Travel Report for
Michael Bierylo
NAMM 2005
Overview
Over the last few years, much of the music technology news from NAMM has
been related to the migration of music making and production tools to
the desktop. In a few short years, there has been an explosion of software
synthesizers, DAWs, soundware and processing tools of all sorts. In a
sign of the times, AKAI,
who for many years hosted a wide range of products in an expansive display
area, was down to showing a few MPC-class groove boxes in a small, off
to the side booth this year. Despite this trend, if there was any news
from this year’s NAMM it’s that hardware is back. Between
industry stalwarts who refuse to roll over and die and innovative newcomers,
I’d have to say that some of the most visible developments were
in the hardware arena.
NAMM is a sales show, but in recent years, one might question who is doing the real shopping: retailers, or companies trolling for merger and acquisition targets. There has been a trend toward consolidation in the music technology industry that began in 2002 with Apple scooping up eMagic. This year we got a glimpse of where some of this were headed. While Logic seems to have flourished under Apple, Steinberg with Pinnacle did not, and Cubase and Nuendo now find their home with Yamaha after a deal finalized at the show. Since the new arrangement was being worked out, Steinberg still had their own booth, with nary a mention of the proud new parent. Leading up to this, the two companies had joined forces to develop Studio Connections, a protocol for integrating audio and MIDI connections between hardware synthesizers and software hosts.
With version 7, Logic is decidedly a part of the Apple Pro Applications line. At NAMM the focus was on how GarageBand and the two levels of Logic were integrated, mirroring the relationship that exists between Apple’s video applications. With Logic Pro, one of the big talking points was distributed processing, and how producers could expand the power of their systems by adding X-Serves to their systems. Apple is clearly focused on addressing the limited capabilities of native processing in comparison to the expandable architecture offered by DigiDesign’s DSP cards.
With some music technology trends, one has to ask whether the industry is responding to the needs of practicing musicians or is promoting products that change the nature of what musicians do. It seems that we are living in an era of editor as composer. Producers of all sorts are increasingly capable of authoring content from pre-existing materials. Sony has moved into this arena in a big way, releasing the Sound Studio line of high-quality sampled performances designed to feed Acid, the PC standard loop sequencer they took on when they acquired Sonic Foundry in 2003. Like Apple and Avid, Sony is highly invested in video production tools, as well as the idea that anyone should be able to produce music. What lies ahead for musicians? Will we be producing music or construction kits?
Manufacturers seem to be looking at release cycles independently of trade
shows, and despite the fact that major players like Apple and Digidesign
had few announcements, this was a good year for all sorts of electronic
instruments and music technology tools. Stuff keeps getting better and
cheaper.
As in the past, this year's report makes no claim to be an exhaustive
analysis; rather it is a collection of impressions from the show. For
a more complete round up of new products, I highly suggest the following:
Also, be sure to check out Music Synthesis Lab Manager Claire Steger's NAMM report as well.
This year’s NAMM saw two significant developments in hardware-based electronic instruments: hard disk recording capability in hardware synthesizers and the integration of audio and MIDI I/O into the virtual studio environment. In the “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” category, Access was showing a working prototype of their new Virus TI line of synthesizers. TI stands for total integration, and by that, they mean seamless integration of audio and MIDI data streams into and out of a DAW using the host’s plug-in architecture, either AU or VST. The Virus, once a standalone synthesizer, can now serve as an audio interface with balanced analog inputs and S/PDIF, a MIDI interface, and a control surface. The unit shows up as an audio instrument in the host exactly the same as a software plug in, complete with an editor and a patch librarian. One of the big advantages here is that since all DSP is done in the synthesizer itself, it takes the burden off the host’s processor, and yields sample-accurate timing. Connection to the host machine is by standard USB, and both Mac and PC drivers will be available.
