Editors' Blogs

Depending on whom you ask about the first day of AES 2009 here in New York, the size and density of the crowd was either a pleasant surprise or a bit of heavy-handed magic trickery. It is true, the aisles were crowded and there was a lot of hustle and bustle, but it's also true that the show floor was about half its usual size. If you wedge a smaller crowd into a much smaller space, yes, it looks busier.

That being said, on my first trip around the show floor and in the first few press conferences, there was some new gear on display that piqued my interest and which I'm looking forward to sharing with you all in the months to come, either through my own review experiences or those of my staffers. In no particular order:

Pete's Place, a relatively new company that gathers together interesting electronic signal processors from a variety of designers, was showing a very cool new set of 500-Series processors under the Electrodyne name, with some famous vintage circuit designs brought into the 21st century. A-Designs Audio had the prototype of a new compressor on display. Remember the Hammer? Here comes the Nail... (Thanks as always to Pete Montessi of A-Designs and Pete's Place.)

Solid State Logic had gear for all budgets on display, from the massive and gorgeous Duality II console to the very sexy little X-Desk, an affordable 8-channel mixer loaded with SSL goodness. We got a sneak peek at a new rack processor that has the summing brain of the SSL Matrix minus the control surface, with details to come later in the year (by NAMM). (Shout out to SSL's Dan Duffell.)

I swung by the Korg booth for a look at the new Wavedrum, a modernized and much more affordable version of the famous modeling percussion synthesizer, as well as some cool new import/export features on the AudioGate software that works with the company's DSD recorder line, and the beautiful and fantastic-sounding SV-1 digital piano. (Thanks to Jerry Kovarsky and Leslie Buttonow of Korg, and a long-distance shout out to Malcolm Doak, the SV-1's proud papa.)

Audio-Technica has two new ribbon mics, completely proprietary in-house designs made in the company's Japanese factory, as well as two new condenser mics, a stereo version of the AT4050 and a multipattern version of the AT4047. (Arigato gozaimasu to Gary Boss and Jeff Simcox of A-T for the cool new toys and the introduction to the designer of these mics.)

Speaking of "proudly made right here", the new CAD Equitek mic, made entirely in the USA, was on offer, and we'll be getting a pair of them for review very shortly. (Hello to Tony O'Keefe of CAD and thanks for the kind words about the magazine... we like it, too.)

On the computer-audio tip, Novation has a new line of keyboards based on the Nocturn controller, with quality keyboard actions and affordable pricing. They also showed the new Launchpad controller for Ableton Live, which was very new to most of the crowd but not to me... I've had one for over a week now and will have a sneak preview for everyone in the December issue, which will get to subscribers a scant few days after the Launchpad's official release date. (Special thanks to Gabe Whyel of American Music and Sound, and to the awesome gang at Novation/Focusrite: Giles Orford, Chris Mayes-Wright, and Matt The Launchpad Genius.)

Prodigy Engineering has a new 500-Series module called the Bella that is fantastically cool... I'll try to bring you a detailed description when I get a moment. (Thanks to Chae Ham for the information.)

I got to see Dave Derr of Empirical Labs, showing his new Mike-E preamp, and Dave introduced me to Gregory Scott of KuSh Audio, whose new Ubk is a riff on the Empirical Labs Fatso. Look for a review soon.

SoundToys has a great new pair of plug-ins for distortion and panning effects. Anything with a Punish Button is okay by me. (Thanks to Mitch Thomas for the quick look-see.)

Mackie debuted (officially) the Onyx-i FireWire mixers, which once again wasn't news to this reporter in particular... I've had an Onxy 820i for several weeks, and it's a great little mixer that will be getting a writeup very soon. Oh yeah, and it works with Pro Tools M-Powered.

Shure has two ribbon mics on display, originally designed and sold by Crowley and Tripp; We'll be getting one or both in for review soon. Also on the way from Shure, a new line of headphones, of which we'll be listening to two. Interestingly, the midline model is the flat and accurate one... the really expensive one with the ergonomic tweaks has a slightly curvy frequency response to goose certain frequency ranges and scoop others. An interesting sonic choice... I look forward to doing a review. (Shout out to Shure's Mike Lohman for the tour.)

Ever heard of Brainworx? Well, you should have. Dirk Ulrich's marvelous software house makes some truly amazing plug-ins, including a new version of the bx1 Modus Equalizer that has some auditioning and soloing tricks built in that make you wonder why anyone hasn't designed eq this way before. We're way overdue for a review.

Rod Densham of Sonnox was gracious as ever, showing me a bit of the new Restore plug-in suite, a set of three tools for removing pops, noise, and crackles from audio. They have a fascinating user interface and look to be as fun to work with as they are effective to use.

Oh, and that photo above? Phil Tennison of Mogami Cable was nice enough to show me a product that he said "was made by the Mogami folks because they wanted to do it right, and they went overboard": it's a 6-foot heavily shielded gold-connectored cable with impeccable audio quality... specifically for attaching an iPod to other audio equipment. The cables have 1/8" TRS on one end and terminate in another 1/8", a 1/4", a pair of RCA plugs, or even TT plugs for patchbays. For the studio that has everything...

Okay, it's late, my feet hurt, and I need to grab a few hours' sleep before doing this all again. The Javits Center apparently activated password protection on their wireless network sometime during the day, so I wasn't able to post this from the show floor, but hopefully a brief delay won't render my poetry too far behind the times. Look for more information tomorrow!