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Pro audio legend Craig Anderton recently built the recording PC of his dreams -- here's some of the questions, issues and answers he discovered along the way with builder Jayce Murphy of PCAudioLabs.
With venues closed and artists stuck at home, livestreamed performances have taken center stage during the pandemic; Craig Anderton shares how to join in.
You may be self-isolating at home with your computer right now, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t steal your files. Craig Anderton explores how to keep your software and songs safe.
Sizing up the NAMM Show with a moderately bloodshot eye, the Anderton Awards return.
Additional aspects of the MIDI 2.0 spec have fallen into place, and the first pieces of gear with elements of MIDI 2.0 are working their way out of R&D and into the real world.
Craig Anderton explores how amp sims are winning over the normally conservative world of pro guitar players, both in the studio and for live performance.
Craig Anderton looks at the changing trends of the annual AES Convention.
Craig Anderton considers whether it's feasible to expect hardware processes to follow software processing into the cloud.
By Craig Anderton. Before the turn of the century, keyboards were on a race to the bottom in terms of cost, before they managed to turn it around in a variety of ways. Will pro audio software pull off...
Craig Anderton ponders whether the music software industry will take the services route to offset maturing sales.
By Craig Anderton. Deep dive into the new Mac Pro and discover what it means for audio pros.
By Craig Anderton. While podcasting started out with homegrown audio, listeners’ expectations are rising fast—creating a new opportunity for audio pros.
Craig Anderton explores the changing ways to recover from OS meltdowns.
By Craig Anderton. Smartphones and tablets have fostered a veritable explosion in DAW remote control options.
By Craig Anderton. With over a quarter-century of development, plug-ins are exploring worlds that go way beyond analog emulation.
Craig Anderton serves up insights on the latest DAW updates.
By Craig Anderton. Digital downloads turned the software sales model completely on its head. Once Apple started the trend, momentum increased for companies selling direct to users.
By Craig Anderton. 2018 laid the groundwork for what might be the dominant computer experience of the future for pros.
Duck and Cover, because the Anderton Awards are back. You've been warned.
Craig Anderton isn’t daydreaming as he looks at the future of recording studios...
By Craig Anderton. Ever since we’ve had a choice of sample rates, there’s been controversy over whether higher sample rates sound better. Some claim higher sample rates add transparency to music, while others claim (with some justification) that no...
By Craig Anderton. Whether NKS has value depends on how you plan to use it, and what updates may be forthcoming.
By Craig Anderton. Will machine learning make audio engineers obsolete?
By Craig Anderton. The latest Apple rumor is that the company is going to replace Intel’s chips with their own starting in 2020.
By Craig Anderton. The lessons of Cakewalk, Emagic, Steinberg, Digidesign and Syntrillium are instructive because each presents possibly sustainable economic models for pro audio software.
Craig Anderton digs into the MIDI Capability Inquiry specification—and digs it.
By Craig Anderton. Thunderbolt 3 looks poised to become the breakthrough protocol its originators always hoped it would be.
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 power that allows amortizing development costs over as long a time as possible—and the longer...
By Craig Anderton. Software’s “next big thing” could be modular software that allows mixing and matching elements from various programs.
The sudden death of Cakewalk was a cautionary tale for companies—and customers. Here's the take-aways.
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 only virtual awards show relied on a distinguished panel of judges, none of whom had...
Guitars are more likely to be associated with tubes and retro technology than cutting-edge software, but that’s changing in everything from recording to live sound. Although guitars aren’t total strangers to technology—MIDI guitar continues to maintain...
If you look at “new product” introductions at trade shows, often they’re more about reminding people of what was a new product a couple of trade shows ago. But as Yoda said, “Always in motion is the...
Recently, I ran across a family photo that was taken in 1890, affixed to a cardboard backing—and was as good as the day it was processed. Will anyone be able to view cell phone pictures 127 years...
Two recent events underscore changes in the world of digital audio. The first is the end of licensing for MP3 data compression (or more accurately, “data omission”), and the second is the news that Sony is installing six new...
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 support only in passing. However, now that a DAW has actually incorporated Microsoft Pen support,...
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 carpe diem and targeting the creative market. In fact, its third major update to Windows...
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 the time, a better choice for multimedia—and the Atari line, which promoted its musical chops....
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 of the trends that are making a lot of noise in our pro audio world:...
NAMM has been making an effort to get pro audio more involved in the show, and the 2017 NAMM convention had more bait than usual to reel in the professional crowd. The new generation of audio interfaces is all...
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 just as CGI graduated to creating virtual environments that could exist only inside a computer,...
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 sorta indicated when something was happening, a volt-ohmmeter in case you had to fix a...