Korg’s new uber-synth, Oasys, combines all of the synthesis techniques in recent their history as well as the capabilities of the synthkit software that was behind the Oasys PCI card. Oasys was a dedicated DSP based system that boasted high quality modeled instruments and effects that appeared in a host device as a plug-in. Korg abandoned further development with the advent of Mac OSX. The Oasys emerges as the 8000.00 flagship of Korg’s next generation of hardware synthesizers. The operating system for the keyboard in based on a Pentium P4, and runs a variant of LINUX. This should ideally provide an easy way for Korg to scale variants on this platform. As it stands, the Oasys includes an expanded PCM "rompler" architecture, wavesequencing a la their Wavestation line, analog and tone wheel modeling, as well as expanded KARMA functions. Imagine all of their currently shipping instruments as well as a Wavestation thrown into a big silver box, and you get the idea. According to KORG however, this is only the beginning, and that we can expect a torrent of updated synthesis architectures in the not too distant future.
Like the Oasys, the new Fusion synthesizer from Alesis is a next generation keyboard workstation designed to be a platform for various synthesis architectures and techniques. The Fusion synth engine includes sample playback, virtual analog, FM, and physical modeling. Where it differs from the Korg Oasys is in expandability. Although the Fusion's architecture won't be open-ended, it will sell for $2000.00, considerably less than the new Korg, when it ships later this year. I would imagine that for future Music Synthesis lab updates, this instrument would merit serious consideration.
Both the new Korg and Alesis flagship instruments include full-featured hard disk recording and editing capabilities. While DAW manufacturers have nothing to fear, keyboard players will now be able to use disk tracks without a computer or other ancillary gear. For the most part, the 24-bit recording capabilities are intended to be used more as a mobile sketchpad than a production tool. However, this feature will enable working musicians to accomplish some essential tasks like recording rehearsals and playing backing tracks in performance, that will once again make the investment in hardware more attractive.
Extreme Analog
There have always been a number of small boutique manufacturers cropping up at NAMM, and for many years some of the coolest have found a home at the Big City Music booth. Big City is an LA-based distributor of new analog synthesis gear, like modules from Buchla and Analogue Systems. It was only a matter of time before the glitch aesthetic made it’s way from the yard sale to the new products category. This year, Metasonix, perhaps the most irreverent manufacturers in the MI industry, was showing the TX-1 Agonizer. This $500.00, limited-issue box is based around an obscure TV tube from the1960’s that was never intended for audio purposes. With controls labeled Pound, Strangle and Grind this is one nasty box. Also showing at Big City was the new Mellotron Mk VI. (Yes, this the real thing.) In addition, recent Berklee Artist in Residence Gary Chang spent the good part of one morning of the show pouring over the new $20,000 Buchla 200e modular system.
Control Surfaces
Everyone is now on the control surface bandwagon. New directions here include the Frontier Design Group's Tranzport, which uses RF technology for wireless control of DAW transport functions. Anyone who uses a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard will immediately understand how cool this is. Aside from bolstering studio ergonomics, this technology will prove useful to anyone who records themselves, by allowing them to record away from the noise and clutter that may surround their computer.
Korg introduced their next generation control surface, the Kontrol 49. (a nod to German software culture, or a sign of things to come?) The additional, and larger keys makes this more playable than the MicroKontrol. The real news here is beneath the hood with Korg's new Native Mode. This is a simple control protocol (Protokol?) for bilateral communication between The Kontrol 49 and a software client, that allows for updating controller assignments, including text labels, for the onboard displays. Currently this will be supported by Reason 3.0 as well as Korg's Legacy collection of software instruments. What's interesting about this is that this protocol is not part of the MIDI spec. According the Propellerheads, this protocol is something more akin to XML than SYSEX. Korg did a great job of getting the word out on this, as the Kontrol 49 seemed to be everywhere at the show.
