Looking for some great holiday gift ideas for a music or audio enthusiast?  Road Dog Online has plenty of great bundles and packages in stock and ready to ship in time for the holidays!  We’ve put together a list of the top holiday gifts and if you don’t see what you are looking for, give your Road Dog Buyer Rep a call at 866.377.8808 and they can help!

Recording Bundles

Road Dog Online is now offering the perfect recording bundles for engineers and musicians including KRK monitors, Presonus audio interfaces, Audio Technica microphones and free monitor stands and XLR cables!

Microphones

Road Dog Online has the brand new Audio Technica Ribbon Microphones including the AT4080 and the AT4081 available!  Also, the new Neumann TLM102 at an excellent price!  At $699.00, you will be able to have the quality of Neumann in your home studio!

DJ Gear

Looking for DJ equipment?  Road Dog Online carries Numark, Gemini, and Denon DJ products including the brand new Numark NS7 Performance Controller with Serato ITCH.  These are extremely hard to find this holiday season and Road Dog has plenty in stock and ready to ship (Free Shipping!).

Earphones

Looking for a great stocking stuffer idea that will be sure to please a music lover?  Try the Future Sonics Atrio M Series earphones or the new Shure SRH Series headphones!  Future Sonics just recently won Best Earphone of the year in Mac Life magazine and rightly so!  These earphones pack some incredible bass even at low listening volumes.  Whether you are looking for in-ears or headphones, Road Dog has you covered!

Mixers

Road Dog Online has the brand new Mackie Onyx i Series mixers with firewire capability that are very versatile and perfect for both live and recording applications.  Check out the brand new Mackie Onyx 820i and the Mackie Onyx 1220i Firewire Mixing Consoles.  These are the only mixers that are not from Digidesign that are compatible with Pro Tools M-Powered

Check out the even more Road Dog Holiday deals here

Don’t forget to check back often for the Doggone Deal of the Day at www.RoadDogOnline.com

So, here’s the deal. There’s a LOT of options out there when you start looking for in-ear monitors. The choices can honestly be overwhelming if you jump in and don’t know the market very well. There’s so many options out there that it’s easy to drown in the selection madness. But never fear! We are “hear” to make it easy. (Get it?) When you’re looking for your next (or first) set of earphones, take these three simple things into consideration.

1) What do you do? Are you a vocalist? Are you a guitar player? Do you play drums or bass? This plays a HUGE role in the kind of earphones you will want. Most of the time drummers and bass players want something with a good solid low end, while guitarists and vocalists prefer something with more clarity than thump.

2) Where do you do it? Are you playing at large arenas or are you rockin your local pub? Are you playing in a house of worship or are you laying down tracks in the studio? This also plays a key role in the kind of monitors you need. If you’re playing huge venues where your screamin’ guitar solo is hitting the crowd with 150db of pure shred-ation, you are probably going to want something extremely isolating (custom molds). If you’re playing for your church and just need to hear your vocals a little better, any universal fit phones will do the trick.

3) What can you spend? Ah, the dreaded question. Everybody knows that we get what we pay for, but we always try to get around it, don’t we? Good in-ear monitors range anywhere from $70 up to $1000. Yeah… It’s a big difference.

Are you ready for kicker? All this is almost pointless until you get out there and listen to some for yourself. I can sit here and argue all day long why one pair of in-ears is the best in the world, while the guy next to me can’t stand the darn things. Everybody’s ears are different. With that being said, here’s my personal suggestions for somebody that is new to the in-ear world.

Guitarists/Vocalists - [Shure SCL4's] These things scream around the mid-high range and really compliment your instrument beautifully. The clarity is great. $249 RDOL price.

Drummers/Bass Players - [OSP EU-6's] Yeah I know you’ve never heard of them. You want want thump? They’ve got it. Give ‘em a try. $199 RDOL price.

iPod Listener/ Music Enthusiast - [Future Sonic Atrio's] They were voted “Earphone Of The Year” for a reason. You won’t regret this buy. $179 RDOL price.

So, there’s my personal gear rant for the day. Give me a call and I’ll talk you through it more if you want. 866-377-8808.

