Winter NAMM Show Report Written by Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com) Anaheim, California - January 18-21, 1996 The annual winter NAMM show (they've stopped calling it the rather stuffy Winter Market) is one of the worlds great toy shows for musicians and engineer. It's held in the vast Anaheim conventions center, and representatives of music manufacturers and others associated with the music industry come from all over the world to kick tires and show their wares. It's a great time, but hard on the feet, and the food is too expensive. The first day at the NAMM show is always pretty scattered for me. It's the day I check out the lay of the land, see who's there, and try to decide what I'm going to spend the next 3 days looking at. I don't know where the day went, but all too soon they were turning out the lights on us. Here's a scattering of scenes from Day 1. I spent quite a bit of time talking with Bret Costin at Midiman about products, the state of the music and computer industries, and life in general. He's a long time MIDILinker and now their chief engineer. They've been busy this year working on hardware products that support other people's software as well as a few innovations of their own. First, there's a new ISA bus PC MIDI interface in the WinMan series, the 4x4/S, with 4 MIDI ports in and out, plus SMPTE sync. The 4 inputs are independent, but the driver includes a merge function for use with software that doesn't know about more than one input port. It's a Windows-only interface, but that seems to be the trend for PC's now that virtually no new DOS software is being written. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Cakewalk for DOS driver for it by the time it hits the market in a couple of months, though, as Cakewalk is now selling Midiman interfaces in their catalog. It's $249 list. For the PC desktop video producer, there's the Video Producer card, a time code sync card for the PC that reads and writes VITC (vertical interval time code - a more robust time code than linear time code, especially when used with a home grade VCR), and even provides on-screen time code display which can be a display only, or a window-burn when writing time code to tape. My favorite new Midiman product comes pretty close to my dream of an under-$150 GM sound module that sounds a lot better than a SoundBlaster. The GMan is GM and Sound Canvas compatible, and includes MIDI in, out, and a Mac serial interface with a thru port. It's housed in a sturdy metal case about 5-1/2 inches square, just right to set on top of your tower case. Audio outputs are on both 1/4" jacks and a stereo mini jack, so it's plug-and-play with studio systems or multimedia powered speakers. It's a wavetable synth with pretty decent sounds over all. Hard to hear on the noisy show floor, but Bret says that the drums and pianos compare very favorably with the Sound Canvas. I thought the acoustic guitars were pretty lame, but then I think that all wavetable acoustic guitars, except some classicals, are pretty lame. I'd be happy to have one to replace some of the weird sounding things that come out of my SB-16. A couple of wish-they-were-classic condenser mics were introduced by two relative newcomers on the scene. Stedman, who's been making a pretty decent large format dynamic mic that looks like a classic side address condenser has finally come out with a real condenser mic. The SC3 is a single pattern .9" diaphragm with an FET preamp and a couple of unusual features. There's a three position attenuator switch with the rather unusual settings of -9 and -18 dB (maybe that's what -10 and -20 came out to be - truth in advertising, you know), and a three position switch that offers a choice of frequency response as flat as the mic gets, (they call that "vintage"), a bass rolloff that starts at 200 Hz and is about 8 dB down at 20 Hz (where the "vintage" setting is 4 dB down), and an "enhanced" setting that looks like about a 3 dB rise between 2 kHz and 15 kHz. It comes in vintage anodized grey aluminum or basic black, and it's all made in America, including the capsule. This means it's not yet another Chinese U-87 copy. Far more "classic" looking is the large, shiny, squared off cylinder from Rode, called, unashamedly, the Classic. It's a multi-pattern condenser with a tube preamp and external power supply and pattern controller, complete with classic bakelite knobs. The tube is the famous and now out of production 6072, which Rode says they found a secret stash of. It's hand made in Australia, from solid brass, and comes in a flight case. Of course a trade show floor is no place to evaluate the sound of a microphone, but at $998 for the Stedman and $1799 for the Rode, they're right in the midst of some healthy competition. There's no clear winner in mics of that class - they all sound different in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways, and there's always something that one will be better than the others at. It doesn't help the "I want to buy one good mic" customer one bit, but for someone who has a collection of mics, it's nice to have a few more choices in the closet. I had to search for a while to find a non-digital signal processor, and came upon the PreSonus ACP-8. It's an 8 channel compressor and gate with a full set of controls on each channel - attack, release, threshold, ratio, and gate level. There's also a side chain insert on each channel, and a each channel has it's own gain reduction LED meter. There's a choice of hard or soft knee curve when the compression kicks in, and an "auto" button for level-dependent attack setting. It's in a 2 space rack, and sells for about $700. The Emu Darwin has been around for a few months