A Barking Dog

It’s a few hours after another edition of Winter NAMM has been put to bed. I left the show floor two days ago. My last NAMM was 2002 where I was an exhibitor, not just part fo the cattle. Prior to that I had at least attended most years and in my former life did several gigs there over the years. During the few years I was exhibiting the dynamic with what were once my suppliers and vendors changed to one of being my colleagues. Over the years changes in personnel and losing contact with many folks left me knowing far fewer people than in years past over the last couple of decades. This year on the floor I knew hardly any of the people working in the booths and I doubt any of them knew about either me or more importantly the LAB. Of the people I did still know, most of them are now in senior positions at various manufacturers so I’m still able to get a door or two kicked open if required.

Like most other tradeshows, most of the deals happen off the show floor in the smokeless bars in host hotels, prime restaurants in the area or sequestered in suites surrounding the convention center. This year I was fortunate enough to be involved in a few of these demos and conversations that take place under “The Cone of Silence”. That’s the really juicy stuff I’d love to share, as there were a couple of “Really? No Shit?” kind of moments. If I want to be able to keep peaking into the cookie jar I can’t blog the details. That’s just the price of poker. For the most part they were all real products in development and within the next year or so it’s likely you’ll see them or hear about them before long. (Hint…NSCA)

I had initially planned to shoot a bunch of video and stills and I did shoot a fair amount, but most of what I shot was available publically on the manufacturers sites. Besides, most of the people that read A Barking Dog have been to the big time trade shows and know what they look like. My trolling of the show was limited to what I saw in the exhibitor guide or that people had told me about prior to the show plus my personal favorite areas including amp control systems; system controller/crossovers and equalizer systems; measurement systems; consoles , particularly control surfaces and any other overpriced processing or mics in wacky colors or with big knobs. I heard from more than one manufacturer a new mantra with regard to showing products. If it’s not done and ready to ship in the next month or two, you can’t show it. Finally a sane, self imposed rule from the manufacturers that should do something to stem the disappointment when engineering prototypes are displayed as beta product. With the advent of communities such as the LAB, word travels fast. In the olden days they could show prototypes because word would be slow to get out. Nowadays, if you show it on the floor to the general public, you better be able to ship it PDQ.

The console department, particularly in the low end market is alive and well and may perhaps reach a saturation point here soon as everyone has something in at least the sub US$10k mark, if not the US$5k mark. Most of the stuff looks like it was designed and priced with churches in mind. This has been a huge force driving the market and has undoubtedly kept more than a few manufacturers that might have otherwise fallen on hard times or possibly gone tits up the ability to remain in the game.

What I thought were notable to mention was my first look at the Crest HP series. Not bad, but nothing to really set it apart from any of the others. Except perhaps for the flex on the surface of the console. Pressing down between any of the two module sections produced a fair amount of flex. There were no facilities for me to critically listen to the console. That would be readily available set of cans or mic. That was the case with most of these low end consoles.

Soundcraft had the GB series in the booth and was showing it. It was too crowded to get a good look at the two times I was there. The Orange Umbrella room was a zoo. It was a conference room off the arena floor that was stuffed with too much gear and too many people. There was one way in and one way out and at one point I thought if they were going to get any more people in the room, they need to use some sort of lubricant. Yamaha used the same sort of single point of entry room (in a ballroom at the Marriott) though it was devoid of any pro audio gear at least they were able to arrange it in a way where it wasn’t assholes to elbows.

Mackie has updated the low end by adding the Tapco line, or should I say reviving the Tapco line a couple years back to deal with the low cost knock off artists. The Mackie product that caught my eye, I plan on picking one up, is the Onyx 1220 mixer with the firewire card. Now that I’m into Final Cut, Garageband and getting into Logic this makes total sense. I’ve been using a Mackie 1202 for my video post and recording to vid but the Onyx makes much more sense. At the price point it seems like a pretty good deal. I was about to pick up a couple of M-Audio USB devices when I saw this was much more what I needed. I was considering some sort of surface but needed something where I could pick up analog inputs and outputs if required. They were also showing a larger frame Onyx which is what the SR series should have been in the first place. I only have the dealer pricing but looking at it compared to other similar offerings from other manufacturers, the low end is getting crowded and there will be new round of price/performance based consoles for the low end from which to choose.

While not exactly low end, Midas was showing the new Siena. Basically the mon console partner to the Verona. Looks pretty good for a mid range desk, though as is the case in all lower cost desks, the tactile feel of the controls feel a bit weak, flimsy in fact. This is true I think for most every manufacturer that offer consoles with this price/performance. There are probably as good or better consoles in that price/performance group but young turks with wood for the Midas name will likely flock to this. It seems like a nice desk, but it’s not a Heritage or even XL250. There is a cute little control link that allows one to select Helix slave channels as the out cue buttons are depressed. Nice touch, though I think it’s doubtful that users of the Siena or Verona will have the budget for a Helix rig. Speaking of Helix, saavy readers will recall some issues I had with a Helix couple months back. The most recent upgrades take care of all the issues I had. Current owners are advised to upgrade to the latest version firmware.

Control surfaces continue to gain traction at all levels of the biz. Since NAMM is primarily an MI show and not pro audio show, not all the surface makers are represented though they have people attending. Soundtracs/Digico wasn’t exhibiting, the only PM5Ds I saw were rentals in the other booths and the only surfaces I saw in the Yamaha booth were the MI line, though the 01x looks pretty neat. InnovaSON was showing in the Sennheiser booth what appeared to be a Sy 48. Mackie was showing the completed TT24, recently shipping about 200 in the channel with orders for several hundred more. Mackie was also showing a 32 x 32 remote stage box for the TT24 that operates over ethernet to a card in the TT24 with the console encoders remotely controlling the mic gains. The remote box is not yet shipping.

Digidesign’s first foray into professional sound reinforcement and more than three years in the making is called the “Venue”. The same name Soundcraft used for a lackluster performing mid range console less than ten years ago. A mixer buddy of mine used a prototype of this new console for a leg of a tour he was on last fall. He was giving it rave reviews when I saw him a couple months ago. The specs on are on the Digi site, but basically it’s a multi layer topology surface with remote racks and digital snake. A couple of things that stand out to me is the ability to use the surface mutes and faders in the event of a console controller failure, use of Protools plugins and the ability to record directly to Pro Tools. On the minus side, the kiss of death is the ability to do only a max of 16 aux outputs according to info I downloaded but the presentation made no mention of such a limitation. This is a huge caveat in terms of using the console as not only a traditional monitor console, but as a high performance ear monitor console as you have to use the auxes to drive the plugin effects as well. The aux routing is in software so hopefully with tweaks and adding a few I/O cards they can fix it, depending on how the software uses the soft knobs to display the master section of the auxes could make a software only fix problematic. If it’s going to compete with a PM1D or D5 (or even PM5D or D1) it’s got to be able to be used as a high capacity mon console as well as FOH. They also showed an Aviom like remote control monitor system. This is owing more to the heritage of Digi/Protools as a studio recording application company. Artist mixed remote mons are a neat concept, but not widely used in concert touring and I don’t think that’s likely to change anytime soon, if ever.

We’re not done yet kiddies. We still got system controllers, speaker systems and a few other tidbits to cover in the next installment.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2005 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Winter NAMM 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.