Travel Report for Michael Bierylo
AES New York, Fall 2007
Overview
I had the best of intentions for my trip to NYC for the AES convention this Fall. I would balance my time between technical presentations, trade show exhibits and general schmoozing. Boy, was I wrong, and I once again, I realized that you really can’t plan your time at a convention or trade show; it just doesn’t work. It became obvious that two days was not enough when after my first two hours at the show, I hadn’t made it twenty feet past the front door. The show for me this year was really more about people than gear, and in my conversations that weekend with students, vendors, and fellow educators, I found two heartening trends: there is work to be had out there, and people still really care about how stuff sounds.
The Berklee Alumni Brunch was a runaway success, with the hotel staff scrambling to set up more seats early on. However, most of my conversations with alumni were on the show floor where many, even ones I didn’t know, were working for a wide range of manufacturers, or were pacing the aisles as attendees. Recent dual major grad, Barry Threw seemed to be everywhere at once and was anxious to talk about the myriad of projects he was involved with –at least the ones not bound by NDAs. Barry and his mentor, Peter Otto from UCSD, spoke at length about the work they were doing with immersive entertainment environments.
At the brunch I spoke with Thomas Owen, who is finishing a teaching assignment in Florida and is currently looking at opportunities in the private sector. Continuing a conversation that started at AES NYC two years ago, Johnathan Belzley is working in Hollywood with Gavin Lurssen in new venture after leaving the Doug Sax’s Mastering Lab. He says that their business started with a solid client base and is rapidly expanding. While, from Jonathan's perspective, mastering is a growth industry, his brother, Aaron, a recent Music Business grad had a slightly different perspective, as the Digital Production Manager at Verve. He spoke of dozens of never released Coltrane sessions in storage, and while these recordings may be of significant historical interest, the company is reluctant to invest in their release, especially with mastering mastering budgets at a maximum of 1000.00 per release.
Also at the brunch I had the opportunity to speak with one LA-based engineer, who shall remain nameless, about his work with the A-list of current pop artists. I asked him if he he could share any tools or techniques that contribute to the sound of current hits from Justin Timberlake and company. His immediate response was that he really didn’t like the sound of the music on the radio; case closed....go figure.
What follows is a quick round-up of a few things that caught my attention from the manufacturer exhibits.
As usual, Harmony Central offers an excellent compilation of product announcements from the show at: http://aes.harmony-central.com/123AES/Index/
Analog Consoles
API must have spiked the drinking water at the Javits Center because when I asked anyone about what they thought was cool, the answer that kept coming up was the 50,000.00 API 1608 recording console. This is definitely not something you would hear at a NAMM show, and while it’s hard to see how a product at that price point would survive in the market, those I spoke to thought it was a great value on sound quality alone.
While a full featured SSL AWS 900+ console goes for twice the cost of the API, SSL has managed to come up with their own impressive line of analog audio components designed to work in a digital production environment. As a sign of their success in this area, the X Logic Alpha Channel won a TEC award this year.
Jazz Mutant
Catherine Bollet, the sales manager for Jazz Mutant, was not aware that the Music Synthesis Department at Berklee had a Lemur. They would like to focus more on getting Lemurs into Higher Eduction and they offer educational discounts on their products. A Berklee grad, Kevin McNoldy from a company called Magic Audio, is their US national sales rep., and he should be able to help us with pricing on their products. The big news at AES was an upcoming software update will add Dexter functionality to Lemur. This will be a paid update for Lemur owners, while Dexter owners will get Lemur software for free. The two products share the identical hardware. Lemur is most useful for designing custom performance interfaces, while Dexter is an impressive dedicated control surface for DAW software. Their show demo controlling Logic 8 pointed to some interesting user interface innovations that are unique to a touch-screen interface.
Digidesign
While many expected a new line of hardware to update Digidesign’s current HD systems, nothing along those lines was in sight. Although Digi is an undisputed market leader, their AES presence was considerably understated compared to what we are used to seeing at NAMM. At AES, Digi brushed aside the last vestige of their collaboration with Focusrite, the Control 24, with an updated controller, the C24. This revision aligns the form and functionally of this product with their existing “D” series of Pro Tools control surfaces, offering complete user interface compatibility between the two. The C24 adds some of the monitoring features found in the X-Mon component of the larger systems. A generous trade-in program will be available for owners of the original Control 24.
Local and regional Digidesign reps Brian Dose and Andrew Harris, familiar to many of us at Berklee, were not at AES and soon thereafter, were let go in an apparent cost-cutting effort.
