Travel Report for Michael Bierylo
NAMM 2008
Overview
Every year seems to have its sign post, a product or group of products that crystalizes what's going on in the music technology industry. I've always felt that artists drive music technology innovations more so than manufacturers. So, this year, with all the buzz about various glitch genres and circuit bending, I was curious to see if any of this would make it to the mainstream industry. For all I could see in evidence, there were more references to Guitar Hero and Rock Band than to any speak-and-spell spinoffs.
However, there seems to be a renewed interest in real-time performance using electronic instruments. Due to market demand, they say, Moog released a version of the Mini Moog with no digital control as well as a performance controller that outputs control voltage. Access released software that expands the capabilities of the TI line of synthesizers to include keyboard controlled audio processing. Even Apple added MainStage, a performance application, to their suite of production tools. Stepping back and looking at the entire industry, it seems that the focus of home studio technology is moving increasingly toward audio production capabilities, while the frontier for electronic instruments is the stage.
Smaller manufacturers still make it to the show, but besides fishing for distribution and retail outlets, they are promoting new models of Web-based commerce. The idea of going to a store to buy sheet music is becoming quaint. So it goes with soundware. Web sites that provide audio assets on demand are on the rise, while various models for subscription services and online brokering, an eBay for loops if you will, are emerging. Native Instruments, who started selling software before venturing into developing integrated hardware, is about to start giving away a free player, and moving one part of their business toward selling patches.
As far as the industry news goes, we heard that TC Electronics would merge with Gibson. This apparently was not an acquisition, and both companies feel there is a synergy here that makes sense. While TC Electronics is best known in the mass marketplace for its line of guitar and vocal effects processors, one wonders what will become of their high-end pro offerings. Given Gibson's experience with Opcode in the music technology field, we can only hope that this pairing will bring some interesting technologies to market or at least long term survival for both companies. Who knows, could we see a Dale Earnhardt commemorative System 6000 Digital Signal Processor?
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 exhaustive round up of new products, I highly suggest the following:
Hardware
Synthesizers
Access - While it took a couple of years to perfect the technology behind the Virus TI (totally integrated) line of synthesizers, these instruments have become one the must-haves in current electronic arsenals. This year Access introduced an entry-level, stand-alone module version of the Virus TI called the Snow, no doubt for it's signature white enclosure. The Snow was designed to be a portable performance companion with 4-part multitimbral capability and 50 voices of polyphony. It has the same architecture and TI capabilities of its larger, more expensive sibling, and should be shipping in April with a list price of 1350.00.
Richard Devine spent the weekend holding court at the Access both, evangelizing the Virus and the newly released Atomizer companion software. The software works alongside the Virus OS to beat slice audio input coming into the Virus, map the slices across the keyboard, and provide addition processing controlled by the mod wheel and pitch bend. In the capable hands of Richard Devine, this became a powerful, real-time performance tool. It looks like Access is pushing the envelope of what we can expect from a hardware synthesizer to include functions that we'd normally associate with custom laptop performance software. Atomizer will be free to all Virus TI users.
Moog Music - Old school was in at Moog Music this year when they announced the Voyager Old School model. While last year's Little Fatty was a scaled down, budget version of their flagship Voyager, the Old School is a Voyager without any digital control whatsoever, essentially a Mini Moog. The idea behind this was to make a player's instrument, not an instrument to use for MIDI sequencing. Apparently much of the Voyager's user base just doesn't use the MIDI functions on the Voyager, and Moog wants to get the instrument in as many hands as possible with a 2595.00 price-tag. Moog was also showing a prototype of it's new MP-201 foot controller. The unit is built like a tank and includes control voltage outputs and a built in LFO, in addition to old school MIDI and USB MIDI. This is obviously an ideal controller for the Moogerfooger series of effect pedals, and well as an additional realtime source for the Voyager. The unit will list for 495.00 and should be shipping by summer.
Clavia - For the last few years, Clavia has focused their development on keyboards that emulate classic keyboards. While the Modular G2 is still their creative flagship, software development has lagged with Vista and Intel Mac editors still in development. Their latest offering is the Nord Wave which is a polyphonic, subtractive instrument that allows users to import their own samples as sound sources. Sample management is done with their cross-platform Wave Manager software. Clavia is eager to note that a wealth of free Mellotron samples is available for Nord Wave users who are after the vintage vibe.
