Unique Beats - Adventures in Electronica

Musicradar.com have announced their tech picks of the year.  See what you think:

1. Control Surface: Novation Launchpad
2. Audio Interface: Cakewalk V-Studio 100
3. Controller Keyboard: Novation SL Mk2
4. Software Synth: FXpansion DCAM, Synth Squad
5. DAW: Propellerhead Record
6. Computer: Apple iMac 27-inch
7. Compact: Dave Smith Instruments Tetra
8. Synth: Roland AX-Synth
9. Monitor: Event Opal
10. Plug-in effect: iZotope Ozone 4
11. All-new product of the year: Native Instruments Maschine
12. Hi-tech hero of the year: Calvin Harris

Abletone send out a letter to their users.  Here it is:

Dear Ableton users,

Some of you have experienced and reported problems with Live 8 several months ago that we have still failed to fix. This is both painful and necessary for us to discuss. We owe you sincere apologies, as well as an explanation and outlook for the future.

Ableton values quality over innovation. Our engineers will stop whatever they are doing to fix a bug when they become aware of it. They must, however, rely on a process that prepares the incoming information and funnels it to them appropriately. Establishing and maintaining this process is the responsibility of management — particularly us, Bernd and Gerhard — and this is where things have gone wrong while we let our attention divert to ambitious new projects.

Our apologies also extend to both the Ableton developers and tech support colleagues because they want to be proud of software and service that users love.

We have now decided to:

• suspend all development towards new features while the whole team joins forces to address the current issues. This effort is open ended and will result in a free Live 8 update;
• make process changes to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.

We hope this plan finds your understanding and agreement. We’d like to wish you a very happy holiday season and a wonderful 2010!

Gerhard Behles, CEO
Bernd Roggendorf, CTO

Unique Beats has found Live 8 a tad buggy to be honest.  We have especially noticed that it crashes a lot more than previous versions.  However this anouncement from Ableton suggests that they are taking things very seriously and have downed everything else to focus there attentions on fixing the issues.  This in our opinion is the right thing to do.  Think differently?  Then post in the comments and let us know what you think they should do.

Unique Beats has joined forces with composer Jwilson on an exciting new project called Our Edited World.

The idea is to collect footage of cityscapes and landscapes from around the world and put it to music.  Think updated Koyaanisquatsi and you're on the right track.

All artists whose videos we use will be credited and the best thing about the film???  It will be debuted as a live performance at the next Unique Beats festival!

Check out oureditedworld.com for more details.