MIKE PAYNE: Welcome everybody to Gearwire Crosstalk show or program, episode number 30, baby. That's big 3-0. On my right is Mr. Dan Agosto.

DAN AGOSTO: Yo.

MIKE PAYNE: What's up buddy? What's going on?

DAN AGOSTO: Ah.

MIKE PAYNE: I like your get-up today.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, you know.

DREW KRAG: Good. Sharp.

MIKE PAYNE: How did you describe it earlier?

DAN AGOSTO: What was it?

MIKE PAYNE: Turn-of-the-century private investigator.

DAN AGOSTO: Turn-of-the-century private investigator kind of trying to get the -- I'm just kind of easing into it.

MIKE PAYNE: I like it.

DREW KRAG: I think it --

DAN AGOSTO: I think I'll be here wearing the whole trench coat, the pipe, you know, [MOTIONS PIPE SMOKING WITH THE MICROPHONE]

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: You know, that sort of thing.

MIKE PAYNE: I thought you guys do that anyway when I'm not here.

DAN AGOSTO: No, you know --

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DREW KRAG: I think it's a more of a professor kind of look myself, you know.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I could get some like leather --

DREW KRAG: Patches. You get some patches.

MIKE PAYNE: Right, right.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, the tweed patches not the leather patches.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: And on my left here is Mr. Drew Krag. What's going on, buddy?

DREW KRAG: Hello, hello. I feel kind of old, man.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah?

DREW KRAG: Podcast number 30.

MIKE PAYNE: I know. That's big time.

DAN AGOSTO: Ready to settle down.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DREW KRAG: Yeah, ready to settle down, get married, have kids, and all that. Just kidding.

MIKE PAYNE: [LAUGHING]

DREW KRAG: Psyche!

MIKE PAYNE: Just kidding all you...

DAN AGOSTO: Sorry ladies.

MIKE PAYNE: ...you know, three or four female Gearwire watchers out there. So anyway, we got a special edition of Crosstalk this week. Last week, the Crosstalk Crew was in Frankfurt, Germany, covering the Musikmesse show and filming the release of new products.

DAN AGOSTO: [IN A FAKE GERMAN ACCENT] Yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: We'll take a quick look at few of the videos Kyle and the crew shot so be sure to stick around and watch. And by the way, Kyle is the man behind the camera that you all can't see right now.

DAN AGOSTO: [IN A FAKE GERMAN ACCENT] Hi Kyle. How are you?

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Anyway, also we'll check back to episode number 29 and complete our brass sample test where we shot out brass samples from three hardware ROMplers and three software sample sets.

Before we get started, a quick reminder as always. If you want to get a hold of us, send us an email at crosstalk@gearwire.com. Also, be sure to visit the Gearwire forums at forums.gearwire.com. Get involved. Speak your piece. We absolutely love hearing from you.

DREW KRAG: Send us an email.

DAN AGOSTO: You know, I just got.

DREW KRAG: Just do it.

DAN AGOSTO: I just went over the thousandth postmark...

MIKE PAYNE: Did you?

DAN AGOSTO: ...just this past week...

DREW KRAG: Wow.

DAN AGOSTO: ...on the forum.

DREW KRAG: Congratulations.

DAN AGOSTO: I'm the only one.

MIKE PAYNE: What is your forum status now? Did you [OVERLAPPING] something else?

DAN AGOSTO: Oh, I'm admin. I've been admin. I, you know, delete all your stupid posts and all that stuff.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: So that's why my posts are always deleted. Damn. At least I know who's doing it now.

All right, back in episode 29, we did a brass sample listening test between three hardware ROMplers and three software samplers. We didn't reveal which was each last week s we're going to do that this week.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: Let's check them out.

DREW KRAG: Yeah. I don't know about you guys but I've been dying of curiosity and many sleepless nights.

MIKE PAYNE: I know, honestly.

DREW KRAG: It's been rough.

DAN AGOSTO: We had -- We had some votes coming in our forum.

MIKE PAYNE: I haven't been eating.

DREW KRAG: Maybe they'll help you fit those shirts a little better.

MIKE PAYNE: Maybe.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: You can start gaining weight this weekend back from what you've lost.

MIKE PAYNE: Excellent.

DAN AGOSTO: But we had a few votes, let's see. Thirteen votes. Two more than last time.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice. Pretty good.