Korg - While Korg had no major keyboard releases this year, they did have one of the coolest things I saw at the show, and the closest thing to what one might call a glitch instrument. The new Kaossilator Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer takes a small Kaos pad controller and adds 100 different sounds and phrases. An internal sequencer allows the user to assemble simple melodic/rhythmic fragments and manipulate them with the pad. The device itself is pocket sized and while it offers little in the way of connectivity or pro features, it's really fun and downright addictive to play.
Controllers
Euphonix - One of the biggest buzzes at the show this year was the Euphonix MC line of hardware DAW controllers. While they are primarily known for their high-end digital consoles, Euphonix developed their EuCon Ethernet-based DAW control protocol as a way to integrate DAW systems into their console-based workflow. These new surfaces, the MC Mix and MC Control, incorporate the EuCon protocol and are aimed at the project studio user with 999.00 and 1495.00 price-tags, respectively. NAMM 2008 was their debut, and while the MC Mix performed flawlessly, the touch-screen on the MC Control looked like it needed some work before an estimated late March release. Currently, their main competition will be the Mackie Control. However, the sleek, compact design, well-designed functionality as well as the responsiveness of their high-speed control protocol will make these units serious contenders.
Novation has gained quite a reputation for performance controllers with their SL line of keyboard controllers, along with the software integration provided by their Automap software. At NAMM this year they debuted Nocturn, a dedicated controller for plug-ins. The Nocturn has no keyboard or screen, just eight rotary knobs on a small footprint device. Along with this, Novation announced version 2 of the Automap software. Together with Nocturn, this offers a unique solution to displaying control surface parameter mappings and values. When used to control a plug-in, Automap will display a transparent overlay on the host computer's screen that shows mappings and values. This overlay can be called up and dismissed easily, and offers a really unique and powerful way to reference remote control.
Audio Hardware
SSL - Once again, we caught up with SSL's US sales manager Faydi Hayek who showed us the new plug-ins available for their Duende hardware-based DAW plug-in system. Also at NAMM, they debuted the Duende Mini desktop system that offers 16-channels of premium processing for 799.00. The Pro Convert software they originally showed at AES was getting ready to ship. While still offering an impressive list of translation capabilities, this was somewhat scaled back from what was promised last fall in the interest of getting a reliable product to market as soon as possible. SSL offers discounts to students and educators, and would no doubt like to get their products into the hands of Berklee students and faculty.
Universal Audio - In a similar vein as Duende, Universal Audio's UAD-Xpander is a dedicated DSP system designed for laptops that interfaces using the Express Card 34 slot available on many Mac and PC laptops. The system starts a 999.00 and the price includes a voucher for additional plug-in software from their line of vintage and contemporary plug-n effects. Neil Ziesing, known to many in the Berklee community from his days with Opcode Systems, is a product representative for Universal Audio and expressed interest in working out some sort of academic pricing for the Berklee community.
Mackie Hotwire
Walking through a NAMM show, even a player can become immune to guitar amps. They're everywhere, and after a while, they just seem to disappear. This year was a bit different when it came to the Mackie Hotwire Guitar amp. Legendary designer Greg Mackie reputedly spent years on this design, and the result is a remarkable combination of high and low tech in a great sounding amp. At the heart of the amp is analog tube circuitry. Not just one circuit, but a number of them, so that in fact, when switching between the various amp modes, the actual circuit routing changes, along with the selection of tubes used. Think of it like having a collection of tube amps at your disposal, where you can easily switch between them. In addition, the amp comes with a collection of creature comforts from a tuner and metronome to on-board digital effects. The amp sells for 1500.00 and is expected to be available in March.
Gadgets
While relegated to guitar subculture, some of the most interesting and innovative sound-shaping tools at NAMM are from boutique stomp box manufacturers. While companies like Line 6 seek to recreate classic fuzz tones and phasers, small, mostly home-based manufacturers are coming up with some really cool, new analog designs. My favorite this year was Oohlala Manufacturing. Their stock in trade is in distortion devices and with names like Truly Beautiful Disaster and Synth Mangler, these devices explore a range of techniques that bend a mild-mannered electric guitar into an unrecognizable source of sonic mayhem.
Another favorite is Pigtronix, where Berklee student Craig Broadhart was on hand demonstrating their line of innovative analog devices. While these include distortion, the company pushes the envelope with updates of traditional analog delay, compression/envelope, and phaser effects. Their new product this year is what they term an analog guitar synthesizer called the Mothership. The devices takes input from a guitar and generates a geometric waveform output and uses an envelope follower to control filter effects. Pretty basic, but surprisingly cool, and no need to worry about tracking.
