Canadian company Cignias has announced an interesting product in the home audio/iPhone category. It's called the MusicNAO and it allows you to wirelessly control a docked iPod with an iPhone or iPod touch. It also lets you play music wirelessly to the dock from an iPhone or iPod touch. The music streams using the stereo Bluetooth capability of your iPhone or second generation iPod touch.

The base unit, which is a bit reminiscent of the Bose product, has 40 watts of output power, contains equalization circuitry, and uses 4" speakers. You can skip music, select music, and control the volume remotely. If you have an iPod plugged in, you can view and select playlists, artists and genres from your iPhone or iPod touch.

The apps for your iPhone or iPod touch are available free from the iTunes app store [iTunes link]. The control connections are through Wi-Fi, while the music streams through Bluetooth.

The unit also has an auxiliary input for plugging in another audio source. Hey, anyone still have cassettes?

The MusicNAO is shipping December 1, with an introductory price of U.S. $249.00 until November 30, then it's $299.00. The prices are the same in Canada. I haven't heard the device, so I can't give testimony to the audio quality.

I do think the MusicNAO is a unique twist on portable music integration with Apple products. The system also supports Blackberry cellphones that have a stereo streaming feature.

Here at TUAW, we've not given Apple's Logic Studio a great deal of coverage recently. In particular, back in July 2009, Apple released its latest iteration of the popular music production software, Logic Pro 9 (alongside the upgrade to all its various virtual studio components too), and not much has been mentioned about it since.

With Pro Tools' much vamped version 8 released at the beginning of 2009, and, more recently, the introduction of Reason's new DAW Record (not to mention all the other powerful DAW's out there), we thought it was high time to take a good look at the new features of Apple's flagship music production solution.

Since Logic Studio boasts over 200 new features, and takes a one-size-fits-all approach (basically everyone will find something different to take away from this enormous package), we're not going to do a comprehensive review (well, not at this stage anyway). Instead, we'd love to hear from you (sitting in your dark studio making funny noises and dreaming of Grammy's) to share with us how these new features are working out in the real world.

What's that awesome new feature you keep on going back to? What's the most annoying problem that disrupts your work flow? From the tones of 'Pedalboard' and 'Amp Designer' to being a master of time with 'Flex Time,' how is it all working out for you?

Apple describes Logic Studio to be "...a complete set of professional applications that lets you write, record, edit, mix and perform. It's also the largest collection of modelled instruments, sampler instruments, effect plug-ins, and audio loops ever put in a single box. So it's easy to get amazing sounds and amazing-sounding recordings. Now you can tackle any stage of your project yourself - without losing your inspiration along the way. " Do you agree with this statement?

If Logic 9 isn't your DAW of choice, or you haven't yet upgraded, now's your chance to tell the world why your DAW is genuinely better. Or why you're sticking to your Logic 8 guns because you think Logic 9 (Studio) isn't worth the upgrade. This isn't a time to gloat and sneer (I'm looking at you Pro Tools people in the corner, you're always up for a fight!!!), but rather to get some genuine conversation going on what really works and what doesn't on our beloved Mac platform.

In the future we're aiming to do a series on the various components of Logic Studio. To get to grips with the nitty gritty of what each application has to offer. If you work professionally, and rather closely, with one of these apps then let us know, we'd love to hear from you.

Sonos, best known for wireless music systems that link to your iTunes library and internet services like Pandora, Rhapsody and Napster, is offering a one piece, 5 speaker system that can be placed in any room. It's called the Zone Player S5 and it's US $399 direct from Sonos or dealers around the country.

Sonos shipped me a review system to try for 30 days, and I thought the sound was great. I already had a mutli-room Sonos system so adding the new portable player was just a matter of plugging it into AC power and pressing two buttons on the S5.

If you don't already have a Sonos system, you have to plug your unit into a router to connect to your music library and the internet. If that doesn't work in your home layout, you can buy what Sonos calls a Zone Bridge (US $99) that plugs into your router and lets the S5 make a wireless connection. Once that basic pairing is made, you can add as many other Sonos music systems as you like, all connecting over a wireless mesh network.

The system sounds quite good, given the limits of the small desktop-friendly size (8.5 x 14.4 x 4.8 inches). There are 5 speakers, two tweeters, two 3" mid-range drivers, and one 3.5" woofer all driven by individual amplifiers. The woofer is a ducted port design and the rear port serves double duty as a carrying handle.