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Are you looking to setup a recording studio at home?  Road Dog Online is proud to announce several new recording packages with everything you will need to get up and running this holiday season! New packages will be added to the site shortly including bundles KRK monitors, M-Audio Monitors, Presonus and M-Audio interfaces, and Audio-Technica microphones with monitor stands and XLR cables!  There will also be bundles including the popular Pro Tools M-Powered 8 Recording Software.  This software is an industry-wide standard so you’ll be using the same software of the Pros who have recorded Grammy winning hits!  This is the perfect gift for those are looking to have a studio setup at home with quality recording gear.

Neumann has also just released the brand new TLM102 microphone.  It is a compact, large diaphragm, cardioid condenser microphone.  At $699.00, you can’t get a better deal on a high-quality Neumann microphone!  The TLM 102 is perfect for home studio recording and broadcasting.  We’ll have these available very shortly!

Neumann TLM102 Condenser Microphone Features

• Large-diaphragm microphone with cardioid directional characteristic (pressure gradient transducer)
• Compact, characteristic but smaller-scale Neumann design
• Very high maximum sound pressure level
• Slight presence boost above 6 kHz
• Transformerless circuitry
• Applications: Vocals, speech, drums, percussion, wind instruments and amps
• Home recording, project and broadcasting studios

As always, feel free to call your buyer rep with any questions you have and they will be glad to give you a Howlin’ Good Deal!

866.377.8808

I personally have had a chance to check out Shure’s new line of headphones and as an audio engineer I am impressed. These closed back professional headphones give you everything you would expect from a name like Shure, but without the pricetag of most pro headphones. Most musicians and audio people are familiar with Shure’s line of in-ear earphones, which have been on the market for years and are tried and true from the stage to an iPod, but these headphones are new ground for Shure. Most companies are timid and reserved when diving into a new field of manufacturing but Shure has gone above and beyond expectations, the SRH line have a smooth rich sound that allows for a pleasant listening experience. The low’s are tight and responsive but not overwhelming, while the highs are smooth and easy on the ears. The sensitivity of these headphones allow them to be driven nicely by a cell phone or iPod, but can handle the high power loud needs of monitoring headphones doing live sound. Shure has hit the nail on the head with all of these headphones.

The SRH line (240, 440, 840) are all available from Road Dog Online and are in stock, ready to be shipped. For the price of these you can’t go wrong!!

Check out this video from Shure:

Give Road Dog Online a call today at 866.377.8808 to pick up a pair of Shure’s new SRH series!!

Looking for a portable recorder that will get the job done right?  The Tascam DR-100 Recorder is a great portable digital recorder that has a lot of great features.  If you have any history of using any of Tascam’s earlier portable recorders, you should be able to pick this one up quick and painlessly.  It builds on the features of the DR-1 and adds functionality.  Tascam really listened to consumers on this one by the looks of it.

The Tascam DR-100 features 4 microphones all together, 2 cardioid and 2 omni-directional.  If you don’t want to use those mics, you can use the 2 XLR inputs and plug in your favorite microphone.  The XLR inputs have switchable phantom power so you can even use your condensor mics.  The DR-100 also features line input with adjustable level and line output which many other similar portable recorders (Zoom H4n) do not allow.   If you need to reference your recordings on the go, you can use the built-in monitor speaker for playback.  Another handy feature that the DR-100 has is “Auto Recording”.  Once the input reaches a selected level, it will start recording.  The recordings sound great with ability to record up to 96KHz sample rate.  A lot of portable recorders can have low battery time but Tascam has addressed this by allowing it to run not only on the lithium ion battery but also AA batteries if the charge runs out.

After you are done recording, you can plug in the USB connection to your computer and transfer files for editing etc. It comes with a 2GB SD card for storage as well as a wireless remote control, wired remote adapter, soft case, and wind screen.

This recorder is very easy to use and versatile.  Its great for recording sessions on the go, small films, broadcasting, field sampling, and singer-songwriters.  Tascam has really brought a great product at an excellent price point.  Road Dog has these in stock this holiday season!  Give your buyer rep a call and we’ll hook you up with a Howlin’ Good Deal!

