Union was our first product, and launched our way of thinking about media and media control, and came from our exact performance needs for live video. We were one of the early entrants to the live video software market, and it’s what defined us for many years. We took musical ideas, and appropriated them for controlling pixels, but this move has proven more circular than progressive, as the broader thinking about media control has infected the audio world.

As our focus and efforts have moved to making hardware that speaks more to music, we’re dedicating more of our time and energy to that world. Given the crossover between Union and DNA, and that DNA occupies a more distinct niche in the live visuals world, it made cruel sense for Union to get the “deprecated” label.
We’re pretty excited, though. We can focus on making simpler software and better hardware that can be tied together in creative ways. With less proprietary software to maintain, we can open up more code so people can learn and expand for their own unique expressions. And because DNA is pretty easy to extend, we can also port over some of the cool features that Union has, like sound trigger, recording, automator, and waveform modules.

For current Union users, we are offering a $25 crossgrade to DNA. For Union purchases over the last six months, it’s free. We’ll still support existing users of Union for some time, too.

Looking forward to 2010.

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news by Peter

Music Radar gives it 4 out of 5 stars. “The Block is a well-built, mini alternative to the more mainstream matrix-style controllers.”

Read the full review here>>

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reviews by Jay

Arkaos has just released a new version of Grand VJ with support for the Ohm64. The nice people over at Arkaos have taken our controller and added native support for it by creating a template that automatically maps the controller to the software and send messages back and forth to show the playback status. Setting it up and using it is very easy, but I made a video anyway to show just how easy it is.

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news by Jay

We have always appreciated Mahogany as an instrument wood going all the way back to the Tactic days. It machines very well, is popular as an instrument wood, is very stable, and looks gorgeous. We have been using Jelutong wood for quite some time. It has some great properties as well including machinability and takes dyes and stains very well. One problem we have found is that sometimes the Jelutong can become unstable when first cut into the Block form leading to a bit higher reject rate. Everyone at the shop is excited to start working with the mahogany again. We currently have some very nice Jelutong Blocks in stock but by the next batch we will be shipping Mahogany Blocks. I will post up some completed pictures when the first Mahogany units start rolling out.

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news by Travis

The block has two sliders, eight knobs, and extra buttons.

In MLRV, I modified several data controls with sliders and knobs. That’s why I call it Block edition.

Enjoy!

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This post was submitted by soolee.

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projects by soolee