Sony and LL Cool J Rap It Up with Web-Based Music Collaboration Bundle

Dr. Dre may have his Beats brand, but LL Cool J was aiming not to miss any as he showed off Future Sounds My Connect Studio, a $900 software and hardware bundle that allows musicians in two different locations to mix and collaborate on the same song at the same time.

?It definitely changes the way music is created,? said LL Cool J at a press conference last week in New York. ?This is the next level in music creation.?

The $900 bundle includes a Sony VAIO E 14P notebook with My Connect Studio from Boomdizzle Networks, a Web-based app that currently allows two musicians in different locations to collaborate in real time. The thin, five-pound notebook has a 14-inch, 1600-by-900-pixel display; a dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor; 8GB of 1600MHz memory; Window 7 Premium; and a 750GB hard disk.

LL Cool J said that in the past if someone wanted to, for example, share a music track with him and let him record lyrics over it, the process required a lot of email traffic and delays as the music was sent back and forth.

During a demonstration in a crowded Sony Store after the press conference, LL Cool J was able to listen to a music track mixed by someone at the other end of an Internet connection and record his voice over the song as it played, all of which was mixed at the other end. Within seconds, the remote musician played back the track, with the new lyrics smoothly mixed in.

The key feature of My Connect Studio, said LL Cool J, is that the technology embedded in it solves all but the most microscopic latency problems, thus allowing voice or other input at one end of an Internet connection to synchronize perfectly with music being sent by the other.

Also included in the bundle is a pair of Sony MDR-V55/BR DJ-style headphones, a one-year subscription to My Connect Studio (including ten hours per month of session time), 25 exclusive tracks, and other features. The Windows application is currently limited to two collaborators, but LL Cool J, who is a co-founder of Boomdizzle Networks, said that number will increase soon, and added that tablet and Mac versions are in the works.

?We?ve embraced technology to bring musicians together,? said LL Cool J, who shared the stage with fellow rap legend Grandmaster Flash.

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