By Elianne Halbersberg

During the past year, the Planet Ill team has been keeping readers up to date on new gear—everything from phone apps to electronic drum kits. As 2009 comes to a close, we thought we’d recap some of the home studio equipment that we didn’t have a chance to spotlight in depth. We hope that some of these suggestions will help you enhance your room and, in turn, create even better tracks.

Readers have come to know the Akai line from previous Gear Up! columns. Ease of use, product compatibility and a remarkably low price point have made Akai a Planet Ill favorite. The Akai Professional MPK88 is a professional, 88-key MIDI-over-USB performance keyboard controller with MPC production controls. The MPK88 draws on the design of the popular MPK49, the first keyboard ever to feature MPC pads. This first-of-its-kind keyboard is ideal for performance, starting with a premium, fully weighted, hammer-action keyboard, adding 16 pressure and velocity-sensitive MPC pads, Q-Link controls, tracking and editing, and a selection of MPC technologies. The pads can access four banks of sounds, so you have 64 samples at your fingertips with the touch of a button. Also built into the MPC and MPK series, are the popular Note Repeat and Swing programs. Two assignable footswitch inputs enable you to connect an expression pedal or other continuous controller and a footswitch for momentary controls like patch change or start/stop. The MPK88 comes with Ableton Live Lite Akai Edition, which enables musicians to spontaneously compose, record, remix, improvise and edit musical ideas in a seamless audio/MIDI environment.

Ableton Live users will want to add the Akai APC 40 Ableton Performance Controller to their arsenal. Both in studio and onstage, the APC 40 with Live is perfect for mixing and remixing your tracks, and is also ideal for DJs. Simply connect your laptop to the APC40 via USB and you’re ready to go. The APC40 is plug and play, so there is no need to install drivers. First-time setup is literally three steps: load Ableton Live, plug in and power up the APC40, and select the APC40 as Ableton Live’s controller. That’s it. No mapping, no setup, no hassles. Experienced Live users can also customize every knob, button and fader on the APC40.

Akai’s Vintage Beat Machines is a sample library for MPCs. It contains classic drums and percussion sounds from drum machines, beat and rhythm generators, and other synthesizers dating as far back as the 1960s. For raw sound quality and less of the electronic and programmed beats, the Vintage Beat Machines Sample Pack for MPC provides everything you need in a single, affordable download. The pack works with all MPC models and contains samples and analog synthesis-based sounds from more than 55 different beat machines.

Mixing. Mastering. Workstations. Plug-ins and modeling software. When you’re working from home, you need products that can meet all of those needs, and companies you can rely on for durability and upgrades. IK Multimedia is always on the cutting edge, as evidenced by ARC, their Advanced Room Correction system: the only product of its kind available as a plug-in. ARC comes with a mic and measurement software, and corrects any room for flat frequency response for your mix. It also eliminates distortion phasing and sweet spots. With the need for a variety of mixes to accommodate a multitude of listening devices, ARC measures time and frequency into an EQ system to eradicate distortion and problems.

At Planet Ill, we’re longtime fans of Avant Electronics. For your studio-on-a-budget, you can’t beat the price and quality of Avant’s microphones. In fact, that’s their CV-12 on Taylor Swift’s award-winning album, Fearless.

Avant offers a range of microphone styles and packages that are worth looking into, but one product in particular that remains on our list of favorites, year after year, is their MixCubes. Designed specifically to get the best possible sound out of your mixes, these full-range mini reference monitors are unbeatable, and the actives plug directly into your computer. Described as “a magnifying glass on your mids,” the MixCubes guarantee crystal clarity and separation.

And finally, earlier this year, we checked out BreezSong’s JamHub, which was the hands-down hit of the Summer NAMM show. This product is so remarkable that it demands a recap:

BreezSong’s JamHub was designed to allow up to seven musicians to literally plug in, put on their headphones and play—jamming together while inaudible to the outside world. Each player sets his or her own mix via the SoleMix controls, and the SoleMix Remote ($74.99) even allows drummers and keyboard players to mix from their instrument. It’s literally that simple and that amazing.

JamHub is available in three models: BedRoom (up to five musicians; $299.99) features 15 audio input channels, five headphone outputs, one SoleMix output jack and effects. Green Room (up to seven musicians; $499.99) features 21 audio input channels, seven headphone outputs, four SoleMix remote jacks, one remote, effects, Phantom Power and USB out. TourBus (up to seven musicians; $699.99) features 21 audio input channels, four SoleMix remote jacks, two remotes, Phantom Power, USB out, built-in metronome, effects, and a built-in recorder that writes to removable SD RAM with a 4 GB card included.

Planet Ill will be onsite at the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim on January 14–17. We’ll take you through 2010 with the latest on all the gear to take your playing and production to the next level.

Elianne Halbersberg is a freelance writer whose work has also appeared in Mix, Premier Guitar, Electronic Musician, Audio Media, Ink 19 and many other magazines and websites.

Follow Us on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/planetill

Join Us on the Planet Ill Facebook Group for more discussion

Check out Planet Ill’s page on Essence.com

Follow us on Networked Blogs