Check out a quick video on The Tascam DR-100 features and usability here:

So, you are ready to ditch the awful sounding stock iPod earbuds.  Here at the Dog Pound, we receive many questions from customers looking at earphones both for personal listening and for in-ear stage monitoring.  There are many different manufacturer’s out there making quality earphones but not all of them are equal and they definitely don’t all sound the same.  So how do you choose the right earphones?  First, we must take a look at the different types of earphones there are on the market.

Drivers

Earphones are built with either of two different types of drivers.  There are earphones with dynamic drivers, which are basically a tiny speaker.  These give a great bass response but can be hard to make a quality dynamic driver small enough for earphones.

The second type of earphone driver is a balanced armature driver.  These are commonly found in earphones because they can easily be made small enough and produce quality sound.

Many earphones use more than one driver.  Often times earphones will have two drivers… one for highs and one for lows.  This helps offset the load on the drivers.  There are even earphones that have three drivers and four drivers.  Do more drivers equal better sound? On one hand, a single driver must take the load of the whole frequency range.  On the other hand, an earphone with multiple drivers must deal with crossover networks and ensuring that the drivers work together to produce the right sound.

Different people will have different opinions on this, but I believe if you can get a quality single dynamic driver earphone, you will have a better sounding earphone.  Future Sonics takes this approach and have built the Future Sonics Atrio Series, which are amazing personal listening earphones.  Their Future Sonics Atrio M series Universal Fit Professional Earphones (M3, M5, and M8) are some of the best earphones on the market for personal listening such as with an iPod or music player.  They are not great in-ear monitors because they can not handle high SPL levels which may be needed for stage use.  If you are looking for in-ear monitors, Future Sonics has the Ear Monitors brand Professional Custom Earphones that sound fantastic.  The benefit of Future Sonics is that they use an excellent single dynamic driver which produces a natural and accurate sound.

Materials

Another piece of the puzzle to note is that earphone manufacturer’s use different materials and different magnets.  Higher priced earphones usually have stronger magnets than cheaper earphones and the same goes for the materials they are made with.

Comfort and Fit

One more aspect of your purchase is comfort and fit.  Most of the higher quality earphones now come with several different types of tips ranging from foam, rubber, and triple flange sleeves.  It is important to have a good seal when wearing earphones in order to have a good bass response as well as the ability to listen at lower volume levels and still have a full dynamic range.

Anything Else?

What you should be looking for in a quality earphone is a flat frequency response across the entire dynamic range.  The highest quality earphones will not have any (or very few) frequencies accentuated over another.  Earphones that boast better bass don’t actually have “better” bass… just a lot more of it.  It is better to have a flat frequency response because you can always adjust the EQ for more bass.  When purchasing earphones under $100, you are often paying for style and not sound.  Once you get above $100, you will see major performance improvements.

At Road Dog Online, we are committed to providing quality earphones for our customers.  All of us here have tried many different earphones on the market.  Feel free to call us anytime if you have any questions!

Last week, the Road Dog crew attended the Belmont University Activities Fair in Nashville Tennessee in support of the new DJ gear lineup we have rolled out! We went in style with DJ Huda Hudia (http://www.myspace.com/djhudahudia) spinnin’ and blastin’ some tunes! You may have heard some of DJ Huda Hudia’s tracks on MTV’s Punk’d or on the EA Sports videogame, SSX Tricky. We had plenty of great gear to display including the new Shure SRH series headphones (SRH240, SRH440, SRH840) to listen to and demo. We gave away a ton of Road Dog DJ T-Shirts as well as Road Dog Frisbees that look like vinyl records! We had a ton of fun and appreciate all of the support to all of those who joined us. QSC, Shure, and JBL sponsored the event and helped make it a success.

Road Dog Online will now be offering DJ Gear from Numark, Denon, and Gemini. You’ll now find a new DJ Gear Banner featured on the homepage for the DJ gear lineup. More DJ Gear coming in the near future!