DAN AGOSTO: So, let's listen to these. Here's the first one, and this one what got the most votes. It got eight votes on the forum.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE ONE]

DAN AGOSTO: And surprisingly enough, that was the MUSE, the SONiVOX MUSE.

DREW KRAG: The SONiVOX MUSE.

MIKE PAYNE: Oh, okay. Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: So, it actually did really well, so the brass samples actually are doing a lot better than the string samples did from the MUSE. 'Let's move on. Number two. This one got zero votes.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE TWO]

MIKE PAYNE: But it sounds so real.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. That was the Motif. Zero votes.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. They're saying. You know, I've seen places that the Motif that the pads are the thing that it just doesn't do that well.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. I have -- The keyboard I have, the EX5, the predecessor to the Motif, has a trumpet patch on it that sounds amazing. It sounds really, really good.

DAN AGOSTO: Is it like a trumpet ensemble or just?

MIKE PAYNE: No. It's monophonic too.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I have the MU-100R in here. I find that solo instruments are actually pretty good.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: But for some reason, the patches -- the pads on the Motif just really don't do it. All right, here is the next one. It had two votes.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE THREE]

DAN AGOSTO: And that was EWSQL.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: EastWest.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: You can kind of tell because it has more of that stereo stuff going and the panning. Here's number four, also zero votes on this one.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE FOUR]

DAN AGOSTO: This is our favorite one.

MIKE PAYNE: Oh yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: This is my favorite.

DREW KRAG: Oh yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: I didn't vote for it though.

MIKE PAYNE: Was that the Super Nintendo?

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: That was the good old MU-100R.

DREW KRAG: Classic.

DAN AGOSTO: Also a Yamaha synth that the pads are just not amazingly there. Here's number five. This is number -- This had three votes.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE FIVE]

DAN AGOSTO: I think this was the one you said you liked. I can't really remember.

MIKE PAYNE: I don't remember either.

DAN AGOSTO: That was KVSL.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: that -- KVSL had the most votes in our last one but it had -- came in second on this one.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: But it was a distant second. All right, and now the last one.

MIKE PAYNE: What's the K stand for? Kontakt?

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: The Kontakt 2. Okay. Then VSL, Vienna Symphonic yada yada.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Vienna Symphonic Library.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE SIX]

DAN AGOSTO: And this is our XV-5050.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE SIX]

DAN AGOSTO: Also not very believable.

MIKE PAYNE: No.

DAN AGOSTO: So, I was pretty surprised actually that the MUSE sounded as good as it did. Let's listen to one more time to it.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING BACK BRASS SAMPLE ONE]

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. That's actually pretty good.

DAN AGOSTO: It just had an amount of realism to it that the others didn't, and this was straight MIDI in. I wasn't doing much at all.

DREW KRAG: Yeah. All the dynamics for all the different MIDI is exactlty the same, right?

DAN AGOSTO: Mmm hmm.

DREW KRAG: It sounds like the samples on the MUSE are just like lower dynamic perhaps like the actual sample itself.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. They're just some sort of, I'm going to use the word again, realism to it. Just it sounded like people are actually playing the instruments. One of the thing I think may attribute to that is that when you load a patch in MUSE, in the Giga virtual instrument, it loads in, you know, sections, and when you load in the brass ensemble, the large brass ensemble, you get, you know, trumpet ensemble, trumpet soloist, a trombone ensemble, trombone soloist, so on and so on, and I think that sort of had something to do with how real it ended up sounding.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DREW KRAG: Sure.

DAN AGOSTO: All right.

MIKE PAYNE: Interesting.

DAN AGOSTO: Cool.

MIKE PAYNE: Cool.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay. Should we move on?

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah, and by the way, Dan is still available for composition for Japanese role-playing games.

DAN AGOSTO: RPGs, yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: Pretty much that's it.

MIKE PAYNE: You can send us an email for dan4japaneserpgs@crosstalk@gearwire.com. That's the number "four". Anyway.

DAN AGOSTO: Two @'s.

MIKE PAYNE: Yes.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: A very valid email address.

DREW KRAG: It's a double email.

MIKE PAYNE: Our own Kyle will put that email up on the screen.

DAN AGOSTO: Make sure to put like three exclamation points after.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DREW KRAG: Make it flash if you would.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: [IMITATING A ARPEGGIATED SYNTH SOUND TO MATCH FLASHING CAPTION]

MIKE PAYNE: Cool. Well last week, the Crosstalk crew was in Frankfurt, Germany for the Musikmesse show, and we got some video to take a look at so we're gonna do that.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: What do we got first, Dan?

