New in stock at Sweetwater Sound: We don’t know how they do it, but MIDIMan has another great product at an unbelievable price. The Dio2448 is a PCI recording card sporting 24-bit, 48 kHz full duplex audio, optical and digital I/O, plus an analog output. All for a retail price of $149.95. Heck, pretty soon they’ll be paying us to take the stuff off their hands.
Also new in stock is the Furman SRM80 signal router and monitor. The SRM80 provides many of the most important functions from the master section of a studio mixer in a form that can be easily integrated into a DAW, or other recording setup where those functions are lacking. Retail price is $499.
As far as we know this has nothing to do with music, but we thought it interesting enough for inSync. This year the Winter Solstice, December 22 — the longest night of the year (tonight), will be extremely special. This is because the solstice will coincide with a Full Moon. Ah, but not just any Full Moon. The Moon will be within a few hours of its perigee, its closest point to the Earth. This will make the Moon appear to be about 14% bigger than usual. However, it is also only ten days from the Earth’s perihelion, its closest point to the Sun. Since the Moon shines with reflected sunlight, then the moon will appear 7% brighter than usual. These events occurring together are extremely rare (last happening 133 years ago). This is probably the biggest, brightest moon of the Millenium. That makes it a rare night indeed! Whatever you do, try to get out and look at the sky. You will never see a Moon like this again, even if the world does not end a week later.
Morning of December 22 – Winter solstice is at 2:44 a.m. EST
The moon is at perigee (221,614 miles from Earth), 5:55 a.m. EST
Full moon is at 12:31 p.m. EST
