Review: AES Report And Photo Gallery

Harmony Central invades the 123rd Annual AES Show: October 5-8, 2007, New York City By Jon Chappell and Craig Anderton The 123rd AES show was held this past weekend (actually Friday through Monday, though this is the last show that goes for four days—from here on out it’s three), and despite the fact that there were not a ton of new releases, there were some events of note. Before we get into the gear, you should know that AES is not just a show to release new product; it exists also as a yearly meeting platform for important committees and consortia to enact standards, monitor trends, and present research. When you register at AES, they give you two booklets: One is the exhibitor directory and the other is the schedule of meetings, committees, white papers, demos, etc. The convention program book is thicker than the exhibitor directory (239 pages vs. 179 pages). So while most people think of AES as the "gear geek show for recordists," it serves this other purpose, where the policies and trends that are being considered may well affect our industry for the long term. The presentations encompass everything from the non-technical ("Tinnitus—it’s not just a buzz word," "Beethoven’s Deafness") to the arcane ("Thresholds for Discriminating Upward from Downward Trajectories for Smooth Virtual Source Motion within a Sagittal Plane").

I went to three presentations: 1) Allen Sides on recording Mary J. Blige on Cakewalk’s Sonar at 192kHz; 2) Barry Blesserr’s keynote speech on "The Art of Space: Audio Engineers as Aural Architects (a fascinating presentation on how perceptions change with taste, not through better science); and 3) Geoff Emerick’s "Recording the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper." This last one was standing room only, as you can imagine, and Geoff was in rare form. All of these activities took me off the show floor, but I felt I had to attend. I wanted to go to more, but you can’t do everything, and I had videos to shoot. So after attending these entertaining but sometimes heady talk shows, I needed to get my gear fix on.

Here’s just a sampling of what Craig Anderton and I saw. You can see video demos and capsule summaries of all the gear here, plus much more—as well as the prognostications of some very smart, connected people in the audio industry—by visiting our HC Theater section (http://www.harmony-central.com/theater). We’re adding videos to the Theater constantly (even as you read this), and we have scores of offerings, so check back frequently. Now, it’s on to the show—the gear part, that is!

A view of Mecca. The convention was held in New York City’s Javits Center, a gigantic glass and steel structure that dwarfs the relatively small AES show. That’s okay, because it meant there were plenty of places to sit down, and the lines weren’t very long for the extensive "facilities." But a 12-oz. coffee ran me $2.75. Welcome to NY indeed.

The AES show seems a little more sedate than a NAMM show—and quieter, too! But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of action or exciting gear. It just didn’t scream at you at 140 decibels.

Allen Sides at the GCPro booth. Sides is a Multi-Grammy-winning engineer who recently recorded Mary J. Blige performing with a full orchestra. For this session, he recorded 48 tracks simultaneously at 24-bit/192 kHz using an Intel-based PC running SONAR. He gave a presentation of this session on Sunday, and says now that he’s worked in 192k, he’ll find it difficult to deal with anything less.

A Designs releases a tube-driven D.I. And it’s very red.

AMS-Neve’s Genesys console uses analog circuitry and an integrated control surface for workstations. It has EQ and dynamics accessible for digital control, but no knobs for these on the mixer itself.

AnaMod’s unusual ATS-1 is an analog tape simulation processor that applies digital modeling techniques, but does so totally within the analog domain.

Arturia showed a spiffy keyboard controller for the latest version of their Analog Factory software.

Audio-Technica came out with their closed-ear headphones, the ATH-M50. They have ringing (sorry) endorsements from George Massenburg, Al Schmitt, Frank Filipetti, and others. They’ll street for about $170.

Audix came out with the micro series of mics—phantom-powered condensers that are ideal for choir and worship. There are two models, the smaller one shown here, and another one with a longer capsule that has increased low-end response.

Blue Microphones introduced Joe, an under-$300 mic targeted at the project studio. They also showed Snowflake, an inexpensive (under $60) USB mic.

Author/photographer David Goggin was at AES to sign copies of his latest (and most excellent) book, Faces of Rock.