DAN AGOSTO: Well let's see. First of all, I'd like to take a look at the Arturia Origin.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: I don't know if you guys have heard about this. This is a modular environment for the Arturia -- like the components of all the different virtual instruments that Arturia has gotten, so not only can you load in like your patches from like say your Prophet V that you have.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: You can take your oscillator from your Prophet V, the filter from our Prophet V...

MIKE PAYNE: That's sweet.

DAN AGOSTO: ...and mix it with an oscillator or a filter from the Moog Modular and stuff like that.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay.

DREW KRAG: That's cool.

DAN AGOSTO: So let's take a look at the video.

[ARTURIA ORIGIN MUSIKMESSE VIDEO START]

JOE WALLACE: I'm Joe Wallace for Gearwire.Com on the floor of Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany. I'm here with [PH] Chris de Young from Arturia, and we're looking at the Origin Synth.

[PH] CHRIS DE YOUNG: Yes. The Origin synth.

JOE WALLACE: Tell me a little bit about it.

[PH] CHRIS DE YOUNG: It's making it's debut here at NAMM. As you can see it's a synthesizer version of the Origin, and it offers the same specifications, adding a ribbon controller and a keyboard.

JOE WALLACE: Now, what inspired the ribbon control?

[PH] CHRIS DE YOUNG: Well, the ribbon controller is, obviously, used to control several parameters. You can design in at set it as you like.

JOE WALLACE: Now, this is the hardware version of the Origin?

[PH] CHRIS DE YOUNG: Yes. The Origin is a hardware product in fact. We have the Origin Desktop, and this is the keyboard version. This is driven by two SHARC processors inside so it's DSP based, and it is a modeler, analog modeling synth.

JOE WALLACE: Now, when is this going to be available?

[PH] CHRIS DE YOUNG: This one is going to be available in December, and the Origin desktop is going to be available in September.

JOE WALLACE: Now tell me a little bit about the Origin desktop.

[PH] CHRIS DE YOUNG: No. I can do it the best by browsing you through the interface probably. That makes it very clear. We have a modular setup. As you can see here, there are slots. You are free to add modules in. When I push it, there is a list that appears and you can choose a module that you want to add, for instance an oscillator or a filter. Another menu appears and you can choose from different types. We included the ARP, the Minimoog, Moog Modular, the CS-80, and in this case also a new Origin filter. So, you choose one of the presets of the modules, and you add them, and you connect them to another one. So you add, for instance, an oscillator of the Minimoog or CS-80, and there you go. So, you can connect and freely route all the modules and as many as you want in these slots. It makes it totally modular and very creative in the sound design process with what you want.

JOE WALLACE: We're talking about the Origin synthesizer. I'm Joe Wallace on the floor of Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany for Gearwire.Com.

[ARTURIA ORIGIN MUSIKMESSE VIDEO END]

DAN AGOSTO: All right.

MIKE PAYNE: That guy talks funny.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I wonder where he went to school.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. I know.

DREW KRAG: You know those Germans. If you don't join the party, they'll come get you.

MIKE PAYNE: Oh. He's German?

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: I thought he was like from Montana or something. He just talks funny.

DAN AGOSTO: Anyway, I really, really, really like the idea of Arturia having a modular environment like a truly modular environment. The problem I have with this is that you have this huge piece of hardware. It's huge if you get the synth version, the keyboard version, but it's still pretty big if you get the desktop version.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: I would have liked to see the option kind of like what we saw with Kore.

MIKE PAYNE: Mmm hmm.

DAN AGOSTO: I'd like to see, you know, just a pure software version that you could run as a VST.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: I mean it's cool that you got all those knobs and things like that but I mean being able to use the pieces of the Arturia puzzle I think is would be really awesome. It is really awesome. I kind of want an Origin for that fact but I'm probably not going to spend the money because in that hardware it's going to be I don't have a place for that hardware either.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: I want to run everything -- If I'm running, you know, virtual synths, I want them in the box pretty much.

MIKE PAYNE: And you don't need any more knobs, Dan.

DAN AGOSTO: No. I don't even use knobs, man.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: I use a mouse. Well, for like preamps and stuff, I love knobs...

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: ...in compressors but --

DREW KRAG: I like knobs.

