New purchases (Pro tools 9!) + Competition time!

Hey everyone, hope your year has been getting off to a good start! Mine has been going well overall, it was my birthday on the 17th, and I had a nice quiet evening with my family to celebrate it. I got lots of CD's that I wanted, some nice new clothes etc. We went to see the film '127 hours' at the cinema - not the best choice for celebrating my birthday! It was an incredibly moving, superbly acted, life affirming, highly emotional film - we all left the cinema feeling a bit 'woah!' I'm really glad I saw it though, and I recommend checking it out :)

I bought Pro Tools 9 recently (the crossgrade option + educational discount meant I could afford it), and that arrived on my birthday, which was cool. As Pro Tools 9 is non-hardware specific (meaning you can now use any audio interface with it!) it meant I was no longer limited by my mbox 2 and DIGI 001 setup (all I could afford with my budget), and was able to splash out on a new Echo Layla 3G interface! It's a great 16 in 16 out unit, with MIDI I/O, 2 nice mic pre's and great converters. Here are some pictures:

All setup and ready to go!

Look at the pretty box!

So far it's working great on my Windows XP Quad core PC setup :) Was a pain though as now you have to buy an iLok in order to run the software, so I had to shell out £31 for what is essentially a USB stick with probably around 1meg of flash memory on it. Buying software and then being told you have to pay more money so they know you paid for it in the first place - well, it's no wonder people pirate! Oh well, it works, that's the main thing!

Here's a picture of the Pro Tools 9 package, plus the iLok booklet thing (would show the iLok itself, but it's already in the back of my computer), as well as a new mullard tube I bought for my Art Pro MPA II preamp recently:

Pretty things!

 Also, check out my unboxing youtube video of Pro Tools 9 here:

Another thing that arrived on my birthday was my new flyers (2500 of them!) - A6 ones this time, double sided, as I felt that made more sense for people to take over A5 single sided ones. They advertise my album on the front, and have space for listing my gigs on the back (as well as advertising my place on the Glastonbudget 2011 bill!) They were designed by myself, and printed by a company called Seren Print (www.serenprint.co.uk , I recommend buying off ebay from them though, as I did, it's a lot easier.)
Here's a picture of the final product:

Lastly, here's a picture of some (over 40!) of the CD's I have bought/ had bought for me (as birthday/Christmas presents) in the past two months or so. I have a little prize (a signed copy of my album!) for whoever can name them all! Leave your answers here with an email address so I can contact you, or just email me @ contact@marcreeves.co.uk

Can you name them all?

Oh - one last thing, check out some reviews of my album Perfectly Fine here:

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Nottingham Evening Post