It’s every musician’s and music technology enthusiast’s favorite time of year: Winter NAMM. This is the show the whole industry has its eyes on, when the big guns in music technology roll out their hot new releases. As always, your inSync NAMM Report crew is there, scouring the enormous show floor to bring you the scoop on all the latest and greatest.
The NAMM Report is not intended as a complete listing of every single piece of new gear debuted at NAMM. 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 we thought you’d be most interested in hearing about, and some stuff that we just thought was cool.
If you see anything that catches your attention here (and we think you will), please give your Sales Engineer a call today! He or she can give you all the updated information.
Now, on with the show…
Line 6
• The all new Flextone III has amp tone from Line 6’s flagship Vetta, effects adapted from their award-winning MM4 and DL4 stomp box modelers, 16 classic Reverb types, and the exclusive A.I.R. II direct recording technology. At the heart of the Flextone III’s is its remarkable collection of Amp and Cabinet models – 32 to be exact.
Native Instruments
• VOKATOR, from Native Instruments, is not your father’s vocoder. In fact, it’s not just a vocoder, VOKATOR is also a sophisticated synthesizer, a granular sampler, and a virtual sound-fusion laboratory. Offering multiple modes of operation, VOKATOR opens vast new worlds of sound-design possibilities. Unlike its predecessors, VOKATOR’s advanced engine uses 1024 bands!
• INTAKT is a state-of-the-art sampler specifically designed for rhythmic loop playback, manipulation, and mayhem. INTAKT’s convenient one-screen interface features tremendous sound shaping abilities without disrupting the creative flow.
• KOMPAKT is a streamlined sampler that ships with a comprehensive library and has the ability to import the most common sample formats. Powered by the efficient KONTAKT engine, KOMPAKT combines intuitive handling and a capable architecture with excellent sound quality.
Sibelius
• Designed by guitarists for guitarists, G7 from Sibelius, provides an extremely fast way for you to create signature riffs. It even reads and plays tab from other people, making it easy to learn new songs. But that’s not all. G7 will turn tab into notation and let you create lead sheets – add chord symbols, chord diagrams, lyrics and more.
TL Audio
• The 5052 Stereo Valve Processor is the latest addition to the Ivory 2 series from TL Audio. We first laid our eyes and ears on the Ivory 2 series at the 113th AES convention, but the 5052 was not complete enough to show then. The 5052 provides everything you would expect from a channel strip product, and then doubles it – making it a front end and stereo mixdown and mastering device. While most channel strip products provide a single mono channel made up of single preamp, dynamics and EQ stages, the 5052 provides two channels of each with independent stereo linking of the compressor, EQ and limiter sections. Recording a stereo source to hard disc through the 5052 becomes simplicity itself, yet when it comes to mixdown the 5052 come into its own by offering full stereo linked EQ and dynamics, allowing processing of the stereo mix buss while mixing.
Vox
• Back in the early ’70s (as the story goes), a little amp was built from salvaged amp parts from a refuse heap and May’s handcrafted “Treble Booster” pedal. Now, in collaboration with Brian May, VOX has introduced a new amp that will allow guitar enthusiasts to achieve the greatly desired effect of May and Deacon’s original and legendary amp. Called the Brian May Special, this 10-watt combo amp is suprisingly small but sounds a great deal like May’s homemade “Deacy” system.