Tech Reviews: New products (October 2021)
Tim Hallas
Friday, October 1, 2021
MT’s tech editor Tim Hallas reveals what's new this month.
Sibelius iPad
Price: Free (in-app purchases)
Sibelius is found in classrooms across the country and is probably still the score writing software of choice for a lot of schools, but it has lagged behind its competitors in the availability of a version for tablet. No longer. Sibelius for iPad has been announced and features the same three pricing levels available on the desktop version: Sibelius First, Sibelius, and Sibelius Ultimate.
The iPad version allows users to take advantage of the iPad's touch screen and interact with their scores in different ways, including the use of the Apple Pencil for enhanced editing and writing. The iPad version is designed to keep the score itself on most of the screen and all its functions are accessed via the Create+ menu. Expect a full review soon.
Limelight & Skylight mics
Price: £189.99
Designed by the team behind Warm Audio's excellent recreation of vintage microphones, pedals and studio hardware, the 512 microphones offer something new for the company. Whereas Warm Audio focus on painstaking recreation of vintage gear, these new products are just designed to be good products that provide all the functions that creators require.
The first two major pieces of gear from 512 Audio are a condenser and dynamic microphone. The Limelight dynamic mic (top) is designed with podcasts and broadcasters in mind and features a hyper-cardioid polar pattern. The Skylight LDC mic (bottom) features a gold-spattered diaphragm and is designed for high-quality studio recording. A review of the Skylight is coming next month.
Oskitone Scout
Price: $42 (kit); $125 (assembled)
A new project from Oskitone in the US has launched a simple synthesiser kit that owners can assemble in 45 minutes and then use to create a simple square wave synth sound. However, this only scratches the surface of the potential of this synth, because Oskitone has made the Scout open source, which means owners can ‘hack’ the code and change the functionality of the synth from the base code.
One of my favourite projects in previous academic years has been incorporating a small amount of coding into my music schemes of work and working with the computer science departments to create a music and code project. Having a hardware synth such as the Oskitone could really enhance such a cross-curricular project.
Impact GX Mini
Price: £60
The Impact GX Mini is a new MIDI controller keyboard with two octaves of mini keys. The controller is class-compliant meaning that it doesn't require any drivers on either Windows for MacOS and it also works with iOS via a separate adaptor. The Impact GX also features an assignable joystick controller and transport controls.
The joystick controls the pitch-bend on the X-axis and the Y-axis is user-assignable. In addition to buttons for the transport controls, there are buttons for cycle, metronome, and navigation to move around the project easily. Given the size and price of the Impact GX Mini, this could be a great little keyboard for music classrooms where space is at a premium.