now, but this was the first chance I had to get my mitts on one. Darwin is a disk based digital 8 track recorder. On the surface it works just like a real tape deck, but it also offers cut/copy-and-paste editing of recorded tracks with a fairly reasonable LCD as a guide. In a world of budget priced recording workstations out there with jog/shuttle wheels that are a joke compared to moving the reels by hand on an analog recorder, the one on the Darwin really works. I'd be tempted to buy one of these to use even as a nothing more than a stereo editor just because of this feature. There's a book full of options for it, with more coming. The basic unit has 4 analog inputs and 8 outputs, with a set of S/PDIF digital I/O connectors that can be assigned to any pair of channels. There's an expansion board to make it a full 8 inputs. A clever routing system lets you internally connect any of the input jacks to any channel, so you can "normal" inputs to make it easy to use with a mixer that doesn't provide multiple group outputs, and an internal 8x2 mixer with pan and gain controls allow you to bounce tracks without ever leaving the machine. A pair of cards provide an ADAT optical interface and control interface so it can actually be controlled by an Alesis BRC and work like another ADAT in a system. A DSP coprocessor for adding effects and equalization internally is in the planning stage, as is a SMPTE slave card. You can buy it without any mass storage for your own external or internal SCSI drive, with an internal 1 GB drive, or an internal Iomega Jaz drive for a gigabyte of removable storage. 1 GB represents a little over 20 minutes if you fill up every bit of all 8 tracks - certainly enough for a few songs, but not enough for a whole project. Of course every manufacturer of this sort of equipment claims that his audio quality is better than the others, and I won't disagree. It goes for a bit under $4,000 with the Jaz drive - more expensive than an ADAT, but a different animal. Hohner (the harmonica folks) have moved into software distribution business. There's a fairly broad line of $69 music software programs including Musicscan, a page scan to MIDI converter; Euterpe, a music ear training program; Drumatix, a pattern-based drum composer; Soundscore, a pitch-to-MIDI program; and MIDI Connections, an auto-accompaniment generator. Old timers will remember Jim Miller's Personal Composer, one of the first sequencer programs that worked in standard musical notation. Well, Hohner now distributes an updated version for Windows - three levels of the program, actually, differing mainly in the number of tracks that can be recorded, ranging from $69 to $199. They're also distributing Samplitude, a very capable but sort of rough-and-ready audio recording program, also in 3 levels ranging from the ubiquitous $69 up to $399. There's gotta be a few useful bargains there. Shubb, makers of fine capos and other guitar accessories, are now selling two software programs to help the working musician take care of business. Song Master 2.0 helps you to organize the songs you play. Presuming you take the time to enter all the data - no small task - you can locate your songs by title, key, tempo, words in the lyrics, and notes that you make to characterize the songs. You can arrange set lists, print out lyrics with chords, and transpose the chords you entered. Although not an official application, it seems like a great way to organize your record collection in more detail than you ever thought you wanted to do. Gig Master 2.0 takes care of business. You can maintain a calendar of your bookings, keep track of who's playing where if you have a band with several variations, keeps track of expenses, income, mileage, product sales, wages, and manage a mailing list. Both programs are available for Windows or Mac, and each sells for $60. Power Technology introduced the DSP-FX card for the PC. It's based on a Texas Instruments 32 bit DSP chip, and provides digital audio effects with plug-in software. A basic system consists of the card and 5 reverb and delay-based algorithms and sells for $795. I/O is analog, with S/PDIF and AES/EBU digital optional. The company claims that the strength of their product lies in the design of their control software, I found it to be a little game-like - but then what's effects processing than playing games until you find an effect you like? I think this system, or something like it, has a lot of potential, but it has a way to go yet. I haven't seen any neat little innovative gadgets yet, but I'm sure there's something out there that's new this year. It's one of the things I look forward to at this show. ===================== I slacked off and went to dinner with some net folks on Friday night (we closed the restaurant), so this is a catch-up report for two days. Fortunately, this year's show seemed to be pretty well stocked with a lot of look-alike products and not a lot of innovation, so it's been a good time to spend a lot of time chatting with a few people. There were Mackie mixer copies galore, but since Mackie already outdid themselves this year with their new VLZ series, the new competition is already in the dust. There were also a few new players in the hardware based hard disk recording field, each trying to be like the others only with more features. Ho hum! Let's start the day's review out with some interfaces. I'd been hearing about the AXON NGC-66 pitch-to-MIDI converter from the developer, but this was my first opportunity to put my hands on a guitar playing through one. The NGC-66 takes a new approach to interfacing a guitar to MIDI - there's a lot of digital signal processing (DSP) in the box, and hardly any analog circuitry