Today's Top Stories:

  Digidesign Unleashes Pro Tools 8 at AES Show
Much of the buzz at the 125th AES Convention was centered around the Digidesign stand, as the company unveiled its groundbreaking new software and hardware! Pro Tools 8 is better than ever, sporting a gorgeous new interface, dozens of new plug-ins, five new virtual instruments, exciting new scoring and MIDI features, more editing and mixing capabilities, improved ease of use, and greatly enhanced performance. Regardless of how sophisticated your present Pro Tools rig is, you'll be blown away when you get your hands on this hot new version! If you own Pro Tools 7.4 or higher, you can pre-order Pro Tools 8 now. If you purchase any Pro Tools system right now, you'll automatically get Pro Tools 8 as soon as it ships. Own an older version? Go ahead and upgrade to version 7.4 and you'll also get Pro Tools 8 as soon as it begins shipping. No matter how you work, Pro Tools 8 will make you more productive with amazing new editing and mixing capabilities!

Get the most comprehensive music and sound creation features and functionality and the proven, dedicated platform for world-class audio production, all in a single application with:

• A beautifully redesigned interface with many new enhancements and new ways to customize everything for the way you work!
  
• Groundbreaking new virtual instruments and premium quality effects.
  
• Score Editor and MIDI Editor windows for comprehensive composing.
  
• Transpose audio regions in real time with Elastic Pitch.
  
• Expands Pro Tools LE and M-Powered systems up to 48 mono or stereo tracks.

  New in Stock at Sweetwater

• Apple iPod nano - 16GB - Smaller than ever, the new iPod nano features a sleek body design and is available in even more vivid colors! But beyond its great looks, it's got brains, too. The new Genius feature finds the songs in your music library that go great together and makes a Genius Playlist for you - it's like having your own highly intelligent, personal DJ right in your pocket! The huge 16GB flash drive means you can carry around tons of media - up to 4,000 songs, 14,000 photos, or 16 hours of video! And now you can shake iPod nano to shuffle your music. Just give it a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library. You can also try your hand at games made especially for iPod nano and the accelerometer. They respond to the way you move, so they're immersive, addictive, and a blast. iPod nano comes with Maze, and there are lots of other games available online.
  
  
• Apple iPod nano - 8GB - Priced to make you smile, the 8GB Apple iPod nano now packs even more cool features, all designed to make it the pocket-sized media companion you've always dreamed about. The 8GB flash drive means you can put tons of media in your pocket - that's up to 2,000 songs, 7,000 photos, or 8 hours of video! There's also a sleek new body design, and it's available in more vivid colors to match your personal digital vibe. But beyond its great looks, it's got brains, too - the Genius feature finds and plays songs that go great together, making it your own personal DJ. And to top it all off, it's got Apple's accelerometer technology that responds to how you move, tilt, and shake your iPod nano. An incredible value!
  
  
• Korg M50-88 Music Workstation - Korg's M50 offers a full-sized, 88-key RH3 Graded Hammer Action keyboard and a full-featured 16-track sequencer! Just tap the interactive touchscreen and get creative! Now, whether you seek natural-sounding acoustic instruments or hard-hitting synths, the Korg M50 puts over 600 individual sound programs and 1,600 drums (all tweaked up to Korg standards) into a robust 256MB of sample data at your fingertips. It boasts three layers of stereo switching and an additional resonance layer for excellent piano dynamic range reproduction. What's more, the M50 is loaded with Korg's REMS cabinet / amp / pickup technology and the ToneAdjust feature lets you tweak each sound to your own personal standard using its user-friendly realtime controls!
  
  
• Bogner Custom Shop Shiva Head with Reverb - Although Reinhold Bogner began designing and building amplifiers long before leaving Germany in 1989, his career really took off soon after arriving in Los Angeles. He quickly gained the trust of many influential players, including Steve Stevens, Allan Holdsworth, Mike Landau and Steve Vai, who sought out his skill at modifying and custom building amps. Hey, Eddie Van Halen even entrusted him to overhaul and revitalize his number one Marshall Plexi, with great results. Soon after, Bogner Amplification was born! Now, for those players who demand stunning tone and robust build quality, there's the 80-watt, handcrafted Shiva Head with Reverb. To say it sounds fantastic is an understatement! There are two channels (each with its own reverb control), a tube-buffered effects loop, and global master volume and presence controls. Its EL34 power tubes provide enough British character and midrange detail to cut through any mix of instruments. Dial in your two favorite tones and switch between them using with the included footswitch.
  
  
• Roland JUNO-STAGE - The 88-key JUNO-STAGE takes everything that made all the previous JUNO incarnations so amazingly powerful, and then retrofits it all for the stage. The extra-large display makes it a breeze to navigate through all its onboard sounds, and a premium, phantom-powered mic input lets you use studio-quality mics in live applications. All the controllers are optimized for live performance, with easy-to-grab knobs for instant Master EQ and Reverb control. There's a USB port and Song Player function that enables direct playback and control of backing tracks from a USB key. You can play MP3, .WAV, AIFF and SMF files, and even use the Center Cancel feature to minimize pre-recorded vocals for karaoke-style performance. It's a great MIDI controller and includes a genuine Roland vocoder!

  Guitar of the Day
If you've just spent a ton of money on a high-end instrument, you sure don't want to see another band's guitarist walk on stage with the exact same model. Because of the popularity of certain other guitar lines, there's a very real possibility of that happening . . . but not with the Jackson Solo Custom Spider Bike Graphic Limited Edition! This electric guitar is painstakingly hand-painted by Mike Learn, so you're unlikely to ever see another one. We have to say that the graphics on this Jackson are so awesome that you can't really even see the pickups, they're so well-disguised by the design (which extends to the matching headstock). And speaking of the pickups, the Custom Spider Bike Graphic comes with molten-hot EMG humbuckers in both the neck and bridge position for a truly monstrous tone!

But that's just the start, because this Jackson has all the features that made the company famous, like a quartersawn rock maple neck with a superbly comfortable, fast-carve neck matched to a compound radius, ebony fingerboard with jumbo frets that's optimized for blazing solos and massive power chords! Special spider web mother-of-pearl inlays are the perfect complement to the body and headstock graphics. And though it's not apparent because of the graphics, this Jackson's body is crafted of lightweight alder, so it's lightweight enough to play all night if need be. Top-quality hardware is another Jackson hallmark, including the highly stable Floyd Rose combination bridge and vibrato, along with heavy-duty tuners, one volume and one tone control, plus a 3-way toggle switch. If you've been searching for a visually stunning, lightweight instrument that will show your audience that you mean business, there's probably not another guitar in this price range that even comes close to the Jackson Solo Custom Spider Bike Graphic limited edition!