This is the kind of thing that probably should have been done a long time ago, but Macworld is reporting that Apple has launched iTunes Preview, a page that appears when you click an iTunes link (like this one) and your browser sends you over to iTunes. Previously, you just got that placeholder page that said "One Moment Please" and asked if you wanted to open the link in an external application, but with iTunes Preview, you get a nicely laid out page with information and reviews (and your browser still opens up the iTunes store).

Currently it only seems to work with music -- movies and television only get a small thumbnail, and applications get the same old gray page. But that'll probably change before long -- it's much smoother to see what you're clicking through to, and of course there's the added bonus for people who don't actually have iTunes installed. As MacWorld points out, there are actually no "preview" buttons on the page -- you can't listen to music there, only click through to the iTunes store. But like I said, it's better than a blank window and a browser popup asking for your permission. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see this grow a lot more in the future.

If you are a sometime PC user you probably know about Orb, a multimedia sharing tool that allows you to access your media from anywhere you have an internet connection and a browser. Now, Orb has come to the Mac and it's got great possibilities -- but it's a mixed bag in terms of reliability.

You can download Orb for free, and set up a no-cost account. The software will index your iPhoto libraries, as well as your iTunes library, both audio and video.

You can then log into your Orb account on any other computer, fire up a browser, and play your media files. Orb has also had an iPhone app that logs you in and gets your media as well. It's been available for a long time, but only would work with a PC-based host. Now your Mac is accessible too.

Orb still lacks a few features you can get on the PC version. One big one is it won't talk to a TV tuner, so you can't look at live video from home on another computer. I expect this will be coming in short order. You can share media with others from the Orb website. They will need a free account, but they can watch a movie or listen to music or view photos just as you do.

In a limited run of 30,000 units, Apple Corps Ltd. will be releasing the Beatles' remastered catalog for your consumption in a green apple USB device. Unfortunately, I didn't say anything about iTunes in that sentence... It looks like the Apples still can't play nice together, so we're left to dream that one day the Beatles collection will make it to the big download cloud in the sky.

Our sister site, Engadget, reports that these drives are available for pre-order now but will not ship until December 7th in the UK and December 8th in the US for $279.99. The 16GB USB drive will include the Beatles' 14 stereo tracks in FLAC (for the audiophiles in the audience) as well as the rest of their collection in 320 Kbps MP3s. The drive will also include 13 documentaries about the studio albums, expanded liner notes, re-touched album art, and several rare photos.

What does all of this mean? The Beatles' record company basically created a massive iTunes LP without iTunes. According to The Beatles' website, there's a special Flash interface for consumer interaction with the extra content. Some would say that this is just another stepping stone in the road to online distribution... while that may be true, I'm getting tired of all the back-and-forth. I own a good majority of the Beatles albums on CD and have already ripped them into iTunes. I expect that most anyone who really wants these in their iTunes library has already gone through the motions to accomplish that. I could pay the $280 for a USB drive, or buy all of the CDs from Amazon.com for half that price and spend several hours putting them on my computer. Sure, sure, I'm not getting the officially remastered files from the Beatles themselves... but I'm willing to make that sacrifice. Even still, this may be the perfect Holiday gift for the Beatles fanatic in your household. (Honey, I don't want one.)

In an attempt to increase movie sales, Apple is pushing out more alternative content on the iTunes Store. Today, they've spruced up their "Music Movies" library and added a landing page to promote upcoming releases. Music Movies are music-themed movies, concerts and documentaries that generally feature exclusive content and behind-the-scenes footage.

While the selection is currently limited, Apple does offer a few movies that are not available anywhere else, such as an exclusive Kings of Leon concert DVD among other selections such as U2's "Rattle and Hum" and "John Lennon Imagine". In addition to the added content, a prominent landing page has been created that is dedicated to this genre of film.

Apple also plans to negotiate early access to music-themed movies and is trying to make the content available for download long before it is available in stores.

Here in the UK, it's getting pretty chilly on the willy compared to a month ago, or so. The warm memories of the summer are slowly dwindling to the reality of earlier, darker evenings (the clocks have just gone forward) as well as tentative first visits from our old friend Jack Frost. Generally speaking, the cold grasp of winter is steadily fastening on us (or not).

But we are blessed with a few heart warming occasions over the winter season (Christmas, New Years Eve etc) that make the cold, well, a little less nippy on the bone. One of these such occasions is, of course, Guy Fawkes night (Remember remember the 5th of November...) And, to me, that means one thing, HOUSE PARTY! And what does a great house party need? An authentic DJ.

