Archive for February, 2009
Apogee Drops Windows Development
Feb 26th
Given that this is Mac OS X Audio, this may not seem like the biggest deal. However for those who were looking for cross platform audio interfaces and considering getting an Apogee interface and FW card, or a USB Mini device, think again:
Apogee has officially announced that they are dropping all Windows platform development to focus solely on the Macintosh. Of course, you can still plug Apogee standalone converters into any Windows audio interface you own. And for those who do use their Apogee interfaces with Windows, they will still support previously purchased cards for a while.
The writing was clearly on the wall for a while, considering how much business Apogee has been doing with Apple-related products such as Ensemble and Duet, popular among Logic and GarageBand users. Still, considering how much of a potential market Windows audio users are, this decision could not have been easy, or made lightly.
Come on in to the Mac OS X Audio forums to read and discuss this further.
The Forums!
Feb 25th
The forums are back online! Check them out here.
We’re happy to have them back, with 100% of the data intact. We’ll revamp the look and feel soon.
Thanks for your continued patience!
The Rebirth
Feb 15th
If you’re seeing this, the bigbluelounge.com has served its last visitor. Don’t despair! What you’re reading is the new home of what was Big Blue Lounge (formerly OS X Audio). Welcome to Mac OS X Audio.com! In preparation for the move to the new servers and new domain, the forum has been taken down to facilitate one final backup and transfer of the database. As soon as the forum is online, you’ll read about it on this page. As many of you may remember, OS X Audio.com was founded by Tony David Cray (tdc). It was the first dedicated site for making music on the then brand new OS X. Over the years, OS X itself changed to a more open platform, capable of running Windows and Linux to appeal to a broader range of musicians. Mac OS X Audio.com will serve your home for making music on a Mac, no matter how you do it.
When the original OS X Audio.com was launched, it featured a front page full of news articles. Back when Tony started the site, coding those articles was very time consuming. The net has changed so much since then, and WordPress (which is powering this site) is making writing articles a snap. A few months ago, Tony asked Kevin Anker (kanker) and I to take over the site. Tony is in charge of the Sydney Opera House’s audio department—a job that takes up all of his time and then some. Tony has recently been recognized with a Grammy award for his work at the Opera House and it’s an award that this community is so very proud of. When Tony asked Kevin and me to take over management of the site, we didn’t hesitate. We love the community and want to take it to the next step. The first step was to move it to our own servers and take on the fiscal responsibility of hosting. First on Kevin and my agenda was to put up a new front page/article system. Both Kevin and I have written extensively about pro audio on the Mac and we’re passionate about bringing interesting stories to this community. To help with this, we’ve recruited Orren Merton, another veteran pro audio writer who’s a close friend of both Kevin and mine.
Kevin, Orren and I will start the flow of articles flowing. We’ll be looking to do a whole lot more than just announcing products. The forums will start off largely the same way they were. We might even have the banners fixed 
The same dedicated crew of moderators and the same forums will make you feel right at home. Even Putte will be there! We hope to keep expanding the forums with new places for manafacturers to host their own forums like we’ve done with Redmatica and Metric Halo. The forums have always been unique. The signal to noise ratio here has always been exceptional. That’s something we’re all really proud of. We hope to greatly expand this site over the coming months and years. We even have RSS now—welcome to the 21st century…
I hope you’re as excited as we are about these new changes. When the forum goes back online, you’ll read it here in a news story. Until then, keep busy creating and start dreaming. What do you want this community to be? It’s always been about the community. Tony did a great job of staying out of the way and letting things ebb and flow their own way. Kevin and I won’t mess with success in that regard. So, keep your brain focused on what you want to see here. In due course, we’ll be opening up the article writing to other talented members of this community to help expand the breadth of the site. Got ideas for some great articles? Contact us!
Until then, thanks for your patience in getting this site back to state of the art.
Marc Schonbrun and Kevin Anker
Owners, Mac OS X Audio.com
P.S. We’ve gotten a few questions about logins and the old site. As far as we can tell, when we import the old database, everything is retained. So for now, just wait and see—we’re all learning!