Tascam brought a full load of new goodies to AES this year. Starting with software, Gigastudio 4 is now a virtual instrument workstation, with the new ability to load VSTi and GVI instruments alongside a the Giga Sample libraries. It supports 64-bit OS’s, including Vista. The new GVI4 is now cross-platform.

The new line of Tascam monitors, the VL-A Series are powered, bi-amped, near-field monitors that come in three paired sizes: the 32W VL-A4, 90W VL-A5 and 140W VL-A8. The series also includes a 50W LF-S8 subwoofer.

Two 1U rack products round out Tascam’s new introductions. the US-1641 USB2.0 audio/MIDI interface includes 10 front-panel inputs (8 of them XLR) include front-panel level controls, and there are another 4 1/4-inch inputs and outputs on the back. It includes Cubase LE4 software. The HD-R1 stereo audio recorder is a solid-state, two-channel recorder and playback device that records 44.1/48 khz, 16/24-bit, PCM or MP3 files.