New year, new gear! Here are the best of the (mostly) new music technology releases that grabbed our attention in the opening days of 2023.
Apple Ups The Mac Mini Numbers
January saw Apple launch their next generation of high-end SoCs – the M2 Pro and M2 Max – and a raft of new Macs housing them that music producers are going to find particularly compelling. For those with budget to burn, the mobility and self-containment of the upgraded 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros are likely to prove irresistible, but actually, if you’re in the market for a new ‘stationary’ studio Mac, the M2 and M2 Pro Mac minis offer unprecedented levels of bang for your buck. The M2 model boasts an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU with up to 24GB of unified memory; the M2 Pro tops out at a12-core CPU, 19-core GPU and 32GB of RAM; and all the usual trumpeted performance multipliers over previous Intel and M1 models can be scrutinised on the Apple website. You also get two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the M2, four on the M2 Pro, and support for two (M2) or three (M2 Pro) displays. And all of that in the same dinky footprint and super quiet design that the Mac mini has always been known for.
Of course, an M2 Mac Studio will be along in the near future, but for now, the M2 Mac mini delivers the best power-to-cost ratio ever in a Mac, and the M2 Pro pushes the performance envelope while still maintaining a very competitive price point. Both are available now.
Audient Smarten Up The Preamp
Hot(-ish) on the heels of the acclaimed EVO 16, Audient kicked off the new year with the introduction of a new 8-channel mic preamp and AD/DA converter, built with expansion of the EVO 16 in mind, of course, but equally compatible with any ADAT-equipped audio interface.
The EVO SP8 packs eight mic/line inputs, eight line outs and a two ADAT I/O pairs, so hooking it up to an EVO 16 or other eight-channel interface via ADAT results in 16 channels of quality analogue I/O, while plugging two of them into the EVO 16 ups that number to 24 – more than enough to record a full band including drums!
The EVO SP8 also features the gloriously convenient Smart Gain function from the EVO audio interface series, with which input gains are set automatically via a single button press, either channel by channel or all eight/16/24 at once; and the excellent Motion UI control scheme and high-resolution LCD display. Deploying the same pristine mic pres as the EVO 16, we expect the sound quality to be every bit as good as that proven box; and at its RRP of £399, the SP8 going to be a no-brainer for any project studio owner looking to expand their recording options.
Steven Slate Turns Our Head(phones)
We might be a bit late to the party with this one, but without doubt one of the highlights of January on Production Expert on was Russ’s perfectly pragmatic review of Steven Slate’s lauded VSX space-modelling ‘Headphone Mixing System’. Having been invited to try said cans by Slate himself, in response to his Facebook post calling out the company’s painfully shouty advertising, our man was so unexpectedly impressed by the VSX’s ability to effectively stand in for his £15,000 Kii Three speaker setup, that he could only conclude that they were “hands down the best headphones I’ve used for mixing”. Not at all bad for a package that lands at $499, and the piece is well worth a read if you haven’t already.
EVE Audio Move Some Serious Air
Pulling together “the eminent technologies of [the] SC3070 and TEC Award-winning SC4070”, EVE Audio’s January-released SC2070 is a near-/midfield monitor aimed at home and professional studios that’s especially newsworthy for its integration of the largest Air Motion Transformer yet in a 2-way speaker: the Air Motion Transformer RS7. With an extraordinarily low crossover frequency of 1800Hz, this is said to reproduce upper mids and highs (up to 25kHz) with “unparalleled precision and resolution”, and is paired with a 6.5-inch SilverCone woofer that’s moved by a low distortion copper cap magnet system with 1.5-inch voice coil, digging all the way down to 38Hz. Output is handled by two class D amplifiers, and onboard DSP (with 24-bit/192kHz Burr-Brown converters) enables filtering for room adaptation, adjusted using EVE’s nifty SMART-knob.
EVE Audio have nothing to prove in the pro monitoring arena, of course, but at $1299, the SC2070 appears to hit a particularly sweet pricing spot for speakers of this pedigree and specification.
Rhodes Go Virtual
There’s no shortage of superb Rhodes electric piano emulation plugins out there, both modelled and sample-based, but with the imminent entry into the software space by the legendary manufacturers themselves, we at last have a fully ‘official’ option in play. Emulating the fabulous MK8, Rhodes’ very own V8 (£150) and V8 pro (£250) plugins go all-in on realism and playability, mapping 30,000 samples (21.4GB) to 100 velocity layers, and featuring a preamp section with Drive control, EQ, a panning LFO and mechanical noise balancing. The Pro version then adds to those fundamentals with an envelope follower, audio-rate panning modulation, a variety of classic mic and amp models, per-note adjustment of Timbre, Fine Tune, Damper and Level, and Compressor, Chorus, Delay and Phaser effects.
We’re not convinced by the two-tier pricing, which feels like slightly mercenary ‘feature dangling’ to us, but since we’re not about to drop eight grand on the real thing, £250 for a thoroughly convincing virtual version of the MK8 still feels like a very fair deal. Both plugins will be available in March, but you can download a 45-day trial version of V8 Pro right now (and use it to enter Rhodes’ Missing Keys competition if you fancy being in with a chance of bagging an actual MK8!). We’ve already taken the plunge and can happily report that it sounds phenomenal.
What’s been the stand-out product launch of 2023 so far for you? Let us know in the comments.