Although most keyboard controllers are based on standard knob and fader physical controllers, the Alesis line of Photon controllers includes a D-Beam-like XYZ-plane controller. Taking this quite a few steps further, Cycling 74 debuted Lemur, a very cool touch screen control surface from the French company JazzMutant, designed for electronic music performance. Lemur features a variety of on-screen objects that can be configured to respond to touch and motion in a variety of ways. Lemur uses the OSC, Open Sound Control, protocol to send control data over 100-base Ethernet. Currently MAX/MSP and Reaktor support this emerging protocol which provides many advantages over MIDI, not the least of which is higher bandwidth and no latency.
Some
Guys Have all the Luck
A few years back, Moog
Music had the misfortune to be within close proximity to the Gemini
DJ booth, which that year featured bikini-clad cage dancers. Despite
the distraction, Bob probably still managed to sell a few Moogerfoogers.
Since then, Moog Music has been steady in producing great-sounding new
analog instruments. (and chose a new location for their booth.) This year,
Moog was showing a new rack-mounted version of their Voyager synth. Next
door however, was the German company Radikal Technologies. Although their
claim to fame comes from a control surface released a couple of years
ago, they were demonstrating what had to be the best sounding electronic
instrument at the show,
Spectralis. This tabletop device is a hybrid synth which features
modeled oscillators with analog filters, along with a step sequencer for
both note and control information. It also features sample playback capability,
and with a USB 2 connection, Mac and PC users can drag and drop audio
files from their desktop to Spectralis. All program, setup, sequence and
sound data can be stored to a computer as well as Smart Media cards. In
addition to a forward-looking design and feature set, this thing sounds
great. With a steady flow of curious synth-heads making their way to see
the Spectralis, I’ll bet this year Moog music would have preferred
to be back next to Gemini.
NI
Native
Instruments usually uses NAMM as an opportunity to announce a deluge
of new products, but with the recent release of significant upgrades to
Absynth
and Battery,
their NAMM releases focused more on supporting their existing products
than on expanding the line. They did, however, announce Kontakt
2.0, a significant update to their flagship sampling product. In addition
to a number performance enhancements, Kontakt will take a cue from MOTU’s
Mach
Five and support surround formats, as well as provide a utility for
translations from any legacy sampler format. (Good news for us K2kxx users)
The one interesting addition will be a built-in scripting language, KSP,
that will enable some fairly sophisticated routing and processing of MIDI
data, somewhat similar to the KARMA function found in some of Korg’s
synthesizers. Although they claim a March 2005 release, I heard that the
feature set had only been decided the week before NAMM, and that they
were showing a early alpha version at the show.
FM
Shall Ride Again.
Ableton released
version 4.1 of Live. Perhaps the most significant addition is a new FM
instrument, Operator.
The addition of MIDI to Live in version 4.0 allows Ableton to expand their
initial product line to software instruments that are add-ons to their
basic platform. The initial 4.0 release included two free instruments,
Simpler and Impulse. Now with Operator, they are charging $150.00. Is
it worth it? Operator is a kind of FM hybrid that fits somewhere between
FM7
and Logic’s EFM1.
It has four multimode oscillators the can be configured into nine different
algorithms, as well as a filter section. This new addition comes with
six tutorial lessons to get novices up and running, Abelton is looking
to integrate some interesting instruments into their basic toolset, and
you can expect more of this type of development from Ableton in the future.
M-Audio
M-Audio showed no sign of slowing development under the Digidesign mantle. Although their long-standing relationship with Propellerheads has been severed, they still distribute Ableton Live. In addition, they begin new relationships with G-Media and Wizoo soundware. G-Media is a consortium of independent developers whose products include ImpOSCar, Oddity and M-Tron, a virtual Mellotron. M-Audio’s line now also includes three DSP plug-ins packages from iZotope: Ozone 3, Trash, and Spectrum.
Although Wizoo has existed as both a book publisher and soundware developer,
the two products currently being hawked by M-Audio are virtual
percussion products: Darbuka and Latigo. Both of these are loop libraries
that feature a unique graphic interface. By manipulating icons positioned
on a virtual stage, the volume and panning of individual instruments in
a looped percussion ensemble performance can be adjusted. It appears that
beat-slicing is behind the tempo control of this loop based product as
well.
