New York, NY (November 22, 2022)—With the holidays nearly here, it’s that time of year again: that time when friends and family turn to you and say “You’re the professional; give me some ideas for audio presents to give people”—and you don’t have any ideas. You can try and explain that consumer and pro audio are two entirely different things, but they won’t understand and to be fair, the line between consumer and pro seems to get blurrier every year.
With that in mind, here’s a few gift guide items ranging from $70 to $1,200 that will give them plenty to consider.
Audio-Technica AT-LP2022 Turntable
Audio-Technica’s brand-new 60th Anniversary limited-edition AT-LP2022 Manual Belt-Drive Turntable ($1,200) pulls out all the stops. The turntable is built upon a 30 mm thick, high-density clear acrylic chassis that reduces unwanted resonances, complemented by a transparent anti-resonant acrylic platter with a mounted black AT-VM95E cartridge as well as a clear AT-VMN95SH Shibata stylus.
The turntable itself sports newly designed isolation feet that are height-adjustable, and also has an external power supply to keep unwanted electronic noise literally at a distance. The AT-LP2022 also comes with a removeable dust cover, detachable RCA cable and 45 RPM adapter.
RTM B-1000EW Portable Cassette Player
The only consumer audio medium more “throwback” than vinyl is cassettes, and there’s new gear in that realm, too. Audio tape manufacturer RecordingTheMasters recently rebranded itself as RTM, and is expanding its presence in the cassette tape marketplace, opening its own exclusive duplication facilities to manufacturer its RTM C-60 and RTM C-90 cassettes. RTM is also moving into electronics, however, with the launch of its new B-1000EW Portable Cassette Player ($85). The new player retains the built-in microphone and external microphone recording of RTM’s previous B-1000 model, along with an expanded window, USB power adapter and more .
AIAIAI TMA-2 Studio Wireless+ Headphones
Danish audio design company AIAIAI has been working with the likes of Richie Hawtin on the R&D of their products and now has artists like Benji B and, Fred Again… as brand ambassadors for their headphones. The latest addition to the company’s wares is the TMA-2 Studio Wireless+ ($350), designed specifically with music makers in mind. The headphones feature low latency and uncompressed audio from the company’s new “W+ Link” technology to provide a reportedly nearly latency-free wireless experience. Furthermore, the TMA-2 Studio Wireless+ also features Bluetooth 5.0 with 80 hours of playback time for music creation in any environment. The cans also come with a coiled cable so they can be used in wired situations as well.
Every Pro Audio Holiday Gift Guide Ever!
Mackie M•Caster Studio
Content creation is the name of the game these days, whether you’re an aspiring podcaster, video game streamer, YouTuber or something else. Like any studio, big or small, it all centers around the mixer, so Mackie has introduced the M•Caster Studio ($350) desktop live streaming mixer, offering processing, ContourFX Presets, a built-in 4 pad sampler, Bluetooth connectivity, full-color MixViewer display, a plethora of input/output options, and more.
METAlliance Recording & Mixing Drums
Closing out this gift guide is one just for the recordists, regardless of whether they’re longtime or aspiring pros. Simply put, a great track without great drums is not a great track, because a well-captured, strong performance is the basic foundation that everything else is built upon. Capturing lightning in a bottle is never easy, but you can make that metaphorical bottle a lot bigger by following the hard-earned advice shared in the new book, METAlliance Recording & Mixing Drums ($70). For those who don’t know, the METAlliance is essentially The Avengers of producer/engineers—a team of legendary pros with dozens of Grammy Awards between them—so their new book on recording drummers is not to be missed.