So when I heard my main man Dan the DJ couldn't make the party (or at the least lend me his decks) I turned to the next best thing, Sonorasaurus - the first complete deejay setup for the iPhone / iPod Touch.

At this point you may be wondering what a DJ app has to do with 'Count The Beats', or, in fact making music on an Apple platform, but it quite literally has everything to do with it. Come on, we all know that deejays are real musicians too, right?

The Tap Tap Revenge empire just became more credible... at least to the Metallica fans out there. Metallica Revenge [iTunes Link] sells for $4.99, but it is not out to make lots of money -- not according to the Associated Press interview with the band's drummer, Lars Ulrich. Ulrich explains that the application itself is really just for fun and that "it's one more thing that'll keep me semi-cool in my kids' eyes for another six months until the next thing comes out."

But we think that this is a little bit more than just a cool marketing scheme... it actually has some brand new features never before seen in a Tap Tap Revenge game. It's the first game in the archive to include a Bluetooth Battle mode. In this mode, two devices connect over Bluetooth to play note for note against each other while obtaining power ups that you can toss at your opponent to distract them and move ahead in points.

Tapulous touts this game as the most difficult Tap Tap Revenge yet. It has a Hard mode with four rails in landscape and an Extreme mode with five rails in landscape. There has never been a Tap Tap Revenge game with five rails. I'm scared to even try it.

The band has also created a contest for those of us who purchase this application. You can win everything from cool Metallica gear to the grand prize of a trip to meet and greet Metallica at a show in Vegas on December 5th.

Here's the track list:

• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Fuel
• King Nothing
• Sad But True
• Some Kind of Monster
• Enter Sandman
• One
• Seek & Destroy
• All Nightmare Long
• Master of Puppets

In the universal scheme of things, it's not a big thing, but it's a welcome update. Apple has announced a new Apple Remote that has aluminum niceness and works with the iPhone, iPods with the Universal Dock, and iMacs introduced since 2005 that have a built-in infrared receiver.

According to Apple, the remote "gives you total command of your music, photos, videos, and DVDs from anywhere in the room. It works with Front Row to make accessing the digital content on your Mac as simple as navigating your iPod."

On an iPod or iPhone connected to a dock with IR you can "experience your songs, slideshows, and more from across the room. Plug your iPod into the Universal Dock and choose a playlist, slideshow, or video. Then sit back, relax, and enjoy. Ready to move on to the next song? No need to get up. Just press the Next button on the Apple Remote. Getting a call on your iPhone? Press Pause, then pick up where you left off."

It's a spiffy new design, with darker buttons instead of the all-white older model. Might make it easier to use when fumbling in the dark.

The remote will sell for U.S. $19.99 and is shipping in 2-4 weeks.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Shazam is one of the first apps I actually used in context on the iPhone, and while we haven't heard much about the app since it debuted way back in the early days of the App Store, apparently the company itself has been blowing up, thanks to the free app. They've picked up a nice round of investment from venture capitalists, and the service itself now boasts over 50 million users (by comparison, Last.fm claims only 30 million, but they've gotten way more press than Shazam's service, including recent integration on Xbox Live). That's a heck of an achievement, and Apple is a huge part of it -- not only did Shazam make a big splash on their iPhone app, but they say that Apple actually helped connect the VCs and the company together. That's an interesting peek behind the scenes at what Apple is doing for one of the App Store's oldest and most popular free apps.

As for why Shazam is so popular, the VCs say they can see the platform as a "springboard" for selling music, advertising, and a few other commodities. Currently Shazam's free app only lets you tag five songs a month (a limit I never hit and thus didn't know about, even though I would say that I do use the app regularly), but they're planning a paid version that will allow unlimited identification of songs through the iPhone's microphone. I don't know how well that will sell (it's hard to believe that people will pay $5 for a service they are already using for free, though perhaps I'm underestimating the amount of music that people want to "tag"), but it's clear that Shazam is a company that is making the absolute best of having an extremely popular free app on the App Store.

The good news is that EA has released Rock Band for the iPhone and iPod touch, and you can pick it up from the App Store right now. The bad news is that it seems like a pretty tough sell -- despite the relatively high price tag (Tap Tap Revenge 3, a similar music game, is currently 99 cents and headed for free), there's not much new here.