In addition to distributing software from these partners, M-Audio has
developed their own line of software synthesizers: Key
Rig and Drum and Bass Rig. And yes, M-Audio is still a hardware manufacturer.
In addition to new controllers and interfaces, they added a POD-like guitar
processor, Black
Box to their line. Roger Linn provided some of the technology behind
this amp modeler/processor/drum machine/audio interface combo. In what
may be the biggest bit of irony at this year’s NAMM, M-Audio’s
big distribution success story, Propellerheads (makers of Reason) left
the fold to be distributed by Line
6, the first to offer modeled guitar amp technology.
Tassman
– Company representatives spoke highly of the relationship with
Berklee, saying that Tassman
has proved to be popular with students purchasing the program at a special
discount online. They continue their trend of releasing dedicated modeled
devices with their debut of String
Studio VS-1 virtual instrument based on plucked and bowed string models.
Music Synthesis Alum Gautam Gautam will reportedly be developing some
patches for them.
Cycling
74 had a banner year with the release of Pluggo
and the MODE
instrument collection for Windows. as well as the first showing of HIPNO,
the latest plug-in bundle in what’s now shaping up to be the Pluggo
line of software. HIPNO
offers 42 plug-ins that focus on granular and spectral processing. Many
of these feature a unique graphic interface called Hipnoscope, built from
Jitter objects. These allow the user to intuitively manipulate complex
parameters in useful ways, and in some cases use video color or motion
tracking as a control source.
WayoutWare –The TimewARP 2600 emulation is this Pismo Beach, California-based software startup’s first product. Their focus is to model the exact functioning and sound of the original in every way. To demonstrate their point, they had a hardware original side-by side with software running on a 2.5Ghz G5. As the show progressed, they accumulated testimonials from mavens of the original, including our own David Mash. The company was taken by surprise with Arturia’s Arp 2600 emulation announced at the Fall 2004 AES. The company was originally planning a Summer 05 release, but has pushed the release schedule to ship in February, 2005. The 2600 sequencer is not part of the original, but in planned for an early update. These guys look like they have really done their homework, enlisting Jim Michmerhuizen, the author of the original documentation, for the their manual, which is available to download. It includes an excellent tutorial in subtractive techniques.
Nueron – Their new distributor is AudioMIDI.com. Nueron VS is the software version which is identical to the hardware synth, except for surround capabilities and the software tools to analyze sounds to make custom models. The software ships with a hardware control that has a joystick to facilitate the X/Y panning functions. The hardware controller is not a MIDI controller, as the Neuron VS uses its own protocol for this controller. Seems that it’s more efficient to write directly for USD than to use MIDI SYSEX.
From
Plug-in to Platform
Although it was shipping for AES, Spectrasonics Stylus
RMX generated a big buzz at the show. The trend in the last few years
has been for soundware manufacturers to ship their libraries in dedicated
players, often using an OEM version of Native Instruments Kompakt, as
we’ve seen with the Garritan
Personal Orchestra. The original version of Stylus was a loop library
in a simple, dedicated player. With RMX, Spectrasonics has built what
is essentially a host platform for soundware. At NAMM they released four
S.A.G.E
Xpanders, add-on packs that round out the original library. These
are $99.00 collections that have already seen life as previously released
libraries such as Burnin’ Grooves and Liquid Grooves. The engine
in RMX is based on Spectrasonics' S.A.G.E.
(Spectasonics Advanced Groove Engine), a variant of the beat-slicing technology
that is also found in Propellerheads’ REX2 files, which can now
also be used with Stylus RMX.