Apogee/Apple
While Apple had a couple of offices available for meetings, they had no presence on the show floor itself. This was somewhat surprising since the AES show came right after the release of their flagship audio production suite, Logic Studio. However, there was plenty of action at the Apogee booth where the new Duet stereo interface was on display. While some sort of product along these lines was rumored to be forthcoming from Apple, Apogee came through. The unit has a sleek, stylish design that uses the same converters and preamps as the eight-channel Ensemble released a couple of years back. At a suggested retail price of 500.00, this is a high-quality interface that reputedly outperforms the Mini-Me in terms of audio quality. At the request of location recording engineers, the new Ensemble Mobile allows an Ensemble interface to run on battery power.
Presonus
While the AES show floor abounds with high-end, esoteric audio designs, the majority of these designer/manufacturers lack the marketed and distribution prowess necessary to succeed in the mass market. In what one hopes to be a coming trend, Anthony Demaria Labs has partnered with Presonus, providing the design for a new microphone preamp, the ADL 600 - Two-Channel High-Voltage Tube Preamp. At a 2000.00 price point this product weighs in at the top of the Presonus range, but may introduce a higher level of audio quality to a new generation of project studio producers.
Flash Recorders
Last year Sony made a splash with the PCM-D1, their 2000.00, pro flash recorder. While this is a high quality recording device, it was released into a market dominated by much cheaper products. This year, Sony addressed that with the PCM-D50 recorder, a smaller, cheaper flash recorder, that retains many of the features, and the converters, but with a lighter construction and less exacting microphone preamps. The list price is 599.00.
While M-Audio had no booth at AES, they did “announce” an updated MicroTrack. The new model adds USB 2.0 for faster transfers, an auto-limiter, and can record single files larger than 2GB, all for essentially the same price of the original.
MAX
Perhaps the most anticipated software development at AES was Max 5 from Cycling 74. While updates over the years have focused on new, updated objects and support for new OS technologies, the basic look and feel of MAX hasn’t changed much since it’s initial commercial release from Opcode. (Remember them?) MAX 5 addresses this with a complete rewrite of the entire underlining code, aligning it with current hardware and OS software platforms. A revised user interface includes a variety of on-screen de-bugging tools. Some of these, like the visual display of signal level at any connection, could easily translate into powerful teaching tools. Visually, objects are much easier to look at, and a new user interface view separates the underlying patch structure from how it appears to a user/performer. No update pricing was available, and while Q1 2008 was the target for release, Cycling 74 hoped to be ready to ship by Winter NAMM 2008.
Pro Tools
Along with the new C24 surface, Digidesign was showing the latest version of its Pro Tools software. From what was touted at the show, one might be led to believe that there is only one new feature in version 7.4: really great time stretching tools; the buzzword at Digi was “Elastic Time.” While this offers some interesting sound design possibilities, it seems that when Digi and others now cites something as a new “creative tool,” they really mean that it’s a new way to fix botched performances. Pro Tool 7.4 should be shipping in late November, following a cycle we’ve seen from Digi in the last several major releases. There’s no word on Leopard support, which won’t be addressed in the initial release.
Pro Tools LE Surround
Ever since Tech Division students started getting M-Box 2 Pro systems as part of their major bundle, they’ve been asking about surround support in LE. While the party line at Digi is that LE systems really aren’t powerful enough to support surround, it was only a matter of time before an enterprising development partner addressed this. Neyrinck Audio, which started by developing surround encoding software for Pro Tools, has provided a solution with their release of the Mix 51 RTAS Surround Panner plug-in for Pro Tools LE. This system uses the existing bus system in RTAS to route a 5.1 mix to six outputs of any multi-output LE or M-powered system, along with four quad sends that are routed to stereo Aux channels. The list price for Mix 51 is 189.00 and there is a fully functioning 14-day demo available on their Website. While this may be a perfect solution for students who want to experiment with surround in Pro Tools at home, the down side is that there is no elegant way to translate a session done with Mix 51 to a Pro Tools HD surround session. You pretty much have to rebuild the surround bussing architecture.
Tascam Gigastudio
Tascam announced version 4 of both their flagship Gigastudio system and the GVI plugin. While Gigastudio remains a PC-only product, the GVI plugin for Mac that was announced at Winter NAMM has yet to make it to market. Mac support is promised for GVI 4, but no ship date was announced. Speaking with one sample library manufacturer who works closely with Tascam on Giga products, it seems that in reality, Mac support may be a long way off.
