What was your best purchase of 2009

[gurumonkey]

It's nice to see so many people mentioning live 8. i feel like on the forums we end up with a lot of complaints about it. good to see so many people find it valuable. i personally haven't had any issues with it at all!

[bridgealantee]

Hmmm single best purchase of 09. Live 8 is up there for sure, mpd 24 has been great to me, but my sp 303 for 175(canadian dollars) was a deal and a half on a great little sampler.

[anachroschism]

APC 40 no doubt. Perfect for what I want to do live, like the feel of everything and price not to bad(in US).

[kristian]

I was gonna say Live 8, but after getting a hold of Reaktor 5, I just can't get enough of it...

[comradec]

Excluding Live 8 itself, in 2009 I purchased the following music gear:

Akai APC40 Ableton controller - Excellent piece of kit, made using Live so much easier and more fun.

Akai LPK25 MIDI keyboard controller - Also a great buy. At last a mini-keyboard that's worth owning. By way of contrast, Korg's nanoKEY, which I bought towards the end of 2008, was a disaster. The keys broke off. I took the first one back but the same happened on the replacement. And not after a world tour. It never left my living room. Until I chucked it in the bin, that is.

Akai MPK25 MIDI keyboard controller - It's been okay, but a little expensive for what it offers. And very heavy.

AKG K271 headphones - Great sound. But not so good if the door bell or phone rings.

Alesis Micron synth - Really good fun to mess with. Not actually used it on a track yet, mind. But fun all the same.

nativeKONTROL nanoLive software - Used for synchronising the Korg nanoKONTROL with Ableton Live. I tried it for a while but found it unreliable because the Borne's MIDI Translator software upon which nanoLive depends does not always behave as intended or even launch at all sometimes. That was a problem on the Windows Vista laptop I used it with; it might not be an issue with Windows XP. But it didn't do the job for me on a Vista system.

Novation Nocturn - Disappointing. I really haven't taken to the Automap interface. It's far too intrusive. I'm not using this now and will probably sell it on. Has put me off other buying Automap-based products too.

Waldorf Blofeld desktop synth - The sounds are good but I wish I'd gone for the version that has keys included. It's too much effort to configure sometimes.

Frontier TranzPort wireless MIDI controller - Great for what it's intended. Useful when I'm standing away from my main computer desk playing on a synth and want to control my DAW at a distance.

In conclusion, I'd say that Akai's APC40 and the LPK25 were my best purchases overall.

2010, however, I expect to be a less gear consuming year for me. Economic realities and all that. I shall endeavour to make best use of the stuff I've got already and probably sell a few things too.

[TRS80]

Live 8 Suite

steel cut oats (bulk)

Brazilian coffee beans (+ Bodum "Chambord" coffee press)

Western Digital 1TB external drive

I'm looking forward to a crock pot in 2010.

[v00d00ppl]

emulator x3 (50 filter types to mess with. hot shit)

live 8 suite (corpus and mpc swing aint nuthing to fuck with)

HP elite 9180f (i love the i7 and 9 gigs on this baby)

windows 7 professional 64 bit

ensoniq eps classic w/ 2MB max memory (its so limited, but the sound at a high knocks my socks off)

mad catz street fighter 4 tournament edition stick (i love sanwa parts)

[timothyallan]

Logic 9 and Alchemy are my tops

[freqn]

a Glock.

[Bleep Blop Ima Robot]

a Glock.

that is a good buy

[smutek]

Dell 2209WA - Really great monitor for the price. Convinced me that I'll never need to buy an over priced Apple Cinema Display again.

Now all you need to do is get off the rest of over priced Apple crap and you'll be peachy

Let me translate that to American for you:

Now all you need to do is get off of the rest of over priced Apple crap and you'll be peachy

Thanks but no. The 40+ hours a week I spend on a windows box at the day job is enough for me and anything but peachy!

No need to worry though, I lost any remaining vestiges of Apple fanboy-ism when the monitor in my wifes iMac went up, now it's just a matter of practicality.

[dysanfel]

I learned to use the gear that I already own better.

[arachnaut]

Komplete 6

[Hertz SM]

Concerning the buck/bang-ratio it's definitely Bome's Midi Translator Pro (can't confirm comradec's experience). Alone the ability to dedicate unlimited and selectable/switchable functions to a single button on my hardware controller is tremendous and a cash saver.

Another fav from day one is "The Glue" comp. Lovin' it.

[AceLuby]

Live 8
Novation 25 SL
APC 40
MPD18
Firewire Interface
Asus PC
Live 8 Suite Upgrade
Ultra Analog

All are about equal