Digidesign let fly a whole host of announcements just before the show. This was the booth during the ICON D-control ES demo. It was hard to see, and most people agree that Digi should have had a larger booth and seating for demos—especially because they released their announcements only days before AES, virtually assuring a mob surge at their booth!

Digidesign also had the C|24 control surface on display and for demo, and was showcasing Pro Tools 7.4, which features Avid integration and Elastic Time—similar to ACID-style stretching and REX-style slicing.

Dymo’s Discpainter does a great job of adding color to your CDs, for under $300. It prints while the disc is rotating, meaning a faster paint job than if the disc was stationary.

On this unassuming side street in NYC’s Greenwich Village is the historic Electric Lady studios, where Lexicon held a reception the first night of the show.

Here’s a shot standing at the back wall looking at the curved wall and window of the control room. The entrance to the live room is on the left and up four stairs, just under the studio monitors.

Inside Studio A at Electric Lady, which houses the SSL board.

The Fairlight Xynergi has an awesome feature in an unlikely place—the keyboard. Note how the keyboard keys are illuminated and change icons and characters depending on the task at hand. You can even have the keyboard emulate a different, non-Fairlight piece of gear (lower left). Now that’s agnostic!

Focusrite showed their new ISA828 eight-channel microphone preamp, sporting eight ISA transformer-based preamps. The circuitry is based on the Rupert Neve-designed Forte console, and was previously used in the ISA430 Mk2 and ISA428 preamps.

The GCPro booth. Guitar Center announced a three-way partnership with AMD and Dell Computers. GC will now be selling AMD-configured Dells in their stores. This is only the second retailer that Dell has partnered with. The first was Wal-Mart. At the center of this photo, in profile, is Allen Sides.

George Massenburg plays his latest project for HC Editor in Chief Craig Anderton. And by the way, it sounded great.

Product specialist Bart Walsh of Gibson talks with his tech just before his demo of the HD 6X digital guitar system. Bart routed each string to a separate monitor in a six-way 5.1 system and blew our minds. He also noted that in addition to the hex pickup, you can mix in the humbucker sound with a D/A converter, or use just the analog signals via a 1/4" jack.

A shot of Bart Walsh demo-ing the Gibson digital guitar. Gibson is to be commended for their commitment to the digital guitar, and for their support of AES. They even brought their bus!

Bob Heil with his PR-20 dynamic mic (the Pink model, whose proceeds go to help fund breast cancer research). He may look like a game show host, but this guy is a ham radio freak, best friends with Joe Walsh, and hangs out with Slash and Tool on the road. And he talks like a rock ‘n’ roller, too, meaning he don’t take no bull**** (a direct quote).

Hot on the heels of their wildly successful AmpliTube guitar modules, IK Multimedia has released the StompIO, a hardware USB floor controller and audio interface. It provides full control over the five "Powered by AmpliTube" software/plug-ins: AmpliTube 2, AmpliTube Jimi Hendrix, Ampeg SVX, AmpliTube Metal, and AmpliTube 2 Live. This eliminates the need to look at a computer or touch a mouse to adjust parameters—something that will appeal to performing guitarists everywhere.

iZotope released iZotope RX, its standalone audio-restoration app. It removes hiss and buzz, and eliminates vinyl crackles and clicks, as well as repairs clipping and fills in gaps. In this shot, the blue waveform exhibits the clicks and pops from vinyl damage, and the orange and yellow show frequency content. The transparency of each waveform display is adjustable, and the visual editing is quite intuitive. The results of the restoration processing were amazing. Included are modules called Denoiser, Spectral Repair, Declipper, Hum Removal, Declicker, Spectrogram, Selective Processing, and Batch Processing.

KeyToSound showed their Producer Pack of mastering oriented plug-ins, consisting of three different types of equalizer and a transparent compressor.

There’s still room in the world for good large-diaphragm tube mics, as Lauten Audio proved with the introduction of its Horizon mic. This uses an NOS military-grade tube and is available in a stereo pair.

The legendary Les Paul, still going strong at 93, with HC’s Craig Anderton.

Lexicon continues the tradition of the PCM60 and PCM 70 with — what else? — the PCM96. The PCM96 is a single-rack-space stereo reverb effects processor with reverb, modulation, and delay effects, new mono reverbs, and can be used as a "hardware plug-in" via VST and AU.