DAN AGOSTO: I don't know. I've gotten used to virtual synths.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: I gobble up the knobs, man.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DREW KRAG: Oh!

MIKE PAYNE: Oh God. Innuendo.

DREW KRAG: Oh man. So now, I like the idea, you know, to be able to take one thing from one place, you know, and combine things, that sort of idea. I love that idea to be able to make -- combine things and make it a lot simpler to create new sounds and stuff like that but I agree, as far as hardware goes, and that's a lot of hardware for that one thing. I would like to see a VST version of it too.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Absolutely, and I'd also like to see the interface a little better just to kind of understand how they allow you to either pick and choose.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I mean this was a prototype version. I don't think they're ready to give like a full demonstration there...

MIKE PAYNE: Okay

DAN AGOSTO: ...at the Messe, but --

MIKE PAYNE: I'm wondering if it's going to be a visual representation, almost like old Reaktor where you can kind of create different synth elements and chain them together.

DREW KRAG: That would be really cool.

DAN AGOSTO: Arturia has always been known for having great GUIs so I'm guessing that it probably is going to look pretty good, but yeah I mean the whole idea behind Arturia has always been taking, you know, these old classic synths and making, you know, pretty faithful recreations of them and sort of giving you like a toolbench to take these different parts and put them together. I think it's a great idea. I think maybe the misstep was how they're presenting it.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. I also think that, you know, a lot of these software manufacturers creating hardware, just like what Arturia is doing, is almost it's a good business decision solely for copy protection.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It's a dongle.

MIKE PAYNE: It's essentially a dongle.

DAN AGOSTO: ...or knob.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. I mean blink twice if you're using cracked Arturia stuff at home.

DAN AGOSTO: I'm not.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Good.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: You know, they might --

DREW KRAG: [WHISTLING AS IF GUILTY]

DAN AGOSTO: I was lucky enough to [LAUGHING] -- Look at Drew.

MIKE PAYNE: [LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Well actually, Arturia was actually nice enough to send me a copy of the Minimoog V, which we have on here, and, you know, it's a great synth.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Nice. All right, let's check out another video. See what else we've got.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. Now this next one, Duesenberg, is that the right? Okay. I'm just checking with Rob. This is a -- This is probably the coolest thing I've seen come back because I didn't go to Frankfurt and the other guys went to Frankfurt.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: And when they came back, this is probably the coolest thing that I saw that was out there. This is a pedal steel guitar that has no pedals. Hear this out. Just watch it. It's interesting.

DREW KRAG: Say what?

[DUESENBERG MULTIBENDER MUSIKMESSE VIDEO START]

ROB WARMOWSKI: Hey everybody. Welcome to the floor of Musikmesse 2007. I'm Rob Warmowski and we're here in the Duesenberg booth, and speaking with Martin, the player for Duesenberg, and also Martin, I'm sorry, what was your last name, Martin?

MARTIN HUCH: Huch. Martin Huch.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Martin helped design the Duesenberg Double Cats Pedal System. We just heard -- We had a chance to hear him play, and it sounds like an amazing slide guitar. Tell us a little bit about how you got a slide guitar sound out of a normal electric guitar.

MARTIN HUCH: Yeah. It's very simple. With this system to get -- for instance, this guitar is now tuned to E major. If you engage both pedals to get to come to an A major...,

[MARTIN HUCH DEMONSTRATING USAGE OF THE DUESENBERG MULTIBERGER]

...and that means it's the same as the two main pedals of the pedal steel guitar.

ROB WARMOWSKI: And the mechanism there, this is a rocker mechanism?

MARTIN HUCH: Yes. It's developed by Duesenberg Guitars.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Very nice. And so, you go from E major to A major, and is that G maybe or no.

MARTIN HUCH: You can get even minor chords on a major tuning. I'm going to show it yet.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Yeah. Let's take a look.

[MARTIN HUCH PERFORMING SLIDE GUITAR WITH THE DUESENBERG MULTIBENDER]

ROB WARMOWSKI: Real nice stuff. Real nice. Thank you so much.

MARTIN HUCH: And it's quite simple to learn compared to a pedal steel. You need a very expensive instrument and 10 years of practice, and this is to be checked in two weeks. It's very simple.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Terrific. Well thank you very much for that.

MARTIN HUCH: You're welcome.

