Winter NAMM 2001 Report
Part 2
Welcome back. Here is your report for day two of the NAMM show, live from the convention floor. There’s more cool new gear out here than you can shake a stick at, but I’ll try to hit some more of the highlights for you.
Looking to get more DSP power for plug-ins with your DAW? TC Electronic was demonstrating the new Power Core – a PCI card with extremely powerful DSP chips. The card’s 4 Motorola 56362/100 MHz chips and 1 Power PC 8240/200 MHz chip deliver professional signal processing into any VST compatible software, such as Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, Spark or Peak. Plug-ins must be re-written specifically for this format, but TC has already ported over their previously TDM-only TC Tools suite, complete with Mega Reverb, TC EQ and TC Chorus/Delay. By the time this card is released (projected for April) all of TC’s TDM plug-ins should be released in this format including the multiband mastering processor, MasterX. How powerful is this card? According to TC, it can run 8 of the high end reverbs or mastering plug-ins simultaneously. Ask any ProTools TDM owner how much power that takes!
Guitar players also had a reason to check out the TC Electronic booth. The new G Major processor and G Minor controller will be on a lot of player’s wish lists. The single rack space G Major includes such guitar essential effects as reverb, delay, compression, chorus/flange, filter/mod pitch, tap delay and gate. Programming is intuitive, routing is flexible, and preset change is fast and smooth for live performance (you can even get true overhang of echos!). The G Minor is an easy to use, programmable foot controller which can be used with any MIDI device, but will integrate seamlessly with the G Major.
RME was displaying their new Hammerfall DSP system PCMCIA card for mobile hard disk recording in laptops. The system consists of a PCMCIA type II card that can be coupled with various I/O boxes. The first to be released will be the Multiface, which sports 3 ADAT optical I/O’s, ADAT sync in, S/PDIF I/O, word clock I/O and 2 MIDI I/O’s. The card uses the full width of the CardBus interface and has RME’s ASIO drivers burned onto the onboard DSP for extremely low latency. With the increased power of today’s laptops, the RME system may finally bring a high quality way to input multichannel audio into these computers, allowing them to realize their full potential as digital audio workstations.
Propellerheads’ new Reason software was making quite a stir. Long available only as a downloadable demo, the full version of the software was finally on display. Reason has a full-featured audio mixer and a complete sequencer, as well as a number of modules for generating, playing back, and processing sounds. Included are the NN19 Sampler (complete with 294 patches), the Subtractor synthesizer, the ReDrum drum machine, and the Dr Rex Rex file player. Rex loops, created in ReCycle, automatically match the tempo of the sequencer they are used with, and Reason includes 300 drum loops and 100 music loops to get you started. Digital effects are also available, including reverb, digital delay, distortion, envelope controlled filter, chorus/flanger and parametric EQ. All this for a list price of just $399.
Sennheiser was showing off 4 new models in their RS wireless headphone series, the RS30, RS40, RS60 and RS80. The top of the line RS60 uses SRS Labs’ technology based on the same principles that allow us to hear natural sounds in three dimensions. By recognizing, and then emphasizing these sound localization cues, SRS processing removes the recorded sound from “between the ears” and places it in surround. The RS40, 60 and 80 all feature “on hook charging”, which allows the battery to recharge whenever the phones are set on the base transmitter.
Dynaudio had their new BM5.1A mixing system, which consists of 5 matched BM6A nearfield monitors and 1 BX30 Bass Extension System. The BM6A’s feature a 7″ woofer with a 2″ voice coil, a 1″ soft dome tweeter, 2 high performance 100W MOSFET amps and an electronic 4th order crossover. The BX30 uses a 12″ woofer with a 4″ voice coil in a ported cabinet powered by a 130W amp. At a list price of $9497 this system is not inexpensive, but quality like this doesn’t come cheaply!
That about wraps up day two of the on-the-scene NAMM coverage. There’s a lot more new gear to talk about tomorrow, so stay tuned. This is David Klausner, signing off for now from Anaheim.