MOTU
Although MOTU usually
uses NAMM to announce new versions of their flagship program Digital Performer,
they no doubt felt the heat from the fall release of Logic 7, and got
a feature-rich update out the door soon thereafter. The big news at MOTU
was their upcoming Symphonic
Instrument. Based on the same technology as their Mach Five sampler,
this is a huge 8GB orchestral sound library that is designed to rival
just about anything on the market. It was designed to deliver great sounds
with an easy to use interface. The addition of convolution reverb makes
this an altogether very attractive package. With an expected list price
of $295.00, this will raise the personal orchestra bar significantly.
One would expect Berklee’s Professional Writing Division to take
a serious look at this.
Notion
Former Berklee Composition Department Chair Jack Jarret was showing Notion,
a soon to be released notation program from his company VirtuosoWorks.
What’s unique about this is that it plays the notated score, following
dynamic and articulation markings as well as tempo, using a library of
built-in software instruments. The instruments are based on a massive
8500 sample collection of sounds from the London Symphony Orchestra, recorded
at Abbey Road Studios. The software uses this library to realistically
render notated music, including careful attention to articulation and
dynamic markings. The NAMM demo which used a excerpt from Stravinsky’s
Petroushka was remarkable. A combination of great recordings and very
effective programming and make this a great tool for producing effective
demos of notated music. The program will initially be on PC with a suggested
list price of $599.00.
Asleep
at the MIDI Port
Although the MIDI Manufacturers
Association (MMA) is still actively developing extensions to the original
1.0 specification, it appears that in many ways it’s out of step
with the current needs of the music production industry. Manufacturers
and research organizations are now developing their own communications
protocols, independently of an industry-wide consortium. While much of
the MMA's current efforts are aimed at technologies that enable music
and audio playback on portable consumer electronic devices, it seems that
the issues cropping up in the studio are taking a back seat. Several of
the the technologies already mentioned here, Propellerheads Remote,
Korg's Native mode, Studio
Connections from Yamaha/Steinberg, and
Open Sound Control, are designed to provide real time control of musical
devices using modern communications protocols. Yamaha's mLAN protocol
for routing both audio and control signals through a single FireWire connection,
is slowly becoming available in a limited range of products, and is compatible
with Mac OSX Core Audio. Although mLAN is trying to become an industry
standard, the only place where it was being used at NAMM 2005 was at Yamaha.
Pass the Peas
Although Digidesign skipped the buffet and open bar at their annual NAMM party held at the House of Blues, they served up a hearty helping of the Black-Eyed Peas. Their absolutely stunning set put to rest any lingering doubts about the musical prowess of Hip Hop groups. The live band was crack and the Peas themselves were consummate live performers. Digi used this as an opportunity to showcase their new live sound system Venue. And oh yes, that odd protrusion by the meter bridge is a dongle. In what will be a true test for computer-based technologies, one will see if crashes and lost dongles will fly in the rough and tumble world of live sound.
In what will undoubtedly be a trend in audio production, the Black-Eyed Peas' show was not only mixed live on the Venue, but the audio channels were recorded to ProTools, transferred to a New York mix facility using the Digidelivery system, mixed overnight on an Icon, and was available the next morning on napster.com. As CD sales slumps, there will be plenty of opportunities for savvy engineers and producers in alternate forms of music distribution, and the capabilities of this Digidesign system clearly point to live music on demand as a reality.
People
Berklee Music technology alums are clearly well positioned in LA, as well as the MI industry as a whole. Talking with Dave Mash on the main floor is nearly impossible given the number of former students that approach him. More recent alums have done well, with our own" TK" keeping busy as Jeff Rona's assistant, and Dan Birczynski tutoring BT in CSound.
Jeff Rona spoke highly of his visit to Berklee several years back and expressed a sincere interest in returning in some capacity. Although he maintain a busy schedule, he might be able to connect with us in some kind of "virtual residency." Bob Muller from Dangerous Music, makers of analog mix bus systems, would like to make the trip from New York to demonstrate his products, and discuss his perspective on analog and digital mixing.
Once again, thanks for reading this and please let me know if you have any comments.
eMBee
February 2005