other than the input and output stages. There's a little black magic about "Neural Technology Detection", but the results are two-fold. First off, detection of pitch appears to be done in no more than one cycle of the string vibration, which means that the delay between plucking a string and the MIDI note data coming out is about 14 milliseconds, about half that of the 'typical' MIDI guitar interface. The other benefit gained from this detection technology is that the system can tell both where the string is picked and where it's fretted. Although most MIDI guitar interfaces provide at least some way to split sounds across strings, the AXON can do a split at a fret, and can also split in to different sounds depending on how close to the bridge you pick. The box is full of tricks, and I found it much easier to get the hang of than other MIDI guitar controllers that I've played on, including my own Casio MG-510. It works with a Roland GK-2a or other hex pickup, and lists for $1195. On the other end of the MIDI cable, Opcode has a new Windows MIDI interface named the MIDI Translator PC that connects to the computer's parallel port. Expandability through modularity seems to be in this year, and here's Opcode's contribution. The basic box is two MIDI ports in and out (32 channels), with a pass- through port for connecting it in line with a printer. That's pretty tame and kind of like a two port version of the Music Quest (now owned by Opcode) Note 1+. The cool part is that that parallel port pass-through can be used to connect a second MIDI Translator, giving instant expansion to 4 MIDI ports. A cost effective solution (or at least an interim solution) when you start overrunning your polyphony or want to get your MIDI devices better organized. And, in the middle of the chain, we have Frank-n-Stein from Monster Electronics (honest, I'm not making this up). F-n-S is a guitar mounted MIDI switch controller that consists of a thin membrane switch pad attached to a small ribbon cable, and a small amount of guts that are installed inside the guitar. Installation doesn't look to be trivial as it includes getting in to the guitar's pickup wiring, but the result is data that goes back to the brain at the other end of the cable multiplexed with the signal from the guitar pickup. This raises all sorts of questions as to how it affects the sound of the guitar, but since the purpose of a gadget like this is to control other devices which also affect the sound of the guitar, the point of argument is academic (so I didn't). The output of the box back at the amplifier end can be set up to be MIDI program changes, MIDI notes on or off, or sequencer start/stop, and can be used to control your choice of programmable effects units. They're pushing it with a wireless system, giving the player independence both from a cable to an amplifier, but freedom from having to walk over to a stomp box to switch in an effect. $795 gets you the unit, and for an additional $295, they'll install it and give your guitar a bizarre new paint job, too. This is as good a place as any to make my annual comment about "why would they ever make one like that?" guitars. Gibson had an Elvis anniversary model of a J-200 which has a painted carving of The King Himself on the top, done with all the taste of a velvet painting. They had similar craftwork on a Les Paul, with carvings and paintings of The Man From Waukesha both in the Mary Ford days and as Rhubarb Red, the kid on the radio with a guitar and a harmonica on a rack. And then there were the American Showster guitars with bodies shaped just like the tail fins on a 1957 Chevy, painted in '57 car colors like Salmon Pink and Meadow Mist Green, with the backs shiny Bumper Chrome. Going from the ridiculous to the sublime, Martin introduced the MTV Unplugged model guitar (this even made USA Today), a Dreadnought sized flat top with the treble side and half the back made of mahogany, and the bass side and the other half of the back of rosewood. The claim is that it captures the best sound of both rosewood and mahogany guitars. Personally, I think they either are running short of rosewood again or someone made a mistake so they put a name on it. ART made a fashion statement with a new effects processor that wasn't a multi-effects unit. Well, it really is, but it's not the typical all-the-effects-you-can-think-of-in-a-chain approach, but rather, has one button to select reverbs, one to select delays, and one to select combination effects. They felt that people were tired of the chains and wanted really good reverbs and delays. I'm not even going to tell you the name of this device because I crashed it when playing with editing some parameters, and when I first tweaked a parameter, it's display said "Loading #1 - yes, it's slow", and started counting. After about 30 seconds, the "yes, it's slow" changed to some other variation, and a full minute later, it was ready to go again. Nice try, guys. It sounded OK, and it was simple to operate, if you liked the presets or had some patience. A few years back, Sony decided, like ART, that people wanted processors that did one job very well, and they came up with the excellent series including the R7, D7, M7, and F7. They've now taken most of the algorithms from all of those processors - they claim they took the most popular ones, but I suspect they just eliminated the most unpopular ones - and put them in a single box, the DPS-V77. Sounds are really great, and the user interface is pretty comfortable, with icons to suggest, in a Japanese sort of way, what the selected algorithm is good to use on. This is a studio grade processor, but it would certainly be at home in a guitarist's or keyboard player's stage