Summer NAMM '99 in Review: Software

By Jeffrye Glenn Tveraas
jeffrye@harmony-central.com

August 2, 1999

NAMM like every other word in our lexicon these days is an acronym. I have come to believe that it stands for "Nashville Accommodates Musical Madness" although you might hear differently from the board of directors. For both of you who may not know, NAMM is the biannual trade show where musical instrument manufacturers, developers, distributors, inventors, wholesalers and retailers gather together to buy, sell and witness the future of music technologies. And it's a great chance to see who brought the slinkiest models to "demonstrate" the attributes and benefits of their particular Strat "knock-off", D-28 "enhancement" or a bit of well cloaked reverse engineering available for both Mac and PC anytime now. So, is it a good time?

Damn straight it is. This is a wonderland for musicians of all ages and tastes, salesman roaming side-by-side with sellers, most of whom either perform well or hire fast guns to show off for them. The stars come out as well. I personally witnessed Al Kooper, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush and many others investigating all the new toys and getting caught up in the excitement with the rest of us. Hundreds of players all showing off their best licks and causing crowds to gather anywhere among the rows anytime at all. Yes, it's truly magical and a good time was had by all. Although Summer NAMM doesn't traditionally resonate with the anticipation of quantum advancements in technology like the winter version, the overall mood was one of playful optimism on most of the faces I saw during my three day sojourn through the miles of aisles. A schmoozefest of unbridled proportions.

This year they put like-minded companies together in the same area when they could and this was a good thing. For example most of the musical computer software developers were grouped together out of the mainstream where I could hop from booth to booth to interview the company presidents and engineers about their new and improved stuff without having to hear the din of hundreds of electric and acoustic guitars and amps, keyboards, percussion, PA's and DJ mixers all vying for your aural attention in the same room at the same time. And it made keeping an eye on your closest competitor pretty easy as well.

And I was pleasantly surprised at just how well a journalist from Harmony Central dot com was received across the board. I wasn't sure how aware all these mainstream folk would be about our on-line efforts but it was made quite clear that HC is a very popular spot and I was treated with courtesy and respect from everyone I talked with. What a nice change - I could get used to that!

Today I'm kicking off my recap on the latest and greatest, mostly from the hi-tech sector - computer software and peripherals, traditional and soft synths and other interesting goodies I happened to run across during my walkabout. There is some great stuff out there already and it's going to get even better very soon. I've got news from Opcode, Koblo, Midiman, Sonic Foundry, TC Works, Waves, Soundscape, Alesis, Korg, Roland, Yamaha, and a host of others so stay tuned. And start saving your sheckels, you're gonna want all you can scrounge up in order to purchase these goodies for yourself.

Fresh from a dawns early flight from hometown Austin to Nashville, shuttle to the fabulously retro Union Station Hotel, and a 6 block walk in 98 degree heat to the Convention center, I first encountered the high-tech wing of the show so I set about gavotting from booth to booth seeing what there was to see and doing my best to get recognized by wearing the official Harmony Central polo shirt. So here's the birds-eye lowdown on this caper...

First I walked to the back to see who was stuck in the cheap seats and there all by his lonesome was Max from Koblo Software (www.koblo.com). He was busy re-configuring his rented Macintosh G3 tower to enable his software to run more efficiently. After streamlining his extension manager and rebooting he opened up his suite of software synthesizers and proceeded to give me the full tour. Here's what he showed me.

The Stella9000 is their top-line polyphonic software sampler optimized for pads and strings - similar to several other softsynths I've reviewed here with a very hip interface and full OMS support (as do all the others). Look for a full review on this here at Harmony Central soon. The Gamma9000 is a robust software drum machine based on a subset of the Stella9000 engine. The Vibra9000 is an interesting monophonic software synthesizer, very green - very very alive and great for sound design and SFX. The Vibra6000 is the smaller model of the Vibra series of software synthesizers, kind of a light version. Simple and easy to use, but still with that same unmistakable sound.


(Click either image for a close-up)

The Vibra1000 is the smallest of their software synthesizers. What a cool little toy! And it's yours for free. You can download it from their web site, along with demos of all the other packages and manuals as well (.pdf). Very hip. Their basic application engine Tokyo must be installed before any Koblo softsynth can be installed and run, so make sure you get that too. Go give them a try, they made a great first impression, and the price is right.

Spark! Master Window
(Click for a larger image)

Then it was on to the TC Works (www.tcworks.de) booth where I got a demo on their new real-time digital audio editor for the MacOS called "Spark!". This is great! It's a full sample-level editor complete with a programmable FX chain and full mastering controls that supports 24 bit/96k sample rate right to your CD burner with the included Adaptec "Toast Pro" application. It supports AIFF, SDII, WAV, QuickTime and RAW files, ASIO and Direct I/O and VST plug-ins. There's a full mastering section with 4 parallel streams of independent processing with flexible routing, native compression and limiting, reverb, delay, filters and EQ. Full sampler support, real-time and off-line time stretch and pitch correction. This is massive, a great creation and finishing station for your digital recordings.

Channel Strip
(Click for a larger image)

Next it was Waves (www.waves.com), where they've rebundled their plug-ins in several different complimentary combinations and making them better values all around. The Native Gold Bundle has everything for either Windows or Mac non-TDM applications including their Renaissance EQ and compressor, MaxxBass, Q10, L1 Ultramaximizer, C1, S1 stereo imager, De-Esser, Truverb (one of the best 'verb plug-ins I've heard), UltraPitch, Supertap, Metaflanger, MondoMod (a wild modulation effector) and more for a price far less than getting them separately. Their TDM bundles for all you Pro Tools owners out there have been upgraded too. Life just keeps getting better.

Speaking of Pro Tools, Metric Halo Laboratories (www.mhlabs.com) was showing two new TDM plug-ins that really rocked. First is the Channel Strip, a complete audio processing section from a console that includes input gain and trim, polarity invert, expander/gate and compressor with side-chain filter, 6-band fully parametric EQ, adjustable 255 sample delay, output gain/trim and high resolution metering for each processing block. And they made it to use as little DSP power as possible so even a basic ProTools setup can run one for just about every channel you've got with DSP power left over. Very cool. And their Spectrafoo metering package with hi-speed hi-resolution level and spectral analysis metering should be checked out by any high end or mastering studio for its accurate and flexible metering and phase correllation displays.