[DUESENBERG MULTIBENDER MUSIKMESSE VIDEO END]

DAN AGOSTO: So, this is the three, sort of pedal, hand pedal version that goes up to five pedal, and this is called the Multibender, the Duesenberg Multibender, I believe, it's called. And yeah, basically you can retrofit your guitar with it and basically turn it into a pedal steel.

MIKE PAYNE: So they sell the system itself and not just the guitar?

DAN AGOSTO: They will be. They will be. This is a newer thing, a newer invention.

DREW KRAG: Impressive.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It's definitely very cool.

DREW KRAG: It's a big step from what technology around was prior to, which was just like dropped D, you know, types of bridges, things like that that will like the Parker Flys, they used to drop them D.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, and I mean pedal steels are extremely expensive as well, and this thing, can't say for sure just yet but it's probably going to be under $300.

DREW KRAG: Wow.

DAN AGOSTO: And...

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DREW KRAG: I'll buy one.

DAN AGOSTO: ...I believe this version fits to a Telecaster perfectly easy.

DREW KRAG: Really?

DAN AGOSTO: You know, if you have a telecaster...

DREW KRAG: I do.

DAN AGOSTO: [OVERLAPPING] guitar. Yeah.

DREW KRAG: Ha ha ha. Alright.

DAN AGOSTO: So yeah, I'm definitely thinking about picking one up. I may have to get another guitar before I do that because I'm using only guitars for certain things but I think this is definitely really cool and especially, you know, if you're just a guy who does music who has to do a lot of different types of music like say if you're doing scoring or things like that, you know, having the sound of a pedal steel in your studio that you can play without having to learn a semi-new instrument is really nice.

DREW KRAG: A new guitar is really essentially, that's basically all you have to commit to. That's pretty cool.

DAN AGOSTO: Definitely. So, shall we move on?

MIKE PAYNE: I think that the only other thing that I saw that I thought was amazing which you guys just informed me was that new Moog Moogerfooger.

DREW KRAG: Oh yeah [LAUGHING].

DAN AGOSTO: The FM Mixer?

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. You could totally tell, man, from the pictures and [OVERLAPPING]

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: No, I looked at it and I thought wow, this looks legit, and I looked at it and I was just like --

DAN AGOSTO: Released on April 1st.

MIKE PAYNE: Oh well.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: April fools. [LAUGHING]

DREW KRAG: Moog gotcha.

MIKE PAYNE: Still, I was pretty pissed. That sounds like an awesome idea though, if it's possible.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I mean, you know, really certain places were, you know, kind of putting it out there as actual news as actual press releases. I -- and then, you know...,

MIKE PAYNE: What certain places were those?

DAN AGOSTO: ...I saw it, um [LAUGHING] -- I don't know if I have the liberty to say.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: How could I say that?

MIKE PAYNE: How could?

DAN AGOSTO: How could we say something like that?

MIKE PAYNE: I don't know.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Holy crap.

[PANELISTS AND CREW LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Anyway --

[PANELISTS AND CREW LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Oh man, laughing so much I'm getting a head cold. Let's move on to the next video.

DREW KRAG: It's a good call.

DAN AGOSTO: IK Multimedia, this is like a Jimi Hendrix suite of guitar effects and amps.

[IK MULTIMEDIA AMPLITUBE JIMI HENDRIX EDITION MUSIKMESSE VIDEO START]

IK MULTIMEDIA REPRESENTATIVE: Amplitube 2 Jimi Hendrix Edition is powered by Amplitube 2, which is a complete guitar amp and effects rig, and one of the leading plugins for this and has spawned several different plugins that are powered by that technology. One of them is Ampeg SVX for bass, and now Amplitube 2 Jimi Hendrix Edition. And what it is essentially is an incredible vintage collection of gear. We've modeled the rig of Jimi Hendrix, and did this in cooperation with the Hendrix Foundation and went to great lengths to bring the incredibly desirable and collectible elements of his rig which happen to include Marshall Amps. If you take a look over here, I'll tell you about some of the gear that's inside. You have Marshall Amps and then -- I'm sorry -- models of Marshall, Fender Brownface and Silver. So, you have a variety of different amps that Jimi used, and then the stomp section, there's an incredible range of really desirable effects, the model of a Fuzzface, the Mosrite Fuzzrite, a model of the Maestro Fuzz-Tone, which some of you may know as also the sound of the Rolling Stones used for "Satisfaction". This is the model of a Uni-Vibe. This pedal is $1,800 in the store. I kind of wanted one and I can't afford that, but a Jimi Hendrix modeled VOX Wah, and these are all really -- It's, you know, the best way to look at this plugin really is a collection. It's both the way to get the Jimi Hendrix sound as well as any sound using these effects and amplifiers. So anyway, here we have a demonstration if you want to hear it.

