Our longtime friend and colleague Mel Lambert just did a drive-by, so we asked him to blog, as he has every blog we’ve put out here. Mel…editor of RE/P at the birth of this modern recording industry and now on top of every new technology you throw at him. Mel?

Thanks, Tom - groovy shoes - and they match. Ah, Anaheim again, and the Winter NAMM gathering. Lots of loud-making booths and funky-looking sales people; some of whom might be carbon-based. (Just joking.) Been playing catch-up with the DAW companies - hello to my pals at Digidesign, Apple, Steinberg, MOTU, Propellerhead, Cakewalk, Sony and anybody else who might come after me with cudgel for missing their names. Cannot believe how affordable gear has gotten; this morning at a Harman ProPress briefing - “Hi!” and a big welcome back to the affable Michael Macdonald, newly named EVP of Something Important at the company - I was stunned at the tumbling prices of a number of important lines, including I/O peripherals from Lexicon, which have shed a significant percent in MAP costs. Okay, these vendors have recovered R&D costs, but when was the last time we heard about significant lowering of prices for must-have products. It will herald the end of capitalism - and you heard it here first. For those of us who have been following high-tech development for more that five minutes, the price:performance ratios I’m seeing here are silly - you can set up a righteous project facility using a credit card - preferably somebody else‘s - and have fun with some extremely creative - and frighteningly elegant - computer-based systems. But I was also heartened to see within the basement Hall E that this NAMM Show has attracted a number of vendors of wood planking - that tree stuff from which we still fabricate guitars, violins and other music-making impedimenta. If you have time, go stroke a piece of exotic ash from Ceylon; you will come away with a better understanding of the God in His Heaven Thing - and few splinters, so you have been warned. If you have been, thanks for listening. I‘m gone. Mel Lambert.