| What’s more excitable than a gear-head set loose on a new piece of equipment? Try a few thousand gear-heads set loose at the coolest music technology show on Earth. Winter NAMM is Mecca for gear-heads, technobabblers, audio-troggs, knob-jockeys, hifi-hooligans and all manner of creatures left slack-jawed and mesmerized at the sight of blinking lights and shiny objects. And there was plenty at Winter NAMM to stir any gear-head’s ardor. Those of you who have had the privilege of attending a NAMM show can attest to the fact that this thing is HUGE. According to sources, there were over 62,000 attendees this year. Your NAMM Report staff was among them, snapping pictures, pressing buttons, and asking questions, all in the effort to bring you the best of the best — and a few "sleepers" we thought you’d be interested in.
General trends were hard to pin down. There was a lot of new gear and instruments being shown this year, and a lot of diversity. Basically, USB interfaces seem to be the wave of the future for digital audio and computer-based recording, as many predicted. Also in great evidence this year: everyone seems to want the sound and feel of analog, with the performance, and easy operation of digital. We must have heard the phrase "...just like analog..." a thousand times. Of course, these ideas aren’t necessarily new, just getting to you in better quality, smaller, less expensive, and easier-to-use equipment. Hard disk systems are popping up everywhere. We only saw one new tape machine, Tascam's DA-98HR, which is very cool by the way. Was there anything revolutionary? Anything that is going to radically change the way we make music? Well, without trying to be coy, you’ll have to read on. Roland is pretty excited about their VP-9000, and it is one of those products that's so revolutionary it's hard to pin down exactly what it does and what the applications are. We’ll have to wait until it’s out in the world among the recording professionals and musicians before we can put it's importance in context. All hype aside, what we saw of it was pretty impressive. . . Remember, when MIDI first arrived on the scene people thought it was just an easier way to layer keyboards together. Obligatory disclaimer: Please keep in mind that this report is not intended as a complete listing of all new or relevant products debuted at this NAMM show, nor is all of the information here guaranteed to be 100% correct. In many cases, manufacturers are still solidifying things like price, availability, and features. We gathered all we could from the things that caught our eye and hope you enjoy this first sneak preview. Much more info will be included in our inSync column in the coming weeks. |
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Part of the West Wing showing less than 10% of the NAMM exhibits.
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