All this CES coverage makes you just want to hear about a different event, doesn’t it? Well, if the more music tech inclined among you are looking forward to the NAMM trade show in one week’s time, keep an eye out for the Rain Computers booth. They will be showing off their new LiveBook Studio laptop and ION Studio rackmount unit, both geared for audio and video editing, and both with plenty of power under the hood.
Not a whole lot separates the LiveBook Studio from any other high end notebook. Different configurations are available, but all include some form of quad-core Intel i7 processor, nVidia GTS 250M video card, and DDR3 RAM. They run anywhere between $1799 and $2099.
The rackmounted ION Studio however, is a force to be reckoned with. The chassis takes up 4 standard audio rack spaces (each being 19″ across). Inside you’ll find the same Intel i7 processor, up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM, whatever video card ocnfiguration you could possibly wish, and in a bit of an odd move, a Windows OS. Albeit, a Windows OS optimized by Rain for A/V work, but I’m not completely sure exactly what that means. Mac OS has long been the operating system of choice for “artsy” folk, but Rain seems to be making a push for Windows users.
The connectivity of this unit is absolutely ridiculous. 10 USB 2.0 ports, 5 FireWire ports, an eSATA port, and 5 PCIe slots. Ah yes, also 1 PCI-X slot. There won’t be a configuration of Pro Tools HD or UAD cards that this beast can’t handle. My current recording setup is a Presonus FireStudio running through a Glyph HDD into my MacBook Pro on a single FireWire 800 port. So if anyone at Rain wants to send me a test unit, I would be most obliged. You can find the ION starting at $2499.
