Recording - April 2010 - 8

Our review crew was scouring the halls at the Anaheim Convention Center this past January 14–17, seeing all kinds of great gear for music production and bringing back their picks to put in our report. After a dismal 2009, the mood of the show was upbeat and forward-looking, with many new vendors and many new products on display. In this print-magazine part of our report, you’ll read about music hardware. Rather than make you wait a month for our software and soundware coverage in a Part 2, we’re offering a free downloadable PDF with links to product manufacturers’ sites. You’ll find it at www.recordingmag.com—click on Resources & Info, select the Resources page, and scroll down to Magazine Extras/Show Reports – Extra Content. Or you can just type “http://tr.im/2010namm” into your browser! There you’ll find coverage including (but not limited to) products from Ableton, Acoustica, Applied Acoustics Systems, Arturia, Avid, Big Fish Audio, East West, Focusrite, FXpansion, IK Multimedia, Ilio, iZotope, McDSP, MOTU, Mu Technologies, Peavey, PSP Audioware, Serato, Sonic Reality, SONiVOX, Sonnox, Sony Creative Software, Spectrasonics, SPL, Steinberg, Studio Devil, Toontrack Music, Vienna Symphonic Library, WaveMachine Labs, and Waves. As always, we apologize for any omissions, and will try to focus on new products we haven’t covered in our 2009 AES Convention Report (January 2010 issue) or intervening Fast Forward columns. Let’s hit the show floor, shall we?—MM Alesis (www.alesis.com) introduced the MultiMix 6 USB ($99 street), a low-cost USB interface and 6-input mixer with two mic preamps; the PalmTrack ($149 street), a handheld audio recorder with built-in mics and onboard effects; the VideoTrack ($199 street), a handheld video recorder with highquality stereo condenser mic from Alesis’s ProTrack recorder; and the Q49 ($99 street), a compact and simple 49-key USB keyboard controller. Allen & Heath (www.allen-heath.com) unveiled the ZED-10 and ZED-10FX mixers ($249 and $299). These compact USBequipped mixers have two Hi-Z instrument inputs, four mic preamps, 2-track record and playback I/O, XLR main outs with inserts, two aux sends, and built-in effects processor on the ZED-10FX. Aphex Systems (www.aphex.com) premiered the 140A Series of audio interface/converter halfrack systems. The 141A ($549) is an 8-channel ADAT-to-Analog D/A converter; the 142A ($649) is an 8-channel Analog-to-ADAT A/D; and the 144A ($549) is a bidirectional digital AES/ADAT format converter. API (www.apiaudio.com) is now shipping the 527 Compressor ($995) first shown at AES. This 500-Series module features a compressor based on the 225L console model with an added Thrust circuit from the 2500 stereo bus compressor. ART (www.artproaudio.com) debuted the HeadAmp 6 ($189), a 1U six-channel headphone amplifier with three headphone outputs and one direct input per channel, mute and mono switching, LED metering, a frontpanel master aux input, and more. Audio-Technica (www.audio-technica .com) gave NAMM premieres of mics that we had written up previously; in our November 2009 issue you saw the AT4080 ($1245) and AT4081 ($895) ribbon mics and the stereo AT4050ST ($1625), and in our January 2010 AES report, the AT4047MP ($1055). Look for a review of Audio-Technica’s ribbon mics soon. Akai Professional (www.akaipro.com) announced the APC20 ($199 street), a compact performance controller developed in conjunction with Ableton. This smaller sibling to the APC40 (reviewed August 2009) offers a 5 x 8 clip trigger grid and remappable buttons and faders. Also on display: a prototype of the iPK25 ($99 street), a 25-note keyboard controller/audio interface/USB/MIDI controller for the Apple iPhone/iPod touch, with the SynthStation music production app. AKG (www.akg.com) introduced the Perception Live Series microphones, including the P2 kick/bass/wind instrument mic ($199), the P3S mic for instruments and backing vocals ($119), and the P4 for toms, percussion, guitar amps and winds ($149), all cardioid dynamic mics, as well as the supercardioid P5 vocal mic ($159).RECORDING APRIL 2010
http://www.alesis.com http://www.recordingmag.com http://www.allen-heath.com http://tr.im/2010namm http://www.aphex.com http://www.apiaudio.com http://www.artproaudio.com http://www.audio-technica.com http://www.audio-technica.com http://www.akaipro.com http://www.akg.com
Recording - April 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - April 2010