rig. Also at the high end for the personal studio, but a bargain for the commercial studio is the M-2000 from TC Electronics. Their top of the line M-5000 does-everything processor is a wonderful effects device and problem solver, plus a darn good D/A and A/D converter, as it has both digital and analog I/O. The M-2000 is a scaled down version in that it's not expandable, and it doesn't have all the processing algorithms of it's big brother. Unfortunately, one of the best processors, multi-band compression, is absent from the 2000. I guess there's no cheap lunch, but this is certainly a unit to consider if you're looking for a first class reverb and would like to keep things digital as long as possible. Down at the lower end of the scale, Boss has updated their do-everything rack processor range with the SX-700. In addition to the standard reverb and delay effects, it includes some of the 3-D algorithms from Roland's RSS spatial processor. The DigiTech Studio Quad is a 4-in, 4-out processor based on their S-DISK technology. You can select a patching arrangement for those inputs and outputs for effects in series or parallel, stereo in to stereo out, mono in to mono out, or mono in to stereo out. The display looks graphically a bit like the algorithm selection on the Yamaha DX-7. At under $500, this unit looks like a good buy. Both the Studio Quad and SX-700 have user interfaces that are quite straightforward, a refreshing change. The Nanoverb, at $179, is yet another serious bang for the buck product from Alesis. It's the replacement for the Microverb, and provides 16 reverb and delay algorithms with a single parameter adjustment for each preset. It's certainly not a tweaker's delight, but with 18 bit converters in and out, and 20 bit internal digital processing, it should certainly hold it's own as that one more reverb or delay you wish you had. Buy three and fill up a single rack space. These days, mic preamps are used as signal processors in addition to getting the mic's signal level up to where you can use it. Tubes still have the lead here, with many new units introduced at this show. One that caught my eye, mostly because of who made it, is the EVDI-2 (Electron Valve Direct Interface) from Voce, the makers of a great Hammond-Organ-In-A-Box. I have to wonder if they didn't build this with the intent of dirtying-up their organ synths just a bit more. Specs are skimpy, but they take great pride in the fact that, unlike some other "tube" preamps in it's price class, it contains no solid state components in the signal path. It's a two channel unit with front panel 1/4" jacks for instrument level input, and rear panel XLRs for mic input. Darn! It doesn't say anything on the spec sheet about Phantom power, and I didn't ask. In the same series, Voce also has a tube and photocell compressor, and again, skimpy specs. If you run across one, check it out. ART created a pair of love-hate camps with their $100 tube mic preamp. Love it or hate it, they now have a single rack space unit with two of those preamps, some minimal metering, and internal power supply (no wall wart) for $349. For another $150, you can get the same preamps again in a 2 space rack mount configuration with really cool big VU meters and a very classic look. They still sound essentially the same as the $100 box, but everyone has his own price for cool. Perhaps the biggest-buzz item at the show was Roland's VS-880 digital studio workstation, an 8 channel disk based recorder/mixer. This is the third generation of this sort of product. The previous ones were aimed at the jingle and video post production market, but this one is clearly positioned for the musician. Like the Emu Darwin (and unlike computer-based recording workstations), the VS-880 presents it's tracking capability as 8 tracks, with 8 takes, or layers, of each track, only one of which can be played back at a time. It would be an exaggeration to say it had 64 tracks - it sort of does, but you can only play back 8 at a time. There are 4 analog inputs plus an S/PDIF stereo digital input, any of which can be routed to any tape channel for recording. On mixdown, you can mix 8 tape tracks plus 6 line level inputs (such as synchronized synthesizers). An optional expansion board adds two internal effects processors (just effects, no dynamics processing) which include some of amplifier simulation algorithms from the VG-8 virtual modeled guitar system. This is no bargain if you just do straight recording - editing is it's strength, with copy and paste tools that work well with music. You can locate your position in the song in bars and beats, and copy to a bar/beat number if you, for instance, want to drop in a chorus in the third verse that was sung in the first verse. You can fully automate it by recording fader movements into a sequencer, or use the built-in snapshot automation. Price ranges from about $3200 up to about $4,000 depending on the options you get with it. The basic model comes with a 540 MB internally mounted drive, but you can also get it with a 1 GB Jaz drive, and connect up to 32 GB of external disk up to it through a SCSI interface. To conserve disk space (no doubt at a premium in sound quality), the VS-880 offers a choice of 4 levels of data compression ranging from Master to Live. Master (no compression) gives the essentially standard 203 track-minutes at 44.1 kHz on a 1 GB drive. Live (maximum compression) give 649 track-minutes. I suspect that's about minidisk quality since it's about minidisk compression ratio. The design of the unit encourages experimentation in mixing and rearranging recorded tracks. That's a real plus if you work that way, but with something this seductive, you have to keep reminding