Social networking that is.  We’ve made some changes to the site as of late to make Road Dog more interactive.  Many of us here in The Dog Pound (Road Dog offices) use social networks ourselves and have decided to let Road Dog in on the action.  Now active on the site, you will find ‘Share’ links on every product page allowing for easy posting function to your favorite social networks including Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Google, E-Mail and many more.  To see a complete list, visit any product page and click the share button.  This will bring a drop-down menu with all of the available sites to share.  Have a friend who might be interested in our Doggone Deal of the Day? Share it! Know a coworker looking to buy some new earphones or speakers? Just click the Share button on the specific product!

Road Dog Online now has its own Twitter and Facebook page with Exclusive Deals available only to followers/friends.  If you are active on Twitter or Facebook, make sure you add us and you’ll receive special deals that are usually significant discounts on products.  Coupon codes are posted for a specific product daily.  This promotion has just begun and we’ve seen a great response from our customers so get in on the action!

Here at Road Dog Online, we like to have our customers involved in our efforts.  If you wish to see a product on our site, feel free to drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter, Call, or E-mail us and we’ll see what we can do for you.  We’re real people who love audio gear just like you.  We appreciate your feedback in the new features we’re rolling out and will continue to offer you great deals on audio gear you love.

Apogee has a new product coming out at the end of July that seems very promising… The Apogee ONE.  I am particularly excited about it because of the portability, ease of use, and versatility.  The Apogee ONE provides a very small, slightly larger than an iPhone, USB interface that can be taken anywhere to provide recording at that euphoric moment when your soon to be double-platinum song pops in your head!  The Apogee ONE has been designed to work with Garageband, Logic, and Final Cut, but can be used with any Core Audio compliant application.

As for versatility, this pocket-sized interface has a built-in specially tuned condensor mic, an instrument input for guitar bass or keyboard, and a world-class microphone preamp input (XLR) for use with your favorite mic!  I have listened to recordings using just the Apogee ONE interface and they sound great!  The Apogee ONE provides a stereo output for headphones or speakers so you can even listen to your iTunes library and control the volume with the encoder knob.  This encoder knob controls the volume and input volumes as well.

Along with a Mac, the Apogee ONE proves to be a great recording setup, especially if you’re on the go.  And the best part?  It will start at $249 in late July.  Road Dog Online will have these ready to go when they become available.  Let us know in the comments if you are as excited as we are!

Check out a video: Apogee ONE in action

Anaheim, CA was rocking when the Winter NAMM Show came into town this year! It was 80 degrees and sunny in southern California and all of the manufacturers were there showing off their latest HOT products. The excitement was contagious as we went from booth to booth to talk with all of our reps at Shure, Sennheiser, Audio Technica, Yamaha, Tascam, QSC, Westone, Radial, Ultimate Support, Whirlwind, and many more. One of my favorites was the Harmon room which had its own secluded area where dealers could check out each of their lines including JBL, Soundcraft, Crown, DBX, Lexicon, AKG, and BSS. 

A big part of the excitement for us was to see all of the new product introduced for the very first time! In fact, we got special sneak peaks on some products that very few dealers got to see. One of the most exciting new products I heard is coming out later this month from JBL - the new LSR2300 Series Studio Monitor System.  It offers big studio sound at the most affordable price point yet.  I was particularly impressed with the LSR2310SP Powered 10-inch Studio Subwoofer with an integrated 180 Watt power amplifier.  For the size of this subwoofer, the sound is incredible.

Shure also came out with some home studio friendly mics that are very impressive. The PG27USB and PG42USB  are Shure’s new side-address cardiod condensor microphones that promise absolutely no latency! Perfect for digital recording! They have also released the “zero latency monitoring, XLR to USB connectivity, and integrated pre-amp with mic gain control” called the Shure X2u. This piece really rocks because now, you can use your old sm58 for quality digital recording by using this handy little adaptor. One other product just released was the Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 which is basically presonus’s digital mock of the Yamaha LS9-16 at HALF the price!

The gang at Road Dog walked away with some great deals from our manufacturer reps which we will be passing along to you.  Look for our new Doggone Deals of the Week coming soon.

Later