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…
Cakewalk
• Project5 goes beyond stand-alone soft-synth “rack” software by providing a complete studio environment. It gives electronic musicians everything they need to experiment, create, and perform music using integrated sequencers, software synths, samplers, audio and MIDI effects, and audio looping tools – all integrated into one workstation. In addition Project5 provides advanced capabilities for synth layering, real-time pattern genesis and triggering, and a seamless live-performance audio engine.
Digitech
• Meet the newest member of Digitech’s bass modeling floor processor line – the new feature-packed BP50. Their bass guitar-freak engineers (we actually met one) built the BP50 with the great tone and effects you expect from DigiTech, including award-winning amp and cabinet modeling plus an arsenal of studio- quality effects designed specifically for the bass.
• DigiTech’s new RPx400 is an interesting device to describe – you might think of it as a modeling floor processor with direct XLR outs (to PA), and a USB recording interface with all of the I/O many of us would ever need. In other words it’s a blend of a live and studio tool. On the recording side of things, the RPx400 lets you capture tracks on a PC via USB and with the included made for DigiTech Cakewalk software. Whether you’re in the studio or on stage, with 12 popular amp models, 6 cabinet models and single coil and humbucking pickup modeling your guitar is ready for any style of playing. It also includes a mic preamp with XLR input and a built-in drum machine. All of the models sound great and with everything the RPx400 has to offer, it is sure to find a home in many musicians’ gig rig.
• A stomp box for vocalists? Essentially, it’s a rack of vocal processing in a box that you can control from stage or studio with your feet – just like guitarists have been doing it for decades! As crazy as the concept sounds, the new Vx400 Vocal Floor Processor just might become the touring and gigging vocalist’s new best friend. Featuring a mic preamp, 40 presets and foot control, the Vx400 couldn’t be easier to use. It also features several vocal “Characters” such as Monster, Chipmunk, Telephone and Overdrive and “Effects” such as Chorus, Tremolo, Doubler, Whammy and more. Of course, there’s a three-band EQ and full-function compressor as well. The Vx400 is a really cool box for the vocalist who wants to maintain complete control over his or her sound.
Emagic
• Boasting better processor efficiency and more editing and mixing power than ever before, Logic 6 promises to be a real boon to Logic users and great incentive for the uninitiated to get on-board. Among the wealth of features and enhancements (20 in all) are Setup Assistant and Project Manager, an improved feature set for film scoring, a newly-developed EQ, MP3 import/export functionality, and more. The new Project Manager is a serious addition to Logic 6 that many end users will really come to appreciate.
E-MU
• New from E-MU is the Vintage Keys that delivers over 30 classic keyboards in a high quality, 61-key package. The brand new 32 MB soundset includes the legendary synth and keyboard sounds that defined music in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s putting over three decades of classic sounds at your fingertips. Vintage Keys also allows you to expand your soundset to match your individual sound requirements with any of the Proteus expansion ROMs. Real-time controllers and other performance features deliver the vintage keyboard sounds in a package that invites performance.
Eventide
• Almost thirty years ago, Eventide Clockworks introduced the first Harmonizer brand effects processors. Now for the first time Eventide has introduced a suite of software plug-ins: the Clockworks Legacy for Digidesign ProTools TDM. These products have been painstakingly rendered by the engineers at Eventide to faithfully recreate in unrelenting detail the unique character of each of these dedicated processors. Full automation and MIDI control have been added to take full advantage of the power and flexibility of Pro Tools.
• Recreating the legendary reverb algorithms of Eventide’s SP2016 – Stereo Room, Room Reverb and High Density Plate – is the Reverb 2016. Every aspect of the original effects has been duplicated including every detail of the user parameters. While the algorithms are identical to the originals, the hardware implementation is state-of-the-art, with features that include a high performance 24 bit DSP, 24 bit analog audio I/O, digital I/O and MIDI interface. As everything old becomes new again, we’re extremely pleased to see (and hear) classic reverb such as the SP2016 coming back into play.