Editors' Blogs

Well, the NAMM Show in Anaheim is off to a flying start, and we've spent the day asking questions and shaking hands and learning about the new products we hope to feature in the magazine in the coming months. The overall mood at the show was one of cautious optimism, but of optimism nonetheless. Many companies were reporting significant improvements in business since the depressing early and middle months of 2009, and a lot of people voiced the opinion that the slow climb up out of the doldrums had definitely begun. 

The show itself was busy today, with some changes on the show floor that led to what many felt was an overall improved layout. Perhaps the biggest and most significant change was in the Arena, the sports stadium at one end of the Convention Center where the Anaheim Mighty Ducks play hockey. Until last year, the Arena was a sort of purgatory for companies showing DJ and lighting equipment; it was noisy, chaotic, had horrid acoustics that multiplied the clamor of competing booths, and was far enough out of the way of the rest of the show that vendors there tended to feel quite isolated. This year, Roland Corporation took over the entire Arena and converted it into a showcase for the many divisions of musical instruments, audio equipment, computer music and video devices, and so forth that come under the Roland umbrella. The effect on that end of the Convention Center was remarkable; acting like an "anchor store" in a mall, the Roland presence drew a large crowd down that way, greatly increasing foot traffic and revitalizing a part of the NAMM Show that's traditionally been rather quiet. Roland was showing a variety of new instruments, and attracted a lot of attention with portable amplification systems that can actually run off AA batteries with good volume and clarity; the Roland Battery Band, a 6-piece ensemble with keyboards, electronic drums, guitar, and vocals, was setting up and playing without an AC outlet in sight, and sounding pretty darn good.

Peavey announced a partnership with Muse Research to market the MuseBox, a portable soft synth engine that can be set up and played like any other musical instrument.

Ableton and Serato announced The Bridge, a two-way communication system that allows the two companies' products to control one another; scratching and stuttering Ableton Live clips with a turntable is just the most obvious application.

Sanyo is a new face at NAMM; they had three new ultraminiature digital field recorders, the smallest of which had a stereo mic array in a package significantly smaller than an iPod nano. 

PreSonus was showing version 1.1 of Studio One Pro; at the company's demo, the software was used by a musical group to track a song, master it, turn it into an uploadable format, and publish it to the Internet... all in the space of 20 minutes.

Focusrite has a new OctoPre II 8-channel preamp rack, this one with built-in dynamics control on every channel. Also at the American Music & Sound booth, a new line of very affordable Allen & Heath ZED mixers, with quality digital effects and USB hookups.

There's a new mic at Earthworks called the SR40, a cardioid small-condenser offering with a 40 kHz bandwidth, and we also got a look the self-contained PianoMic miking system. 

TC Electronic has added improved features to its line of guitar harmonizer and vocal effects pedals, and showed the Impact Twin, a high-quality audio interface.

Samson was showing the Q3 video recorder with built-in high-quality stereo mic, and a new line of guitar effects pedals with a vastly improved user interface, new computer integration (including editing software), and a variety of new sound models.

MV Pro Audio is now distributing the products of Australian gear maker SM Pro Audio, which includes a wide variety of audio processors, studio tools, and handy interfaces; most picturesque of the many products new to the show is the Jackaroo, a gigantic rackmount cable and audio testing kit which can check and diagnose problems on just about any kind of cable you can think of, and route signals between them, not to mention providing phantom power, DC for guitar effects, and a built-in test speaker. Want to route audio from a banana jack to a Speakon? Now you can.

Down in Hall E, where smaller firms, newcomers, and a few companies whose main presence at trade shows tends to be at AES all hang out, there were a ton of new products at the Analogue Haven booth, mainly handmade synthesis and signal processing gear from tiny firms like MakeNoise, Malekko, Harvestman, TipTop, Doepfer, LiveWire, Mungo, and of course the masters of nasty, Metasonix. (The René matrix sequence controller in the photo above is by MakeNoise.)

One interesting trend this year was how many more firms were showing brand new keyboards. I'll talk about these throughout my reports, but today's honorable mentions go to the new Nord Electro 3, which adds Mellotron and Chamberlin sounds; the Kurzweil PC3K, an 88-key piano and performance controller with an enormous library of internal sounds and the ability to import samples in RAM; a prototype Digital Mellotron stacked atop the real thing at the Big City Music booth; a new keyboard from Dave Smith Instruments, essentially a Mopho monophonic synth with a 32-note keyboard attached; the lovely new Taurus bass pedals from Moog; and a number of new Roland keyboards, including a gorgeous classical organ and a new 76-key combo keyboard with organ, piano, and other sounds galore.

There's a real spirit of get-up-and-go at this show; I got stopped in the hallway by someone showing me a prototype of a new product and asking me if I'd review it for RECORDING. Why not, I replied. That may be the byword of this year's NAMM: Why not.

More tomorrow... stay tuned.