Waves announced Horizon, a premium collection of over 50 plug-ins. Available in Feb $5750 Native, $9500 TDM.

At NAMM, Focusrite announced the Octapre MKII Dynamic ($699), an audio interface with a Focusrite pre and compressor on each channel.

The Bridge lets you use Scratch Live from within Ableton Live. It also lets you open ALS files in Scratch Live.

Mackie is showing the new Onyx 1640i at their morning press conference, now with Digidesign-approved Pro Tools compatibility.

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Just back from the press event for the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. The bus is a nonprofit mobile studio that travels the country 10 months out of the year to provide free hands-on music and video education to students to help them learn to play music, write songs, and produce audio and video projects. Here are some photo highlights from the presentation, which featured Yoko Ono Lennon, Jackson Browne and Quincy Jones, as well as performances by students from the Fernando Pullum Performing Arts High School:

Having recently inherited the title of Managing Editor for EM, I’ve come to NAMM to get an education in the business. I’m here in Anaheim at the Penton booth (5715 if you want to stop by!) waiting for the floor to open. So far it’s been overwhelming but interesting (not to mention loud).

I made it to the Beakfast of Champions this morning to see NAMM President/CEO Joe Lamond talk with guests about the industry–particularly how 2010 can only be better than 2009.

His celebrity guest was Yoko Ono, who of course talked about the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus and the importance of music education. It would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday this year, and she’ll be holding a press conference at the Wanna Play? stage at 1:30 today, where they’ll also feature plenty of performances through Sunday. All day Saturday will be the NAMM School Jam USA.

We’ve moved! Go to blog.emusician.com/robairreport to keep up with Gino’s twice-monthly columns.