Sure, there is four-device Bluetooth multiplayer, and that's something that Tapulous' game has never had. But other than that, it seems like this is basically EA's cash in on the tapping concept -- the draw of Rock Band has been getting together with your friends and jamming out the hits on those fake instruments, and touching a button-less screen by yourself doesn't have the same effect. Singing is included, but you're still just tapping out notes for that -- it seems like they missed a lot of potential fun there. And even some of the fun things from the console version like the drum fills for overdrive and the character avatars are missing here.

If you don't like the 20 songs included with the game, you can download others at 50 cents (in two-song packs for a buck each), but most people probably shouldn't even bother at that price -- just stick with Tapulous' game unless you really love Rock Band and its aesthetics (even then, I haven't seen my much-beloved Harmonix mentioned anywhere with this port, so I doubt they're even involved. Update: They are listed on the game's splash screen, however, according to our readers).

Even if you want to try this one, wait for the inevitable price drop -- if the game really lived up to its name as the premiere music experience you'll find on the consoles, it might be worth it, but all indications are, unfortunately, that it doesn't.

Sonos has announced a portable wireless music system that uses an iPhone or iPod touch for a controller. The Zone Player S5 is a one piece, 5 speaker music player that can access your iTunes library or any internet radio station, as well as Napster, Rhapsody, Pandora, last.fm or Sirius if you have the required subscriptions.

The physical unit has only volume controls and a mute button. Like other Sonos products, the S5 needs a wired router connection or a Zone Bridge unit, which is a U.S. $99.00 box that plugs into your router and then allows the S5 to be wireless anywhere in the house. You can add additional S5 units that only need AC power to work.

The S5 looks a bit like the Bose audio systems that dock with the iPhone. The difference with the Sonos unit is you keep the iPhone with you, and the S5 gets your music from iTunes.

The S5 will be available later this month for $399.00. If you already have a Sonos system in your home or office, or are just getting started with multi-room music, this system is worth checking out.

Of course Apple also provides solutions to stream iTunes with the Airport Express Air Tunes hardware/software. Apple also offers Remote, [iTunes link] a free app to control Airport Express or an Apple TV from your iPhone and iPod touch. Logitech also offers the Squeezebox family of wireless music products, and there are other good solutions as well.

Choice. It's a good thing.

Within days of the iTunes 9 and iTunes LP announcement, people had already thoroughly hacked apart the iTunes LP format only to discover it was just a clever combination of images, HTML, CSS and Javascript. Because any web developer could create an iTunes LP, it seemed strange that indie labels were left out in the cold, with LPs having a high cost of entry and no distribution of their LPs on the iTunes Store.

We do have a report this morning of Apple announcing that they'll be opening up the LP format, but a few inventive artists appear to have leapfrogged that step towards glasnost. It was only a matter of time before someone starting offering iTunes LPs in other ways, and iTunesLP.net is that someone. They're already offering up Disney's Fantasia in the iTunes LP format, but no music is included.

Installing the LP is as easy and double-clicking the downloaded file, but for the music to play properly it must be correctly tagged and named, and of course you need a legitimate way to get the music in question. Even though the site only offers 1 LP currently, it has plenty of tutorials and directions on how to create and distribute your own.

As long as no copyright laws are being broken, I think creating and distributing these LPs is a great idea. It offers users the chance to create visually stunning LPs for older music that the labels wouldn't bother with, and it offers indie labels the chance to get iTunes LPs out there, even if they're not yet available directly in the iTunes Store. With Apple's new policy towards opening up the LP format, this may be a brief opportunity for the workaround, but it's nice to see.

If you've ever played Gears of War 2 (who hasn't), or watched Desperate Housewives (we know you secretly love Mrs Van De Kamp), then chances are you've heard music composed by Pieter A. Schlosser from PaaxMusic in Los Angeles.

Pieter's been in the music business for the last five years working on a whole lot of tunes for film, TV and gaming. From CSI New York to composing in "French" for The Sims 3, he's got a wealth of experience in this field and, must be mentioned, he's an avid reader of TUAW too.

When Pieter got in touch with us regarding our 'Count The Beats' series, and sent us the above picture of his studio, suffice to say that the TUAW offices descended into a flurry of excitement (papers flying in the air and everything). What can we say, we love a picture of an inspiring setup.

The logical next step was to sit down with Pieter and talk shop. Read on to find out how the complexities of this mighty setup come together, how the iPhone works as a part of the composing journey, a little bit on DAWs, the "dream upgrade" and how to get the job done when all else is failing.

A word of warning, there is some serious music tech geekery ahead. If in doubt, just pretend that it all makes sense and slowly nod your head, then move onto the next paragraph. That's what most of us do anyway!