’s Next?
Two recent events underscore changes in the world of digital audio. The first is the end of licensing for MP3 data compression (or more...
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Is the Pen Mightier than the Mouse?
Last month’s column covered the Windows Creators update, and although there was a fair amount of detail on the Surface Dial, I mentioned Pen...
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Windows Creators Update Meets Pro Audio
Although concerns about Apple’s commitment to pro-level creators are likely overblown—Apple probably has a few tricks up its sleeve for 2018—Microsoft is doing a...
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Cracks in the Mac?
Since its introduction, the Mac’s share of the pro audio market has been hugely disproportionate to its general market share. It upended the Amiga—at...
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Touching and MIDI and Clouds—Oh My!
Although Apple wasn’t at NAMM, it chose that time slot to introduce Logic Pro X 10.3. And in typical Apple fashion, it embodied three...
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Interfacing with Interfaces at NAMM 2017
NAMM has been making an effort to get pro audio more involved in the show, and the 2017 NAMM convention had more bait than...
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EQ: The Next Generation
When plugins first appeared, the goal was often to provide virtual equivalents of hardware devices—similarly to how CGI originally reproduced reality less expensively. But...
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Testing, Testing
Let’s salute the unsung hero of modern recording software: test and measurement. In the days of tape, your test gear was VU meters that...
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Mixing and Mastering with “Self-Driving” Audio
Here’s an interesting workforce statistic: Far more jobs are lost to robots than to companies sending jobs overseas. But of course, as recording engineers,...
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The 141st AES Anderton Awards
It’s been said the only survivors of a nuclear war would be cockroaches and Cher’s career…but then there’s the Anderton Awards, "honoring" the...
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Is Video the DAW’s Final Frontier?
With a few exceptions, most recent DAW changes have been incremental: We haven’t seen huge breakthroughs like when Opcode’s Vision merged hard disk audio...
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Fix It Before The Mix
When multitrack tape recording progressed beyond a few tracks, a new phrase was added to the recording lexicon: “Fix it in the mix,��...
Gear and Technology
Software Tech: Stability Wars
As we become ever-more dependent on computers, we increasingly run the risk of being blindsided by our tools.
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Software: The State of the Software
Yes, these are challenging times—and times that are difficult to quantify.
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The Ever-Evolving Subscription Model
It seems like only yesterday we covered changes in subscription software—last March, to be exact. But, in “computer years,” six months can be an...