A VERY EFFICIENT TRADE SHOW
Jun 1, 2004 12:00 PM
Ah, springtime in Frankfurt, Germany. In an average year, the pro-audio community makes its yearly pilgrimage to Deutschland for the Musikmesse convention, where it encounters hundreds of shiny new gadgets, liter upon liter of cold beer and even colder weather. Luckily enough, this year, the weather abated, but the gadgets and beer were present in spades. And for you gear whores, here is a quick rundown of some of the highlights.
Arturia upped the ante on the soft-synth workstation with the release of Storm 3.0, which now features unlimited instruments, full Rewire support, audio/MIDI sequencing, piano-roll MIDI editing and much more. IK Multimedia unveiled StudioPhonik, a new plug-in instrument with extreme physical-modeling capable of creating high-end, studio-quality renditions of drums, guitar, bass and more. Native Instruments entered the hardware world with its Guitar Rig suite, which features a collection of guitar-amp and effects plug-ins with a stompbox-style controller. The company also showed off the B4D drawbar-organ controller for its popular B4 soft synth. Steinberg released the latest version of its popular audio editor Wavelab 5, which supports 32-bit, 192kHz audio and DVD-A authoring.
On the hardware front, Dave Smith Instruments offered a look at the new Poly Evolver synth, the polyphonic sequel to the famed Evolver. The new synth features four voices, separate sequencers and effects for each layer and discrete stereo outs for each voice. RME showed its new RPM digital I/O, which includes two switchable stereo phono/line inputs, a mic pre, two stereo RCA outs, stereo ¼-inch outs and MIDI I/O in a half-rackspace chassis. And AKG released a new version of the famed C 414 mic that includes five selectable patterns — cardioid, hypercardioid, figure-8, omni and the new wide cardioid — among a host of other refinements.
For the DJ crowd, Technics turned the spotlight on the SH-MZ1200 4-channel analog/digital mixer, which boasts an optical crossfader, fader-start sync and more. American Audio added the DCD-Pro 1000 dual compact CD player and the Q-Spand MKII 4-channel mixer with QStart technology to its already-impressive product line. ALCATech showed off DigiScratch, a hardware/software system for DJs who want to add digital files to a traditional DJ rig. The system requires a Pentium III/800MHz or better machine, and an optional rackmount control unit is also available.
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