Today's Top Stories:

  Exclusive Video Chats with Music Industry Heavyweights
While there was plenty to see, hear and learn at this year's AES Convention, the Sweetwater booth was also a beehive of activity during the show. Editorial Director Mitch Gallagher was able to get five of the music industry's biggest names to sit down and share their thoughts on industry trends, the state of music/audio technology, the future of the music industry, and much more. Best of all, we caught it all on video for you! These exclusive interviews are available only at Sweetwater's website. These are QuickTime movies, and though they're compressed, they're still fairly large files, so we recommend you have a broadband connection for the downloads. You'll also need QuickTime installed on your Mac or PC to view them. If you don't already have a copy, it's available free for Mac computers on Apple's web site. If you're running Windows, there's a QuickTime player available for you here.

  Waves Drops DSP Accelerator Prices
As software applications and plug-ins have grown more powerful, they've also begun to be more CPU-intensive. Try to run too many Waves plug-ins or create and playback too many tracks and you may find your once-spunky computer is suddenly unable to keep up. This usually results in sluggish performance or even system crashes. Which is why Waves developed the APA32 and APA44. These hardware audio processing accelerators connect to your Ethernet port and with the help of the NetShell software, allow you run more instances of Waves' amazing plug-ins. What's more, Waves has dropped the prices of both units! The APA44 dropped by $450 and the AP32 by a whopping $600! The APA32 allows you to run six IR-1 reverbs, nine Linear Phase Equalizers or 12 Multiband Parametric Processors - and the APA44 is even 30% more powerful. Best of all, both are Mac and PC friendly!

  Korg OASYS Gets an Update
As promised, Korg is continuing to improve on its Open Architecture Synthesis Studio - better known by everyone as the OASYS. The company has announced that version 1.2 of the OASYS operating system is available to all registered owners as a free download from its web site. And while there are certainly some interesting new features and enhancements with the new OS, it also comes complete with a demo version of the LAC-1 Legacy Analog Collection, which includes the MS-20EX semi-modular virtual analog synthesizer and a faithful recreation of the Polysix, Korg's first true polyphonic analog synth. New OASYS v1.2 features include:

• An easy-to-use chord feature that lets you store a chord, then transpose it by playing single notes on the keyboard. This chord mode is integrated with the Drum/Chord Pads, allowing eight such voicings to be stored.
• Polyphonic Unison in both Poly and Mono modes plus Unison Stereo Spread which distributes unison voices across the stereo field.
• Improved parameter smoothing when using knobs, sliders, controls and tone adjust features.
• Increased polyphony for the AL-1 and STR-1 expansion instruments.

  Guitar of the Day
If most of us walked into a pawn shop and saw the Fender Custom Shop '51 Nocaster Relic hanging up, we'd surely believe we'd hit the jackpot and found one of the last true vintage collector's items. That's how convincingly Fender's Custom Shop has "aged" this new guitar. As you probably know, the whole concept behind the Fender Relic Series was to produce a guitar that looked like it had lots of mileage on it, with just the right number of nicks, dings and scratches and even tarnished metal parts. This way, no serious guitar player will ever have to get on stage with a shiny new instrument that screams, "Hey look! He just bought me!" The '51 Nocaster celebrates the time when Leo Fender had to change the name of his Broadcaster and hadn't yet come up with the Telecaster name. Thus, as in 1951, this particular recreation has neither the Broadcaster nor Telecaster sticker on the headstock, hence the "Nocaster" designation. Period accurate features include an ash body in Honey Blonde nitrocellulose lacquer finish, a "U" shape maple neck, single-ply black pickguard (with a natural "halo bubble") and 21 vintage style frets. The pickups are Custom NoCaster Vintage Tele single coils with a vintage wiring circuit. Everything comes packaged in a tweed "thermometer" case with gold interior plus the standard Fender molded case, strap, cable and other case candy.