yourself that you want to make music, not play with the toys. Akai, who started this generation of hardware digital recorder/mixers with the DR-4d a short 3 years or so ago, recently introduced the DR-16, a 16 track version, leading the pack again. I guess that with 16 tracks worth of things to control, the front panel gets kind of crowded, so they're now offering an optional board which produces a graphic display of all parameters on a standard VGA monitor. With the introduction of the 16 track unit at $4995, Akai has dropped the price of the 8 track to $3495. TASCAM showed their new minidisk based 4 track Portastudio, the model 564. I've gotta say I was underwhelmed with it, and I suspect the rest of the world may be too when it's released this summer. I tried to start a rumor about this one a few months ago and nobody was interested. For about $2300, you'll get 4 tracks of digital audio of minidisk quality which isn't too bad, but it's not the quality most people expect when it comes to digital recording. It was too new for the reps to know it very well, but it appears to have some kind of file management system that allows you to store a maximum of five songs on disk, even if they're short. It's a clean looking unit and it might turn out to be OK, but the price puts it in a class where it might not be an effective tradeoff for 8 tracks at the same price. I believe this was part of a trade that TASCAM and Sony did, in which Sony got TASCAM's DA-88 format to sell, and TASCAM got the minidisk format. I think Sony came out ahead on this one. TASCAM also introduced their DA-38, a digital 8-track recorder that uses the same recording format as the DA-88, but is built with a higher level of integration (so it's less modular inside). It has new DSP circuitry which probably adds a marginal improvement in sonic performance. Inputs and outputs are unbalanced -10 dBV on RCA jacks and balanced +4 on DB-25 multi pin connectors, the same as the DA-88. There's no provision for slaving to SMPTE time code, but with an external box, you can get SMPTE or MIDI time code out of it to sync up a sequencer. If you need for your multitrack to chase SMPTE, though, you still have to buy a DA-88 or it's upcoming upgraded model. One interesting possibility for a multiple machine SMPTE chasing system is to make the first machine a DA-88 with it's optional SY-88 time code board, and then slave additional DA-38's to the DA-88. This could save about $1,000 a module over an all-DA-88 system. The price of the DA-38, if I remember correctly, is $3495. Every good recorder needs a mixing console and there were plenty on display. Of particular interest was the introduction into the USA of the 8 bus Eurodesk by Behringer. This console is almost a complete knock-off of the Mackie 8-bus with only a couple of small changes, and a list price of $2795 for a 24x8 configuration. There has been some criticism of the quality control of this console by our friends across the pond. I guess we'll see when they start selling over here. Korg has been making the high end Soundlink multitrack recorder/mixer for several years, and they're expanding the product line with a new digital mixer for external recorders. The 168RC recording console is designed as a companion to a pair of ADATs, with 16 channels of ADAT digital input and 8 channels out. There are 4 mic inputs and 4 additional line level analog inputs. With 24 inputs and only 12 faders, things get a little hairy, but there are a set of assignable knobs which can be used as mixer controls as required. The faders aren't dynamically automated in this version (it's coming) but 100 snapshots can be saved for preset automation. Two effects processors are included. At about $3200, it's got some of the features that people wished for in the Yamaha ProMix 01, but can't afford a ProMix 02 to get them. My crystal ball tells me this isn't going to be a real hot product - not because there's anything wrong with it, but that Korg doesn't know how to sell this sort of thing. I could be wrong, though. =============================== Last day of the show, catching up on things I know I missed and places I wanted to revisit. Starting off at the Yamaha "booth", which has not moved totally off site (to the adjacent hotel) rather than having just the pianos and band instruments over there and the good stuff in the main convention center building. They're trying once more to revive the difficult-born and suspected dead digital recording processors, the CBX-D3 and -D5 with some more software alliances. This is a really neat box that serves as an audio interface, through the SCSI bus, to any computer with software to support it. I've written about it in the past so I won't repeat the details here. The problem with these units is that there's been very limited software support for it. The combination of one of those units and Cubase Audio running under Windows makes a decent recording package, but there's a pretty limited number of users with that combination, and a lot of people don't want to learn Cubase, good a program as it is, just to be able to record audio through a Yamaha CBX. Now, Mac users can get support for the CBX from EMagic's Logic Audio 2.5 and Opcode's Studio Vision 3.0. Cakewalk also announced that they were going to add the CBX to their devices supported by Pro Audio 4. If that doesn't give the unit a boot into the market, it'll be time for Yamaha to retire it for sure. The CBD-X3 gives 4 outputs and 2 inputs at a cost of $995, so it's in line with the professional audio cards if you need multiple outputs. The -X5 adds an SPX-100 signal processor and four channels of 4 band parametric equalization for the recently reduced price of $1,995 - not