[GUITARIST DEMONSTRATING THE USE OF THE IK MULTIMEDIA AMPLITUBE 2 JIMI HENDRIX EDITION]

[IK MULTIMEDIA AMPLITUBE JIMI HENDRIX EDITION MUSIKMESSE VIDEO END]

DAN AGOSTO: All right.

MIKE PAYNE: See, I don't know if I like it so much. For some reason, the guitar sounds all like all distorted.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: It's weird.

DREW KRAG: This is the best you’re going to -- best sounds you're going to find as far as distortion I think on a computer.

DAN AGOSTO: You know, one of my favorite guitarists, as with probably most guitarists, is Jimi Hendrix.

DREW KRAG: Of course.

DAN AGOSTO: And this is a great way to get some of those tones, I mean not necessarily if you want to emulate but you can use the same tools or just like emulation of the same tools. This isn't perfect but I think this is kind of a cool product even though, you know, I prefer mic'ing up an amplifier, not everyone can do that.

DREW KRAG: I mean considering the fact that it's all being done inside of a computer with zeros and ones and digital all this and that, I mean it's not that bad. I mean I doesn't compare to a full Marshall half stack that's cranked, you know, with all those pedals.

DAN AGOSTO: Or three as Jimi Hendrix used to use.

DREW KRAG: Well sure, you know, and -- but I mean for basically a plugin that you can just pull up and mess around with to get those sounds or experiment with those sounds, it's pretty good.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah, out of all of the VST or, you know, whatever plugin amp simulators, I believe IK Multimedia's Amplitube is what I would probably use in front of probably all of them.

DREW KRAG: I agree, and distortion is one of those things when you're using like VST distortions and stuff like that, a lot of them, basically any distortion on a computer, it just doesn't sound the same, but with the Guitar Rig and all that, I mean it's really good and beyond guitars too, basses, keyboards, anything, drums, that you want to distort, you can run through there and actually it sounds pretty cool, so.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. And did I say amplitude before?

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: I believe I did. [LAUGHING] Cut that out.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: All right boys and girls, we're back from a quick break, and we're going to move on to another video.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. This one is the JazzMutant Dexter.

MIKE PAYNE: Let's scope it.

DAN AGOSTO: Multitouch thing.

DREW KRAG: Ooh, touch. 2653

[JAZZMUTANT DEXTER MUSIKMESSE VIDEO START]

PASCAL JOGUET: So, basically here is the mixer over here, really classic. The idea is to have, of course, eight tracks at once, and to access all the tracks with bank -- to the other banks directly, so I push this button and access, and I drag my finger and just access to the different tracks, so if I want to work on the guitar, I just do this and you have the guitar, okay? And so, of course we can solo tracks. You can go deeper in one particular track. So, if you want, for instance, work on the snare, which is this track, click just on the EK, and here you have access to the channel of the DAW. So, the EQ, the effects, and the surround panner, and of course the level, the sends to busses, etc. So, you can go also deeper in each different parameter. I mean here you can access the EQ, okay, so you just draw the EQ curve with your fingers, which is a really smart way to work, and you can go on a bigger view of it if you want more precision and more comfort, more comfortable display. So, as you can see on the software, we really have the first ever graphical EQ you can use with your fingers, and because we use a unique multitouch sensor technology on this, you can move several parameters at once. Okay, another great thing that you can access directly under the track without going back to the mixer and to go back to the other track, here you have the name of the other track so let's go to the kick, just click it, and on the display you show the EQ curve, okay, and of course with it you can also access all the tracks directly and edit the new curve like that. Well, that's really the fastest way to work with DAW systems. Let's go back to the channel here. Here is the effects control. On this track, on the snare track, we have a compressor, and you have a two-dimensional controller to edit but you can also go to a larger view for the plugins, and here you have a list of the different plugins you have on this track, and because you know plugins sometimes have so much parameters on one plugin, you can here, just by dragging you finger on the screen, you can just access all the parameters. And of course, you can go back to another track directly without going through those nightmare navigation buttons.

