Minnetonka has re-named and re-priced their Batch Pro application. It’s now known as AWE (Audio Workflow Engine). It comes in a new version that offers Hot Folders that give the user the ability to do simple drag and drop tasks across one 5.1 input, and the others will auto-load. It is a “Fat” client, meaning you can do some or all of your processing locally, or send some tasks to a server. The price for the AWE is $395 and the server is $2495.

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.

Peter Janis promised me that his new Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer makes your listening experience a wonderful thing. Of course I’m the constant skeptic until I heard his booth demo. He’s got something here! I heard two identical sets of speakers playing the same source material and the stabilized set had a decidedly sharper image. You’ll want to check these out, especially for $99 each.