so good a bargain and the -X3, I think. The W5 and W7 synths introduced last year, based on the physical modeling VL-1, got some new software to bring their built-in sequencers up to the capabilities that people have come to expect of a sequencer these days. Version 2 adds groove templates and quantizing capability, including a swing quantize feature. They've also added the ability to record track mutes and unmutes in real time, so you can do dance remix tricks and save your work. There's a new set of preset voices, and some changes to the voice editing utilities. Brain dead me forgot to ask if the new software would be available to present owners as an upgrade or if it was only available in new units. Bug your dealer if you have a Wx. It's a little amusing that Yamaha considers this software upgrade a historical event. Here's a quote from their press release: "For the first time in the history of the company, the Yamaha Corporation of America is introducing significant software enhancements . . . 'Yamaha is taking a bold step by upgrading a product with the development of software rather than the development of another piece of hardware', said Avery Burdette, product manager, Digital Musical Instruments." Gee, what a concept! A software upgrade! I thought that was the reason why they implemented features in software rather than hardware. Oh, well. And speaking of the VL- series, there's now a graphic editor that allows the user to conceptualize and design instruments that don't exist in real life - just like a synthesizer. I only got a partial demonstration of the brass instrument model, but you can easily change bore size, bell size and shape, and stick a reed or a cross blown mouthpiece on it instead of a cup mouthpiece if you choose. It doesn't add any new capabilities to the VL, but it does make editing a little easer to relate to real life. It runs on a Mac. In line with the other manufacturers that I mentioned who are moving away from multi-effects processors, Yamaha introduced the ProR3 digital reverb, which looks on the outside a whole lot like the earlier but still respected REV-5. It's an upscale reverb- only unit with internal 32 bit processing, and 20 bit converters in and out. Of course that cuts it out of the digital I/O business so hope your analog effects sends and returns are up to it's claimed 110 dB dynamic range. It's designed for the professional studio, which probably means they don't want to destroy the market for the $300 SPX-100. Soundcraft introduced a new 8-bus console that will be of interest to the folks looking for an alternative to the Mackie. The Ghost (not part of the Spirit series) is just under $4,000 for a 24x8 configuration, and offers some interesting features to set it apart from the Mackie standard. There's 4 band equalization with two fully parametric mid frequency bands, 8 aux. sends of which two are stereo (10 aux busses total), a built in SMPTE generator and reader with time code snapshot or MIDI automation of mutes, (motorized faders are planned for a future version), a set of built-in transport controls, and 4 MIDI continuous controller faders. There are some compromises to reduce the number of physical components, but there are a lot of features packed into this board, and Soundcraft has a reputation for quality and good sound. The stereo aux sends get their panning from the channel panpots, which might (literally) make for some awkward juggling for position, and the MIDI continuous controllers are physically shared with the first 4 bus output faders, but Soundcraft expects that clever users will find creative, or at least useful, ways of using these features. I'd hardly call it a Mackie killer, but it's a level above in some respects, for more money. I had to walk past the DigiTech booth at least three times before the big ugly VU meters caught my eye, but they've jumped on the tube preamp bandwagon with an interesting combination of tools. For $995, you get the VTP-1 which includes two channels of 12AX7 mic preamp, 4 band equalizer with two sweepable mid-bands and high and low cut filters, Phantom power, line level input, polarity reverse, gain control at two places (labelled Gain and Trim) so you can adjust the level at which you're hitting the tube and essentially adjust it's saturation distortion (or, should I say, "warming"?) characteristics, and digital output - AES/EBU or S/PDIF, 44.1 or 48 kHz. Oh, and the ugly VU meters. There's also an insert point if you're not satisfied with this as your only signal processor in the chain. For those who believe that the only way to terminate a microphone is with a transformer, a plug-in is available which bypasses the standard electronically balanced inputs. I haven't the foggiest idea of what it sounds like (would you, with someone playing drums in one ear and distorted guitar in the other ear?), but if you're shopping for a tube box in that price range, the VTP-1 offers a lot of bang and is worth checking out. Incidentally, it's built by IVL, the Pitchrider people, who got together with DigiTech because of their pitch shifting technology (DigiTech also makes a couple of "harmonizers" designed by IVL). Don't get your hopes up, but the guy from IVL that I talked to said they've been getting a lot of requests to revive the Pitchrider. Maybe next year? I haven't intentionally been avoiding discussing synthesizers, it's just that there are so many of them, and once you've heard one GM set on mediocre speakers with all sorts of noise around you, you've heard them all. There's a lot new here, but you don't need to know about it until you go shopping. One new exploratory entry that was looking for a US distributor, and might be a good buy for the analog