SSL Software
While SSL has been looking at ways its existing core technologies can be marketed to project studio users, at AES they offered a couple of products aimed directly at the Pro Tools user base. Fadi Hayek, who many of us know from his hard work evangelizing Nuendo, was on hand to talk about one of these, Pro Convert. Days before the show, SSL acquired this translation software from a German developer. Their claim is that Pro Convert will translate the meta data from one session format to another, including plug-ins and plug-in settings. This appears to be several steps beyond the current capabilities of OMF and AAF formats, and will go so far as to save the translation as an actual Pro Tools session. Fadi visited Berklee last summer and would be happy to return at any time. He mentions that there are academic discounts available for SSL products and he would like to set that up through Vendor Offers on Campus Cruiser.
IK Multimedia ARC
While JBL was the first company to introduce acoustic analysis and correction tools in a studio monitor, users need to buy their speaker to take advantage of this capability. IK Multimedia has taken a different approach with its ARC Advanced Room Correction. The system announced at AES includes a calibrated microphone and analysis software that provides data used to set EQ parameters on a mix bus insert, designed to compensate for the acoustic anomalies found in any room. The advantage here is that the system can be used with any monitor system. While the list price for this is going to be 699.00, IK Multimedia offers a 499.00 cross-grade to existing customers, which would include any student who registers Amplitude LE that comes with their M-Box Pro bundle. This might be a good solution for students who, even with studios available, will still spend time mixing at home. The AES show floor was no place to listen to this, however the company would be very interested in visiting Berklee and making a presentation.
Arturia
Arturia made a name for itself creating emulations of classic analog instruments, and their latest offerings focus on products that consolidate these technologies. Analog Factory is a system that includes a software library of patches using algorithms from their complete line of instruments. Also included is a controller that allows editing of the most common/useful parameters. Although the system offers a veritable anthology of classic synthesizer sounds, it offers only limited programming capabilities. At AES, Arturia was showing the forthcoming version 2 that includes patches from their Jupiter-8V.
People
While it would be hard to summarize all the conversations I had over a couple of days at AES, here are a few.
Dave Greenspan is the studio manager for the studios at the University of Michigan. Last year he oversaw the construction of a major new studio desiged by John Storyk in a state-of the-art multimedia center at U of M. He chose an API Vision console for this new facility and this year he was eyeing their new 1608 for updates of smaller facilities. Asked why U of M was investing in analog technologies, Greenspan said one of their main criteria for studio acquisitions was sound quality, and the “API stuff sounds great.”
I ran into Sonivox founder Jennifer Hruska at the show. She recently hired Music Synthesis grad Katherine Bigby and was showing her the ropes at AES. Since a number of Music Synthesis students and alumni, have worked for the company, our discussion centered on education and the expectations the industry has for entry-level employees. Jennifer also expressed interest in exploring some sort of teaching role at Berklee. This is good news as she would have a great deal to offer students both as a sound designer and an entrepreneur.
Former MP&E faculty member Bill Crabtree doing well in his job at MTSU. Their program is an interesting contrast to Berklee’s, as engineering and production is part of a Recording Industry concentrate that includes topics covering the business as well. He reports that Nashville has a very active AES chapter and that many of the students in their program are involved. Bill extends an open invitation to anyone from Berklee to visit their campus.
Berklee alum Larry the O (Oppenheimer) has a new gig as Product Manager for BIAS Peak. Aside from evangelizing Peak, he highly recommended Thailand as a vacation destination and reports that former Lexicon engineer Gary Hall, father of the PCM 42, is now living there comfortably.
Whether at NAMM or now AES, I always manage to have an interesting conversation with Gary Karlsrud from M-Audio about the music technology industry. Gary spoke of some of the changes brought about by the host of legislation designed to prevent corporate fraud along the lines of the episodes with Enron and Tyco. Apparently, the stricter accounting practices, legislated as a result, deprive manufacturers of the certain types of incentives that would traditionally fuel their business. With sales across the industry more of less flat, we brainstormed what might be the next big technology to stimulate business. We settled on some sort of lifestyle appliance for musicians and called it a day.
Berklee alum, former faculty member, and all around good guy, Geoff Gee was at the Tascam booth showing Plectrum, his new sampled instrument library that’s being distributed by Ilio. The collection is a tour de force of creative sampling and processing techniques that yields 185 unique and very playable instruments. These are all made from various sound sources found around the farm in Hebron, New York where he and his family now make their home.
Korg was doing well at the show with a lot of interest in the MR-1 and MR-1000 recorders. Jerry Kovarsky, US product manager for Korg synthesizers reiterated Korg’s interest in education and would very much like to arrange another visit to Berklee.
Once again, thanks for reading this and please let me know if you have any comments.
eMBee
October 2007