Software
Spectrasonics
Last year Spectrasonics skipped NAMM altogether while they worked away on a new product. The fruits of their labor saw the light of day at NAMM this year when patron saint of sound design, Eric Persing, rolled out Omnisphere. Spectrasonics has been quite successful at creating powerful and evocative sampled instruments such as Atmosphere, Trilogy, and Stylus RMX. These were based on the UVI sound engine, which essentially is a platform for sample playback. With the next generation of instruments, Persing wanted to develop their own sound engine that would expand on sample playback and get much deeper into synthesis techniques such as granular, waveshaping and FM. What emerged was something they call the "Steam" engine. While the synthesis and modulation functions here are deep, Spectrasonics has made them immediately and easily accessible to any musician. The sound library itself is massive, made up of the greatest hits of all their previous libraries, along with a collection of new and unique samples. They showed a sampling session for their demo where an upright piano was set on fire, and was carefully recorded as it went up in smoke. The overall sound quality of their library is fabulous, and the sound design is ingenious, with patches like a Farfisa organ grain-cloud sounding at once unique and familiar. The only downside of their demo was the September 15 release date. With such a build-up I didn't meet anyone who didn't want to leave the show with a copy tucked under their arm.
BIAS Peak
Larry, the O, Oppenheimer, Berklee alum and the current Bias product manager, talked about the upcoming release of Peak 6. This update has been promised for over a year now and Larry talked a bit about the dreaded software development phenomenon known as "feature creep." There's a lot that they want to pack into an update of this product that tries to be all things to all users. Larry hoped for a February release. Now that we're headed into March, I guess they're still trying to make an end. Larry would like to visit Berklee, perhaps this spring. He hopes to show the new version of Peak, as well as get some ideas about the kinds of products we'd like to see. It's seems they have lots of technology, but need to focus on how it can best serve the market.
McDSP
It's always a pleasure to see Colin of McDSP, and it seems like trade shows are his element; he's the ultimate evangelist. At the show, they unveiled several new products. There seems to be a theme, with one plug-in that adds noise, one that removes it, as well as de-esser. While none of these products is breaking new ground, each represents some engineering advances, and taken as a whole, will be a valuable addition to the tools currently available in their bundles, making McDSP more of a complete solution, as Waves might currently be perceived.
Apple
Given Apple's major presence on the floor for NAMM 2007, despite the absence of any new products, one would think that with the release of Logic Studio there would have been a major blitz. That was not the case. Apple held court in a large demo room off the floor that was, for the most part, by invitation only. A major part of their presence was taken up with dealer meetings and presentations. Apple representatives were on hand at both Apogee and Euphonix answering questions on how those products complemented Logic Pro.
MOTU
MOTU is one of the few companies to consistently hold out on product announcements till NAMM, and this year they previewed DP6. While not the Pro Tools killer that Logic aspires to be, the new version includes major updates to the user interface, DSP allocation, and general functionality. They also announced Classic Keys, a cross-platform collection of fifty sampled, classic keyboards. While other companies offer various individual vintage instruments, this looks like a very complete collection that would serve the needs of just about any keyboard player. To top it all off, their workhorse audio interface, the 828, got a big update with the new version 3. The unit now includes support for sample rates up to 192K as well as on-board DSP, making in a more attractive dedicated mixer.
Digidesign
Digidesign recently released version 7.4 of their flagship Pro Tools software, that was previewed at AES, and it was still their show highlight this year. With the company now joined by M-Audio and Sibelius in the Avid family, the combined trade show display was massive, displaying virtually every type of music technology product imaginable. In some cases, both M-Audio and Digidesign are covering the same ground for no obvious reason. Take studio monitors for example, now that Digi has their own line, how are these different from M-Audio's premium offering? (other than price...) Why does one choose an M-Box over an M-Audio interface to use with Pro Tools software? The impression one gets is that there's much duplication of effort here, and that some sort of consolidation may be in their future.
With the release of KORE 2, NI is not only looking at new ways of organizing software sound resources, but a new business model for selling soundware. At NAMM, NI announced that a free Kore Player would be available in March, and the company will be selling sound-packs for 59.00 each. The player will have all the sound engine capabilities of the full Kore 2 version, with a starting collection of 30 patches. While giving away the synth but selling the patches is a new development in the electronic instrument industry, this is a model that we increasingly see with technology tools in general. You need to look no farther than the printer you probably got free with your new computer to understand that the cost is in the toner, not the machine. And so it goes for software synthesizers.