wannabe user if it gets over here at it's target price of $900 is the ProTone from Spectral Audio GmbH of Switzerland. It's a two rack space analog synth with two VCOs, ring modulation between them, MIDI controllable cutoff and filter resonance, and enough knobs to turn to get the requisite blEEps, Fjuarrghs, zzZZaaaappPs, and rrhoosHs while running a sequence. You probably can't rush right down to your local music store and buy one of these unless you live in Europe, but it's nice to see a pretty good sounding product to fill a hole that's been created by the recent demand for "vintage" analog synth sounds. Two very interesting approaches to synthesis were introduced by InVision and Seer Systems. These are both totally computer based synthesizers that play the General MIDI set of sounds plus extensions based on the strengths of the developers. The Seer currently runs on a Pentium under Windows 95, and is designed to play back through a sound chip that's apparently planned to become standard equipment for Pentium mother boards in the coming year. It'll also work on a Windows compatible sound card. The InVision system currently runs on a Power Mac, with a Windows 95 version planned for release in the second quarter of this year. Interestingly, both systems utilize both sample playback and physical modeling techniques. With a system like this, you can show up on a gig with only your computer and keyboard, and play live to sequences. Neither system is very expensive ($300 ballpark for the Seer, $200 for the InVision), but decent GM sound modules are close to that price range, so it's kind of a tossup right now as to the value of these programs. The advantage, if they run with it, is that the sounds are upgradeable and new ones can be added any time the programmers get around to it. The Seer folks apparently have some sort of jump because they've been working on sound development for this Pentium mother board chip for over a year now, and there are a couple of pioneer sound developers working with them (so expect classic analog synth sounds to be particularly realistic). As I've said before, it's difficult to make any quality judgements on the show floor, but my initial impression of both systems, and this could be because their playback system couldn't handle the required volume to get above the ambient noise, was that neither was as clean as I would have liked on sounds like flute and piano, that really need undistorted sine waves to come through. Strings and synth brass sounded fine, though a muted trumpet on the InVision was really buzzy on a couple of notes. It could well have been a blown speaker though, as I heard it on the last day of the show. I dunno, can you blow Genelec 1030's? That's what they were using. I think we'll be seeing more of this sort of thing - using the computer rather than an outboard synth or sound card - at least for non-critical work like sales presentations and club dates, and with mainstream applications like that to support the technology, it can only get better for the more serious applications. I'll bet you thought I'd never get around to talking about software. Everybody has a new version of everything. See your dealer or wait for the upgrade notice to come in the mail. I did get a peek at Voyetra's Digital Orchestrator Plus, which was released a few months back with virtually no fanfare. It's a Windows based sequencer with audio recording extensions, pretty closely matching Cakewalk Pro Audio on basic features, and offering a whole lot of features that keeps Sequencer Plus fans hanging on to their DOS versions. It's cheap, too. You can upgrade from any version of Seq+, including those bundled with sound cards, for $59, and even less for some versions. A little birdie told me that Voyetra, who's been promising a Windows version of Sequencer Plus, may well have decide that this program is it and they didn't even know it, so it may be renamed to Sequencer Plus for Windows within the next few months. Voyetra's been heavily into the PC multimedia market and had the musician market on the back burner for too long, and this may be their re- entry. It looks like a very nice sequencer that's capable of adding audio tracks easily and flexibly. A new entry into this MIDI+audio market is Zadok from the Netherlands. WinAudio is a MIDI file player (you have to create the MIDI file elsewhere) that adds 4 tracks of audio. It's a smooth working program and has a target price (when they find a distributor) of $120 in the US. It has the usual cut/paste/drag/drop editing capability that we've come to expect. One particularly cool feature is a good time shrinking/stretching algorithm that can change a song either by beats per minute, or by actual seconds. This is really useful when you assemble a 30 second spot that comes out at 32 seconds. With all these audio tracks filling up your disk, you end up with a full disk rather quickly. Emagic announced ZAP, the Zero Loss Audio Packer for Windows, to compress audio files on your disk without tossing away data. If you've ever tried compressing a WAV file with PKZIP, you've probably ended up with a file just a tiny bit smaller or maybe even a little larger than when you started out. PKZIP and all the other compression programs were designed with text or executable binary files in mind, and can't find much to do with a file that's as random as an audio file. There have been a couple of other lossless compression programs for audio files, but nothing has become a de facto standard, and MPEG (which is trying to become a standard) introduces some unrecoverable data loss. ZAP claims up to 50% compression and full recovery of all data. There's obviously been some good work in this area (Roland claims zero data loss and inaudible effect in real time playback for the compression that they offer for their new VS-880) so perhaps there'll be some fallout to the on- line business, too, in smaller audio files transferred. A really cute and potentially useful program for the studio engineer is TrackManager from Creative Input. It's a program to maintain session track sheets for a modular digital multitrack recorder. You can enter the track layout for each song, notes about each track, start and end times (the program automatically calculates the song length), basic data about the session and the studio, and it keeps track of which tape of a set (like Tape #2 = tracks 9-16 of a 24 tracks session) is which. It'll print a track sheet as well as cassette labels in an Avery format. A planned enhancement is to read tape time directly off an Alesis BRC. TrackManager is a FileMaker Pro application, and is available for $29 if you already have FileMaker. It's also available bundled with a runtime version of FileMaker for $59. Platinum Nights from Stringfellow Technologies will make you a star for only $198. It's a program that helps you along the way to building a successful record product. It includes what amounts to a project management program that lets you develop a timetable and budget for your project (with some reasonably realistic estimates if you don't have a clue). It'll track your actual expenses with your budget, and includes a contact and mailing list manager for publicity. There's nothing here you couldn't do with a word processor, a spread sheet program, a simple data base, and some common sense, but it's cool that someone thought to put it all together. It even includes a WWW browser bookmark file with over 20,000 music related web sites (guaranteed to be out of date at least a month before you get the program, but what the heck). Back in the real world, Cakewalk announced plans for a "connectivity" specification, allowing other hardware and software developers to integrate their products with Cakewalk. Since Waves is now providing add-ins for Digidesign and Sonic Foundry, I look for them to start Cakewalking soon. Known partners at this point include Yamaha's CBX line, the Soundscape hard disk recording system (different from the Soundscape sound card), the Roland VS-880, and Digidesign Audiomedia III card. It wa really hard to come up with a winner for my Cute Product Of The Show award, but I guess I'll have to give it to Roland for their PMA-5 Personal Music Assistant, a derivative of the Personal Digital Assistant that we know of as the Apple Newton. It's a touchpad/pen operated music composition (can I please use the word just once more?) workstation that's jacket-pocket sized, and packed in a fold-over leatherette case that looks a lot like a Franklin Planner. You could fly across the country with your headphones on, composing tunes all the way (a set of batteries lasts 5-6 hours) and your seatmate would be impressed that you were doing real work through the entire flight. The PMA-5 is a General MIDI synth based on the Roland Sound Canvas engine, with 28 voice polyphony. It's an 8 track sequencer with 4 melody tracks and 4 canned backing tracks in 100 preset styles. Input a chord progression and put it to work generating your backing tracks, then input your melody by touching the "keyboard" in real time or a note at a time if you wish. It's like the next generation of the Yamaha QY-10/20 line. There's a serial port to transfer data to your computer for further editing in Standard MIDI file format. You can also load songs from your computer into the PMA-5 for playback on the road - so you can take your work with you. At $595, it's not going to be a door buster, but consider it for a Christmas present for your weekend warrior musician very good friend. That's about all the good schtuff for this year, now here are a couple of philosophical observations. There was an educational session on the World Wide Web, at least two web site providers exhibiting at the show, and home page URLs are now treated on manufacturer's literature just like phone numbers. Several major players have set up web pages this year or are about to do so, and the good news is that, though they seem to be about a year behind the power curve, they've done some studying in the interim, and we may see some useful data beyond reproductions of catalog pages and advertisements. Alesis plans to put full detailed product specifications up, as well as SysEx implementation data for all of their products. Roland will be presenting written-in-English-by-Americans operating instructions for their products in what amounts to FAQ (frequently asked questions) format. More demos will be available on line from software manufacturers, and those willing to take the risk of sending their customers off into neverneverland will be including links to other sites that have support for their products. This sort of thing could easily be either a disaster or a waste of time (both for the user and the manufacturer), but I have faith that we'll be seeing some good applications of the WWW this year. NAMM has been called the "Hair, Tattoo, and Spandex Show", and I didn't see a lot of that this year. Perhaps political correctness is in and sex-selling is out. There were fewer babes in the booths handing out literature and telling you you'd have to ask someone else if you had a question beyond "do you have any literature?", and there was far less extreme dress (men and women) walking about on the show floor. I can't say as I missed it - well, just a little. Let's hope I don't feel out of place next year if I don't wear a tie. -- I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)