Pro800
Price: £149 (retail)
Behringer is back at it again and is recreating clones of famous pieces of hardware. This time it's the Sequential Circuits Prophet 600. Original versions of this will go for ridiculous money on eBay or Reverb. Behringer's recreation will cost under $600. This version contains 8 oscillators (two more than the original) and contains a wide range of modulation controls for further sound design.
For people looking for a particular synth sound or wanting to teach the concepts of polysynths without breaking the bank, then this could be the synth for you. It might be quite a niche product in the education market, but I always like to teach synthesis on a real synth, so at this price, it could be great.
Tula Mic
Price: $199 (retail)
Tula is a new brand from Sweden and its first product is a handheld mic that also doubles as a portable recorder. The mic has been designed in conjunction with Russian mic designers, Soyuz, and features both cardioid and omnidirectional mic capsules. The Tula connects via USB-C and can be used as the main mic for recording a podcast, or it could be laid flat on a table for recording an entire meeting.
In the music classroom I always found having a portable recorder very useful. Although student work can be captured via a phone, having a decent mic makes all the difference. The Tula can store up to 8GB of audio internally and has built-in background noise reduction. This could be a great device for capturing student work.
Keystation 88 Mk3
Price: £175 (retail)
M-Audio has been releasing no-nonsense MIDI controller keyboards for a very long time and they can be found in countless studios, schools and colleges around the world. M-Audio has updated the Mk3 line to include an 88-note, semi-weighted controller. The keyboards feature a range of useful additional functions, including octave shift, pitch-bend and modulation controls and basic transport functions for controlling a DAW.
The keyboard is semi-weighted and is designed for both studio use and live performance, so it is not unnecessarily heavy. The keyboard has both USB and 5-pin MIDI connectors and a socket for connecting a sustain pedal. It comes with a wide range of software instruments and music software to get you going and, although unlikely that you will need one of these on every student workstation, they could be perfect for teaching machines at the front of classes or in school studio spaces.
iPad Air
Price: Starting at £579
Everybody must now know what an iPad is (and I don't usually include the launch of new hardware like this in here) but the new iPad Air might be the perfect tool for a lot of music departments. The new model is now entirely screen – in a similar style to the iPad pro and some iPhones – but doesn't use the facial recognition software (fortunately).
The new iPad Air features the most powerful chipset in any iPad and can handle very large amounts of processing for music software. Apps like Cubasis and GarageBand take advantage of the touchscreen, and the lightness of the Air means that they can be used in practice rooms and free up desk space that might otherwise be taken up by computers.
