12th Australian Flute Convention Binary Designs was invited to attend the 12th Australian Flute Convention, held from the 24th to 28th March at the beautiful Novotel Pacific Bay Resort at Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales Central Coast. We presented a music technology session on each of the 5 days of the conference, with a separate product highlighted on each day. products included the Superscope series of CD players/burners, My Voice software, Music Pad Pro digital music stand, SmartMusic Studio complete practice system, and Finale and Sibelius notation software. We showcased the Superscope PSD300, a portable CD player and burner with the ability to change the tempo of a song without affecting the key, or change key without changing tempo, using ordinary audio CD's. This makes it the ideal practice and rehearsal tool, coupled with the fact that you can then burn the altered track directly to CD. We also showed its 'Vocal Reduction' feature, which reduces the solo line in many commercial recordings. Volunteers got the chance to record themselves directly to CD by playing along with CD backing tracks. Everyone was very impressed with the quality of the resulting audio mix, and we explained how we had done many live concert recordings using little more than the basic Superscope unit. We also showed 'My Voice', an inexpensive software program which allows you to record from a microphone directly into your computer, as well as create backing tracks by ripping songs from a CD then using voice reduction to make a rehearsal track similar to what the Superscope does in its hardware. We spent some time showcasing 'SmartMusic Studio' (the complete practice system), and had members of the audience select their favourite pieces to play along with its 'Intelligent Accompanist'. All were impressed with range and quality of the accompaniments in its extensive library. The interactive 'Assessment' feature in the Exercises was particularly popular with teachers, and we explained how this is now part of the Finale notation package where it is known as 'FPA' (Finale Performance Assessment). The workshops were rounded off with an overview of music notation software, with the major software contenders, Sibelius and Finale, demonstrated and compared. With each package having its own unique features, and both able to produce professional scores with ease, it is sometimes difficult to choose one over the other. Our advice is always to give both a test drive using the tasks you commonly perform, and take into account your need to share scores with your associates, students and publishers. (Our free demo CD was given out to all attendees, and it included demo versions of both Finale and Sibelius)