This week audio professionals from around the world converge on New York for the 123rd AES Convention. The exhibits, which run from Friday through Monday, October 5-8, promise to reveal fantastic new technological advances in recording, mixing, and live sound equipment. In addition, AES attendees experience in-depth sessions, workshops, and tutorials, and a fresh mix of pro audio resources you can't find anywhere else.

Sweetwater Is On the Scene! Sweetwater is here to take you on a virtual tour of this year's newest developments in music technology. We'll cover the latest mixers, recording devices, microphones, software, and more. This year's coverage will include Mitch Gallagher's daily AES blog, video features, and a host of new product introductions. We'll add news and information every day of the exhibit, so check back often!

Subject to Change... As with all of our show reports, please keep in mind that this is not intended to be a complete listing of all new or relevant products debuted at AES, nor is all of the information here guaranteed to be 100% correct. The key phrase here is "Subject to Change." In many cases, manufacturers are still solidifying things like price, availability, and features. We gather all the information we can from the things that catch our eye at the show, but in the end, we hope you find the new products as exciting as we do and that you'll call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer to keep on top of them as the information continues to develop. We hope you enjoy this insider's look at the 123rd AES Convention.

Day 1:
New York, New York! A heat wave in October. Hordes of people. Endless rows of manufacturers.

It must be time for another AES show! The 2007 Fall AES Convention is taking place at the Javitz Center in New York City. Unlike some recent trade shows, there was real excitement in the air at the convention center on Day One.

The show opened at noon, with a huge crowd waiting to make their way into the exhibits. The list of new products is impressive: Sony's new affordable handheld digital recorder, Blue's Joe microphone, Apogee's Duet, Apple Logic Studio and Logic Pro 8, Cakewalk SONAR 7, Digidesign Pro Tools 7.4 and the new C24 control surface, A-Design's Hammer tube EQ, Eventide's plug-in for the controlling the DSP8000FW from within Pro Tools (as well as the soon to be released ModFactory guitar pedal)....the aisles were packed with great new items.

Be sure to check out the product section of this report for more details, and watch for my AES show videos, which will be posted very soon.

That's it for now from NYC and the AES! - Mitch Gallagher

Day 2:
Software was big at this year's AES show. There were plenty of offerings for both the PC/Windows and Mac worlds. Some of the new packages had already been announced, and were being shown for the first time at a trade show. These included Apple's Logic Studio and Logic Pro 8, which were at the Apogee booth along with the sleek new Duet interface. Cakewalk was showing off SONAR 7 and all its new MIDI, mastering, and other tools. Steinberg had Nuendo 4 on display at their booth, and Digidesign was touting Pro Tools version 7.4, which introduces "elastic time," among other new features. MOTU was showing the latest version of their MachFive sampler, which is now at version 2.

New software announced at the show included Cycling '74 Max 5, FXpansion BFD 2.0 (along with new sound libraries for BFD), BIAS Peak 6, Arturia Analog Factory 2.0, which brings the number of presets up to 3,500, Ableton Live 7 and numerous new Ableton software instruments, and Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 and Drumtracker (drum replacement software).

Eventide was showing a new control plug-in for the DSP8000 that runs within Pro Tools. Waves upped the ante for guitar amp/effects modeling with GTR 3.0. IK Multimedia introduced not only new virtual instruments, including the Sample Moog, but also "ARC," the Advanced Room Correction system, which uses a calibrated measurement microphone and a software plug-in to correct for room acoustics.

There's lots more to talk about from this year's AES - check back for all the latest news, information, and video! - Mitch Gallagher