I happened past the Ion booth while I was at CES, and was pretty impressed with some of the new gadgets and goodies they had on display this year. Granted you had to fight to get the attention of an ION representative at the booth, and I didn’t bother fighting that fight, but their gear spoke for itself. Some of ION’s new releases include some vintage-looking turntables that can record vinyl directly to CD or to you computer via USB, and some more updated, modern looking turntables (like the one above) that do similar things.
ION made its name by being one of the first companies to make USB turntables and USB cassette players to help people get their old analog media into a digital format that’s inevitably more portable and will last longer. (when all those cassettes degrade, you’ll have those old mix tapes your old sweetheart gave you digitally on your computer, and hopefully backed up!)
ION brought some new products to the table this year though, including the Discover Keyboard and Discover iType, both keyboards for your iPod Touch or your iPhone – the former a music keyboard that you just dock your iPod Touch or iPhone to and use it to make music, and the latter an actual QWERTY keyboard that you can dock your iPod Touch or iPhone to and it’ll let you type out e-mails, text messages, notes, and all in all type on the phone without having to use the on-board keyboard.
In the music vein, The Discover DJ is a full set of mini-turntables with an integrated mixer that plugs right into your Mac or PC via USB and lets you mix your music collection on the go with a tiny pro-style setup. I saw a lot of products like this at CES this year – mini DJ setups that allow you to drop tunes, beatmatch, and get some professional mixing and effects using the music collection on your laptop – all in a package that you could slip in a laptop bag. Eventually, performance DJs won’t have to carry around large mixers or CD mixing gear. A couple of iPods, a laptop, and a tiny set of decks like the Discover DJ, and you’re set. Personally, I’m looking forward to it – I just need an ION turntable to rip all of my vinyl to mp3, and I’m on board!
Check out all of ION’s CES product releases below: