Welcome to the final NAMM InSync. Today’s inSync also includes a little on MacWorld, too…
Audio Technica gave us a look at their new Artist Elite Series. The results of extensive research on Audio Technica’s part, the Artist Elite Series consists of four handheld vocal mics built to deliver pristine studio quality sound for touring bands. The Artist Elite Series mics aren’t really “rough n’ ready, toss them in the back of the van when the gig is through” budget mics, but they don’t have to be handled with kid gloves, either. Each mic features superior anti-shock engineering and rugged construction. They sound fantastic! You can read all the details in the NAMM Report.
Opcode is back, thanks to Gibson guitars, and they were looking pretty good for being gone for… what is it? About three years? Anyway, they’re back in force with several cool new interfaces, including the SonicPort Studio Series.
Bassists would approve of what was going on at the DigiTech booth. No less than 4 new bass effects pedals were getting their first glimpse of an unsuspecting world. In appearance, these are basic, meat-and-potatoes effects pedals rather than fancy mega-boards, but they offer a ton of features and sound great. The line-up includes the Bass Wah with several different types of sounds to choose from, and the Bass Squeeze compression/ sustainer pedal.
Of course, 2002 Summer NAMM wasn’t the only big news happening in the world of pro audio during the month of July. We were also at the MacWorld Expo in New York, and have plenty of exciting news to pass on!
Sweetwater is an Apple re-seller, but most importantly we’ve been leaders in computer-based audio production since making music with computers was a place where only the super-tweaky dared to tread. Now, computer-based audio production is commonplace at all levels of the industry. We’ve helped design thousands of turnkey systems for a huge range of clients, but maybe an even better indicator of the prevalence of computer-based audio production was the number of folks we talked to at MacWorld who weren’t strictly musical but were still familiar with many of the issues in our industry.
Apple’s recent acquisition of Emagic was the most music-centric topic at the show. We heard plenty of viewpoints, and in the end came away from MacWorld with a lot of questions answered and a lot of concerns put to rest. Another important announcement was the imminent release of Jaguar, the latest Mac OS upgrade (OS10.2). Jaguar includes a selection of MIDI and Audio configuration tools similar to OMS and FreeMIDI, so users can define their studio configuration at the system level.
Of course, there’s much more to tell you about MacWorld – like the keynote address with some cool new products – and you can find full, detailed coverage in our MacWorld Report, now online and ready for your perusal.