Just in from the Messe, a sort of CES for European audio geeks, is a device that packs a museum's worth of vintage recording gear into a cute, handheld FireWire unit. Plug it into your computer, and you can add 32 simultaneous channels of vintage compressors and equalizers into your mix. (So no more of those grungy bare-bones guitar arrangements: better go all Moody Blues on us.) All the number crunching is done on onboard chips, not your CPU. It's enough to make you want to take up a hobby as a recording engineer, particularly as the price is likely to be well under $1000. And you might correctly wonder if high-priced recording studios are long for this world.

Messe: 32 Compressors, 32 EQs, All in One Tiny FireWire Box

Contact information for this author is not available.