KRK Classic 5
Price: £120 each (retail)
RK make excellent monitors to suit a range of budgets. Their Rokit series can be found in schools up and down the country. The Classic 5 builds on that knowledge of 30 years of speaker design to create a slightly cheaper model.
The Classic 5 features a 5” driver, with KRK claiming that it can handle frequencies up to 35 KHz. The back panel has controls to boost or cut the high and low frequencies, and to tailor the sound to your liking. It also has all the normal inputs for connecting to other equipment.
krksys.com
Cubase 10.5
Price: Elements – €99 (£84.44), Artist – €309 (£263.56), Pro – €559 (£476.75); upgrade prices are available
Another thing found in schools right across the country is Cubase, and with good reason. It's been one of the top DAWs for 30 years. The latest version, 10.5, has just been announced and comes with some great new additions including a new instrument, new effects, new utilities and some tweaks to the workflow.
The biggest addition is Padshop 2. Padshop is a granular and spectral synthesiser (it uses tiny elements of waveforms played back in different ways to create sounds). Padshop version 1 was one of my favourite Cubase instruments, so I can't wait to hear version 2. Expect a full review of Cubase 10.5 soon.
Poly D
Price: TBC
For lovers of old analogue synths (such as myself) the holy grail is the Minimoog Model D. Original models sell for ridiculous sums of money, and Moog's own modern equivalents aren't exactly cheap. Enter the Behringer Model D. Whether you think emulation is a good or bad thing, like the original it is still monophonic.
However, the new Poly D does something that the original Model D and the original Minimoog could never do, offering up to four-note polyphony with an all-analogue signal path. If you want an affordable polysynth, this could be it.
Boss DD-3T
Price: around £120
It's rare that a product in production as nearly as long as I've been alive gets an upgrade, but that's what's happened here. The Boss DD-3, in continuous production since 1983, has been upgraded to include the much-requested tap tempo. This means that with an external switch you can synchronise the delay to your music.
The Boss DD-3 has been a stalwart delay pedal of student guitarists for countless years because of its simple use, affordability and, of course, its great sound. I see no reason why the DD-3T shouldn't continue that legacy.