Soundware
As usual, there was a dizzying array of sample libraries and instruments, and many of these focused on emulating authentic acoustic performances. One standout in this category was Flying Hand Percussion by Eitan Teomi. This hand percussion library is a massive collection of multi-sampled articulations from twenty different instruments. The producer took the time to really explore the different performance possibilities of each of these, and made sure all possible characteristics were sampled at up to twenty dynamic levels. The library is available in Kontakt format only, and for good reason. Extensive use of Kontakt's scripting language KSP, is at work here, translating MIDI input in a number of expressive ways. The product received a 2008 Electronic Musician Editors Choice award and is distributed by Sonivox
Speaking of Sonivox, recent Music Synthesis student Andrew Hlynsky was on the floor at NAMM doing demos for them. Among the libraries he showed was a new collection from recent grad Ben Cantil that uses only sounds originating from the human body to create a variety of sampled percussion sounds and loops.
Given the massive selection of loops available, one wonders if the market is saturated. Most collections offer gigabytes of loops that would take a lifetime to audition, but there still seems to be a need for new, fresh soundware. As an alternative to buying into a collection, San Francisco based Beat Hive offers a new business model for distributing loops, an online broker service. Users register and can either upload loops to offer for sale or audition, select and buy loops. Currently, 12,000 loops have been uploaded, and while the selection is daunting, there is a database function that lets sellers tag their wares and buyers browse.
Pure Magnetix, from NYC, has developed an online subscription model for not only loops, but sampled instruments as well. Subscriptions range from 5.75 a month for limited access to a 150.00 annual "all access pass" that entitles the user to pick and choose freely for a year. Music Synth alum Brian Cass is involved with this company, and according to him, the service is attracting some attention. However, their main income is from developing OEM soundware for companies like Ableton to include in their production bundles.
Tascam reports that their GVI4 plug-in will soon be available for the Mac, as they did last October at AES. This time, the goal is to ship by April. What this means is that the floodgates will open for countless libraries that were developed for the, PC only, Gigastudio. While Giga itself will not be cross-platform, the libraries will be able to load and play on the GVI4 plug-in on the Mac. Hopefully by the time developer and Berklee alum Geof Gee makes his visit here in April, his brilliant GVI Plectrum library will be available for the Mac.
People
Before heading to the show in Anaheim, I had the opportunity to have lunch in Los Angeles with Music Synth grad Dan Lehrich, who is now working for game developer 7Studios. He talked about his work in general, but what was fascinating to me was how he came up with an idea for a "tempo-driven" game and prototyped it using MAX/MSP. After several false starts, the game is now in production. Dan talked a bit about the industry and the similarities between how games are currently developed and the original Hollywood studio system. In perhaps a sign of the times, just about every recent Berklee grad I spoke with on this trip had somehow been involved with the game industry.
Another Music Synth grad, Matt Moldover, also seems to be doing well, as Ableton flew him from New York out to the show to do demos for them. Moldover has been busy building performance systems over the last few years, and his efforts now revolve around what he calls controllerism. His inventions have become a staple on YouTube, where he deftly explains his current performance practices.
Samara Krugman is another Berklee alumna who, for a number of years, has been working across the river from Berklee at Cakewalk. At the show, Cakewalk announced that Roland had acquired a majority share in the company. Samara explained that this was a natural extension of the cooperation that had been going on between the companies for the last several years. Currently, Samara is a product manager working on Roland's new digital mixing system, which boasts tight integration with Cakewalk's Sonar workstation. She mentioned that she would love to return to Berklee for a presentation on her work and careers in the music technology industry.
Every year the corner of NAMM that's devoted to Analog Haven, an LA distributer of boutique synthesizer equipment, seems to get bigger. This year, besides the usual product reps from England and Germany, a few smaller startups were on hand with prototypes. I was pleasantly surprised to meet John Bowen, who is a former colleague of Mike Brigida and Tom Rhea, from "back in the day..." He was kind of the odd ball this year, showing up with a working prototype of a new, all-digital, subtractive keyboard synthesizer called the Solaris. The strengths of the instrument are an intuitive user interface, combined with a 96k sample rate for both audio and control routings. The synth is due to go into limited production in April, and at some point, John would like to visit Berklee.
Once again, thanks for reading this and please let me know if you have any comments.
eMBee
February 2008