Here's an overview of the day that I spent at the 2011
AES Show in New York City. First of all, thanks to everyone who came by the
Hal Leonard booth for my book signing. It was great to personally meet so many of you that have I've only previously known through
Facebook.
Other than that, the AES show was fairly depressing. It was the smallest show I've been to in some time as many audio companies, especially those that sell software, didn't even bother to exhibit. Who can blame them? NYC is one of the most expensive places on the planet at the moment, and AES charges a fortune for their booths. What's worse, they really don't reach much of an audience these days since the attendance at the show consists of mostly grey beards. I think the average age must be something like 45 or older. It's depressing. Even I was feeling old. If AES doesn't address this issue soon and do something to attract the younger generations of the business, it's going to die and fairly quickly.
As far as the show itself, there wasn't much to tell. Most of the manufacturers consisted of boutique creators of mics and mic preamps, it seemed, many times 2 or 3 to a booth.
JBL and
Yamaha didn't have booths at all, but did bring in their trucks that featured a few exhibits inside.
Of course the big news was
Avid's introduction of
Pro Tools X, which seemed to be pretty good if you're a power user. In a nut shell, if you regularly do sessions at 192kHz or use 256 tracks, you'll have to run out and get this right away. If not, continue upgrading to
PT 9 like the rest of us (I just updated last month, but I'm not the only one as this was a comment that I heard on the floor over and over).
Ocean Way decided that making monitors and drum libraries wasn't challenging enough and jumped into the microphone biz as well with a model based on a
U47FET. I'm sure it sounds great since
Alan Sides knows his mics and wouldn't have it any other way. The price is right at about a thousand bucks.
Focusrite entered the controller biz in earnest with this nifty workstation that's the big brother to their
2802.
This interesting device by
VisiSonics is actually a surround mic and camera. It has 64 mics and 5 cameras, which is cool in itself, but the best part of the software, which allows you to isolate any conversation in a crowd with a touch of the touchscreen. I'm sure the FBI or CIA will be all over this.
The
Kamesan KS-117 Lip Checker does just that. It checks and measures the sync between audio and video so you know just the right amount of offset to apply. It was in the
Tascam booth, so I guess they distribute them.
Also from
Tascam, the
iXZ is an outboard preamp for the iPhone recording. There are a few of these already on the market, but this one is only 50 bucks. Great for interviews, I bet.
I loved the sound of the these
JBL computer monitors. The
LSR2325P's sounded huge and have bit bang for the buck at only $199 each. Of course, I use
LSR4328's everyday myself, so I'm already a big JBL fan.
Finally, this is what I felt like by the end of the show.
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