Winter NAMM 2000 Report
Part One
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. Your NAMM Report staff was there, 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.
Please keep in mind that this 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. We hope you enjoy this first sneak preview.
ROLAND: They had so much new gear – so much cool new gear – that it’s tough to know where to begin. We had the privilege of seeing all this stuff put through its paces at the big Roland show the night before the official NAMM opening, and the crowd was suitably impressed. We’ll start with the addition to their VS workstation series, the VS-1880, which like its predecessors is a completely self-contained digital recording workstation with built-in digital mixing, optional effects processing, and CD-burning capabilities. You get 18 tracks of simultaneous playback, 8 tracks of simultaneous recording and 288 virtual tracks. Burning CDs is very efficient, thanks to a feature called Audio CD Image Format. Accessing CD writing menus and Mastering is a button push away.
The new MC-307 Groovebox is for the DJ who wants the old school feel with the cutting-edge of groove technology. All new patterns, realtime controls, PLUS accurate turntable emulation which has to be seen – and heard – to be believed. DJs who want the visceral vinyl feel should check this out.
The VG-88 V-Guitar System ($1295) also ranks high on the impressive scale. It’s a top-of-the-line guitar modeler, and the detail and variety of options are extraordinary. Features include nylon string guitar, brass sounds, and awesome guitar-oriented stuff like overdriven amp sounds and tube amp tones. We saw a great demonstration with this and were amazed. They were also showing the GR-33 ($695), the latest and most advanced in Roland’s extremely popular line of guitar synths. The GR-33 boasts a massive wave memory and over 350 stunning instrument sounds including analog synths, basses, nylon string guitars, orchestral sounds, a variety of instruments, choir sounds and more. It’s a great tool for a creative guitarist.
Need fat bass? The DB-700 ($1299) is Roland’s high-performance digital bass amp. It features COSM bass amp modeling to pack a lot of bass power and volume into a pretty compact and portable package. It’s perfect for mid or large sized performance venues.
They also were showing off their new XV Series of synths. The 3 XV synths are all 128-voices and include the XV-88 expandable keyboard, the XV-3080 rack module and the flagship XV-5080 rack module. They are all expandable and feature enormous internal wave memory – up to 64MB with 1,083 waves and sounds from many Roland classics, such as the JD-990 Super JD.
Expanding on the technology and innovation that made the Roland V-Drum kit so popular, the HPD-15 Hand Percussion Pad ($1295) is a perfect example of a seemingly simple idea executed brilliantly. Just like the name suggests, the HPD-15 is sort of the hand percussionist’s answer to the V-Drum kit. Percussionists can tap, slap and pound away like angry chimps. Like the V-Drum kit, the pads are touch sensitive for expressive performance, and the sounds are incredibly realistic. There’s even a “D-Beam” and dual ribbon controllers. Trust us, it rocks.
But Roland’s crowning achievement this NAMM, and one of the most exciting releases of the entire show, is a unique device called the VP-9000 VariPhrase Processor ($3295). The VP-9000 is difficult to describe. The basic principle is that the VP-9000 makes music “elastic.” It’s an audio processor that allows you to manipulate pitch, time and formants in real time via MIDI control. But the sound quality of the original sample remains the same, whatever you do with it. Speed it up, slow it down, but the pitch stays the same. You can also instantly match phrase loops from different sources to the same key and tempo. But the VP-9000 goes far beyond pitch correction, or sampling. Basically, you can take a vocal line, drum beat, or other musical phrase, and change the “character” of a song, all in real time. Seamlessly. Still a little unclear? Well, we saw a number of different demonstrations of the VP-9000, and with each demo our appreciation grew. The applications are mind-boggling, encompassing everything from remix tasks, to postproduction for audio and video, to a complete creative tool. You’re going to be hearing a lot about this new technology in the coming months, and Sweetwater will keep you up to date on all the latest developments.
CROWN: Their new CE 4000 amplifier was crankin’ out loud and clear at the Crown booth. The latest addition to their CE Series amps, the CE 4000 is being targeted to nightclubs and DJ systems, regional touring PAs, A/V rental houses and fixed installations. It’s one of the most efficient amplifiers that Crown has ever come out with: a switching amplifier design means the CE 4000’s BCA topology delivers massive amounts of power while generating just one-tenth the heat of a conventional amplifier. The CE 4000 delivers a solid 1800 watts per channel (both channels driven) into 2 Ohms, 1200 watts into 4 Ohms and 600 watts into 8 Ohms. For such a powerful amp, it was very lightweight, checking in at about 34lbs. Crown also gave us an award for outstanding sales in 1999.
Just as we get started we have to sign off. There’s not enough room in inSync to hold everything just yet. We’ll be back next week with much, much more information on the latest and greatest new toys we’ve uncovered. Stay tuned.