I'm not going to bore you all with details about my personal ups and downs of 2008. All I can say is that 2008 has been a very difficult year for me in terms of allocating time and resources for all the projects that I'm working on. Running two businesses and still have time to spend with my family isn't an easy task! My wife, who's taking care of the overall business administration of my companies, has patiently stand by my side and helped me more than I could ask for. She's a keeper and I love her deeply!

On behalf of me and NEriks Audio I would like to thank all our friends and all our clients for a wonderful 2008. A special thanks goes to Ulf Edelönn and the Fitzpatrick team who enthusiastically have supported us in regards to our work related to vintage synthesizers as well as modern gear from Moog Music. I would also like to thank Mattias Olsson of Roth Händle Studio in Stockholm for being a great friend as well as a huge source of inspiration for a technical geek like me!

It's with great passion for music and technology that I'm entering 2009 as head of the everyday activates of NEriks Audio. I'm feeling very enthusiastic about the future and I hope that 2009 will bring a lot of new and interesting challenges to us. 2008 was a bit of disaster for our product development, mainly because we didn't allocated enough time for the development of products. During 2009 we will cease to provide engraved front panels as a measure to get more time for our product development.

I have finally decided to replace my beloved Otari reel-to-reel 2-inch tape recorder with a computerized recording solution. The main reason is that the tape recorder it's too complicated to use for spontaneous recordings. I have up until now tried to keep the computers and software out of the NEriks Audio Recording Studio since I feel much more inspired by using dedicated hardware. Working on a daily basis within the software industry (my main occupation besides NEriks Audio) has made me feel resistant to bring computers and software into the studio since it simply reminds me too much of my everyday work. On the other hand I already work very closely with software and electronics when building, developing and repairing electronic instruments on behalf of NEriks Audio so one might wonder why I feel the way I do about software and music?

Anyway, I recently decided to scrap my previous ideas about using software for musical purposes and go for a computerized recording solution instead of holding on to my old tape recorder. After all, I might benefit a lot if I can utilize my software developing skills to develop customized tools and applications for my own purposes. I already have implemented some tools for measuring and calibrating synthesizers so I'm basically already using software when working with "music"!

So, what type of software will replace my old tape recorder? After a two-week period of intense evaluation I decided to purchase a license of Ableton Live 7. Installing Ableton Live on my old workstation didn't work very well due to limited amount of memory and a slow CPU. I therefore purchased a new workstation with two Intel QuadCore (Xeon 5450) CPU's and 8GB internal memory. In contrast to many recommendations I also decided to install and run the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. The main reason to use the 64-bit version of Vista was to avoid the 3GB memory limit in the 32-bit version. The installation of Windows Vista, device-drivers and Ableton Live went very smooth so now we're in session!

For the records: I'm keeping my tape recorder as a backup!

I have spent the entire weekend working on the new analog mixing console that I'm building for the studio. Despite only having 16 input channels the console will be physically quite large. Last night we started to build the frame of the console which is mainly made out of solid oak. I hope to have the console ready by the end of May. I'll try to post some pictures of the console along the work with it. Please, stay tuned for continuous updates of the progress!

The core business of NEriks Audio is to provide professional repair and restoration services of vintage synthesizers and vintage studio equipment. Our knowledge of vintage synthesizers from manufactures like Moog has also resulted in some inquires about servicing, repairing and selling modern equipment from Moog. In order to provide our customers with modern equipment from Moog, NEriks Audio recently became an authorized Moog dealer. In relation to our Moog dealership we naturally decided to invest in some Moog gear for our own studio ...

Yesterday we got the first shipment from Moog. I spent the entire night installing and testing the new equipment in the studio.  Among the gear we got is a Moog Little Phatty and some Moogerfoogers. I really like the fooger's but being a analog synthesizer geek I would have prefered that Moog provider the Moogerfooger line of products in a compatible format to their old vintage modular products.