Cathy Castoro from Wunder showed me their full line of mics including the CM7-GT tube mic and the CM49 and CM50 replica mics. Also in the booth was the the PEQ2, a fully Class-A discrete 1970’s-style mic-pre/equalizer for $3450.

Watch the video and find out. Don’t be Blue if you can’t figure it out Snowflake!

Peter Montessi from A Designs unveiled the Hammer EQ featuring Philips 12AT tubes, 2 channels, 3-band EQ controls per channel, boost knobs (up to ±12 dB) per frequency range, bypass, hi cut and low cut filters switchers, on/off switch and blue lamp and 2 balanced XLR inputs (one per channel) and 2 balanced XLR outputs (one per channel). The 2-rackspace unit sells for $2,695.

Dave Hill from Crane Song was proudly showing his ready-to-fledge Egret workstation back end. It contains 8 channels of high quality D/A converters and a stereo line mixer with color options. The stereo mixer offers level control, cue send, and a pan control, solo and mute buttons on each channel. A balanced stereo effects return is built into the system as is a headphone mixer allowing the user to create a monitor mix when Egert is being used in multi-channel location recording. The D/A converters support sample rates up to 192K.

photo caption: Digidesign’s Lev Perrey

It’s been a long time coming but Digidesign has exeeded expectations with their release of the C|24, a replacement for the Focusrite Control 24. The unit features a lot of ICON features including 6 character, over/under scribble strips, new mic preamps taken from the Digi 003, a line mixer that’s integrated into the monitor system, twin 5.1 returns and true 2-knob surround panning. The unit will sell for under $10k and will fit into the same slot as its prececessor with room to spare.

Sarah Yule from TL Audio, the company that’s passionate about tubes, was proudly displaying a rackful of new processors and I/O boxes at their booth. Boasting discrete class A signal path plus selectable tube stage with variable drive, the range features a dual mic pre and DI, a discrete class A stereo processor with compression and EQ and a discrete class A mono channel strip with DI, compression, EQ and balanced insert point. All units also have a classic TL Audio tube stage which you are able to select in and out of the signal path and control how much saturation you get with rotary drive control.

Everyone seems to like those monitors with room-correction algorithms, but not everyone wants to replace their monitors. IK Multimedia now has a solution for room correction in plug-in form. It called ARC (Advanced Room Correction), and it comes with a microphone for recording tones that determine the room correction that’s needed. You apply the plug-in to your DAW’s master channel when mixing, and disable it before rendering the audio, to keep the room correction off the audio file. IK expects to ship ARC in Q4 for $699 or $499 for registerd users of other IK products.

In other IK news, the SampleMoog ($299) virtual instrument that’s based on samples of 16 vintage Moog synthesizers is now shipping, and the Stomp IO hardware foot controller/USB audio interface for using with Amplitube will be available in November. IK is taking pre-orders for ARC and Stomp IO on its website.

We’re here with Rick Stevens, owner of Record Plant in Hollywood, and they’re announcing their expansion into Miami — South Beach, and introducing a new concept: The Record Plant, South Beach is going to be an 8-studio complex, two of which are owned by Record Plant, with the other six studios being owned by…..Top Artists and Producers. They’re calling them, “stu-di-o-min-i-um.” Cool, huh?

Studiominimum is a world-class recording studio and related lounge/work space, side-by-side with Record Plant’s own studios– all in one location. Record Plant will take care of everything, from technical and engineering service, messenger, runner staff, health club, swimming pool — everything. Rose Mann-Cherney and Rick believe that this development represents the development of the future of the high-end recording industry. Sales are underway; actual opening of the studios is projected for winter season, 2009. Stay tuned for updates.

For more, www.recordplant.com.

Mix Girls Jen Smith, Sarah Benzuly and Clarina Raydmanov were looking mighty fine at the Mix/Avatar 30th Birthday bashlast night at Avatar Studios. The Mix crew and about 500 other attendees had the AC working overtime as the body heat and unseasonably warm NY weather kicked the party up to sauna-like levels. Despite that, plenty of good food, drink and audio celebs were in evidence making it the coolest place to be in NY.