MusikMesse '98 Picture Book

The Messe is a massive, sprawling complex of buildings connected with walkways. It's so big (10 different halls and 25 floors total) that they run their own system of shuttle buses to help people get around easily. One of the hallways was so long that you couldn't see one end from the other! At least they had some moving walkways for much of the distance. Unlike NAMM, MusikMesse is open to the public (for two of the five days at least) so it gets quite crowded compared to the NAMM shows.

MusikMesse is packed with all sorts of performances. Some of them are partly intended as real life product demonstrations, and others are purely entertainment. Some performances take place at an exhibitor's booth, but the Messe also provides plenty of dedicated performance areas that are less restrictive. To the left is a picture of a concert in the Galleria portion of the Messe, which resembles a giant greenhouse. It's usually standing room only, so you don't get much of a break from walking the floors.

Performances held at a booth in the convention halls are a little harder since there are usually volume restrictions on the show floor to keep things down to a dull roar. One method for coping with this restriction is to have a completely closed off and acoustically sealed room for performance. Another technique, employed here at the Laney booth, is to have a bank of amplified headphones, which helps to block out sound from other booths. Of course you can combine these two techniques so the people passing outside a performance room can easily listen in.

This year at Steinberg's booth, they were showing how Cubase VST was used to remix some of the Backstreet Boys' songs. All the remixing work was done completely on a computer. Here is one of the engineers showing some of the PlugIns they used and explaining how they were applied. We would have recorded the presentation for you, but we would have been violating a few copyrights in the process and probably received a nice, friendly letter from a lawyer.

Marshall's presence at MusikMesse dwarfs that at the NAMM conventions in the United States. There are plenty of amps on display, and the latest Dual and Triple Super Lead amps were set up with guitars so you could plug in and test them out. Marshall's booth also included a performance room where bands would perform with some of the Marshall products.

That's all for this year's MusikMesse. Summer NAMM will be upon us soon enough, and we'll be back in July with plenty more product news, presentations, and reports.