[JAZZMUTANT DEXTER MUSIKMESSE VIDEO END]

MIKE PAYNE: Wow. That's pretty damn cool.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

DREW KRAG: I agree. Do you guys remember the Lemur?

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. Definitely.

DREW KRAG: I think I got hipped that a year ago and I was just really excited to see something like that coming out of the market, and I'm actually really excited that they took it a step further. I, for one, I don't really like using the mouse. I use the mouse as little as possible, but for a lot of stuff, you're still forced to use a mouse, but to have one of these, Dexter's just like right next to your mouse pad really like kind of lower in your studio right by you would be kind of a sweet tool to kind of fly through some stuff.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I love the idea, you know. It's great because it's going to help people out, help people do creative things and I also agree, you know, having a little something off to the side kind of helps. You know, I have that Frontier Designs Tranzport. That's kind of the thing I keep off to the side because, you know, I can do one-button undo if I want on that.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: I don't really mind using a mouse for it. Oh, well, I do like this product. It's not for me really but one thing I did want to say as -- In the interview, he actually kind of explained something like Lemur is like for like live type stuff, DJ applications. This is definitely for in-studio for the DAW.

DREW KRAG: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: I think that's kind of cool that they focused on that.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DREW KRAG: If it works well with the various software that they say it works well with, I'm probably going to buy one.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. They were showing Cubase.

DREW KRAG: Depending on how much it is, but it's I'm very interested in it mainly just for speed like I do -- I actually mix through like a summing bus mixer but a lot of the effects and EQ and everything is still inside the computer so this would be just another way to make it quicker for me.

DAN AGOSTO: Which summer do you use?

DREW KRAG: We got like kind of a home-built summing bus.

DAN AGOSTO: Oh. That's good.

DREW KRAG: It's nice. Yeah. [LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Who built it?

DREW KRAG: This guy we know. I'll tell you after the podcast.

DAN AGOSTO: Right.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: I'll actually market it.

DREW KRAG: Oh really?

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

DREW KRAG: I'm going to go, "Hook it up!"

DAN AGOSTO: Sweet.

MIKE PAYNE: Look at that. Deals happening on Gearwire Crosstalk.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: You know, ebbing and flowing. Moving back and forth, give and take.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. I'll negotiate if you guys want.

DREW KRAG: I just like to be able to touch a touch screen, you know, four different places.

MIKE PAYNE: That's sweet. That's sweet.

DREW KRAG: That's really what it's all about.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. You can put all five fingers down if you want.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. That's cool.

DAN AGOSTO: Turn around.

DREW KRAG: Yeah. It looks cool.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Cool. Do we have any other videos to check out today?

DAN AGOSTO: Nope.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Well, we'll have plenty more on the Gearwire home page, so be sure to check back frequently. We got plenty of videos still we've got to go through and edit.

DAN AGOSTO: But there's tons up already.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. Now, absolutely. Absolutely. Check out what's already there, and you'll see a lot more coming.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. One thing definitely to check out, the Nord Wave. You guys heard about that one?

DREW KRAG: No.

MIKE PAYNE: Mmm.

DAN AGOSTO: It's basically a new Nord Lead. What they've added is you're able to import samples as an oscillator, so you can put samples through the Nord Lead so you can modulate other oscillators with the samples. You can also use wavetables. It's very cool. There's also a Kore 2 video. Arturia also had the Jupiter 8V, so definitely keep an eye on the Musikmesse stuff. A lot of cool new products come out, and also a lot of the things that you wouldn't see, you know, stateside, because a lot of cool stuff comes out in Europe.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. Cool. All right. Well, thanks everybody for watching. That concludes the Gearwire Crosstalk show for number 30.

DAN AGOSTO: Yep.

DREW KRAG: Wow.

DAN AGOSTO: And yeah, that's a lot. Number 31 next week, it's going to be a fun one next week. We're actually going to do a little bit of reminiscing, watching some of your favorite things that have happened in the past on Crosstalk.

DREW KRAG: What about the pre-video Crosstalks.

DAN AGOSTO: We got a plan for that, a special plan.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: Don't worry about that.

MIKE PAYNE: When did we do it in video? Was it number 13?

DAN AGOSTO: What's that?

MIKE PAYNE: Was it number 13?

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. Number 13 was the first video.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: So yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: All right. Well thanks everybody, and we will see you some time soon.

DREW KRAG: Peace.