Line 6 didn’t exhibit the show, but you could see the combo amp version of their SpiderValve series at Freescale Semiconductor’s booth (because Line 6 uses FreeScale’s processors in their boards). Line 6 did host a pre-AES party at a SoHo club in NYC and demo’d the Bogner-designed series. This is a 6L6- 12AX7-driven amp (with digital effects, naturally). Oz Noy, the brilliant avant-garde guitarist, played through two at the party.

Lynx Studio Technology’s latest audio interface card, the AES16e, works with the PCI Express bus on Windows or Mac.

MOTU’s MachFive2 is a major update to their MachFive virtual sampler.

The Novation NIO 2|4. "NIO" stands for Novation In/Out, and it’s a simple interface for plugging in your guitar or instrument for extremely low-latency conversion. I tried it out with the demo guitar, and despite my best Al Di Meola impression, I couldn’t tell I was hearing an A/D-D/A conversion.

Sound on Sound editor Paul White, hanging out in—where else—the press room.

Super-producer Phil Ramone was at the NARAS booth, signing books and holding forth with the convention attendees.

PreSonus had several new products at the show. The ADL700 is a tube preamp/compressor/EQ designed in collaboration with designer Anthony DeMaria.

The PreSonus Monitor Station is designed to add console-type functions, like talkback and speaker switching, to computer-based setups.

RND (Roger Nichols Digital) released the Spl-izer (pronounced "SPLY-zer"), which is an adjustable 3-band 24db-per-octave frequency splitter that allows the three bands to be isolated and routed to aux or instrument tracks for separate processing.

Roland’s V-Mixer is designed for live performance, but not only interfaces with a digital snake, but allows simultaneous recording into Cakewalk Sonar.

Talk about a trio of audio legends (from left to right): Al Schmitt, Bob Ludwig, and Roger Nichols.

Shure exhibited several models of their in-ear monitoring systems, from consumer to pro. The series ranges from the SCL2 at $110 (list) to the SCL5 ($626 list). They’re available in different colors, too.

Sony made a big impression with their PCM-D50, an under-$600 "little brother" field recorder to their acclaimed PCM-D1

SPL’s Transducer is a power soak for guitar. It allows getting your preamp and amp sound without having to hit sound levels that would cause your neighbors to call the cops.

SSL showcased the "Shed of your dreams," a structure they will sell you along with amenities (a wine rack with wine, a tea set). It was a neat structure to visit, as it was a) quiet and free of the ambient din of the show floor; b) climate controlled (it was hot in the aisles, and the air conditioned space was like an oasis) and c) had Peter Gabriel inside at the board (at least on the first day of the show—I don’t think he’s included in the purchase price).

A shot showing the internal structure of SSL’s shed. SSL had about two-and-a-half days to construct in New York what would normally take five or six days to fully outfit correctly. But everything worked beautifully—even the air conditioning!

At the SSL board in the shed. The wallpaper on the monitor on the left shows Peter Gabriel in his own shed—presumably in a lovely English garden somewhere.

Steinberg had a workstation setup to demonstrate Nuendo 4, the latest version of their post-production oriented DAW software.

Electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani stopped by the show before embarking on a series of live performances.

TC Electronic is now shipping the Digital Konnekt x32, an all-in-one digital patchbay, format converter and FireWire audio interface, for integrating digital outboard effects units and keyboards with modern digital audio workstation-based studios. It streets for around $1500.

The Toontrack guys were just one of the tenants in Digidesign’s Third Party Pavilion. They gave a great demo of EZDrummer, which they had running as a plug-in in a PT LE environment. Also in the developers’ alley were Ableton, ATTO Technology, Brainworx, Flux, Overloud, Neyrinck, Sonnox, and Source Elements.

If you were a guitarist, one of the biggest items of interest was Waves’ GTR 3, shown here with the stompbox interface. This sounded amazing, and the demo guys really showed it off well.

Yamaha had their LS9 mixer set up and working. Here a booth visitor steps through the editing screens to change the EQ.

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