Just back from Summer NAMM. I had not attended the show in a few years since it moved back to Nashville after abortively tried to make show work in Indianapolis and Austin so I was not sure what to expect. What I found and for which I was pleasantly surprised was an upbeat (no pub intended) trade show with a lot of new products and a cool vibe. To be clear the show is about 80 percent Guitar MI and related accessories and about 20 percent pro audio – it’s not nearly the show that it used to be ten years ago when half of the show or more was high tech / pro audio.

What I found refreshing was the large number of new products – many of which were exhibiting for the time – here are some links to just some of the cool products I saw at the show:

• Presonus just released their ADL 700 (over a year after it was announced)
• New ZOOM Q2HD

AND

• Zeurcher Ampifaction
• Alairex Guitar Amplifiers
• Zerberus Guitars
• Four Force Guitar five watt studio guitar amp
• Boicebox Guitar Pedalboards
• Big Joe Stomp Box

And lots more …

In addition to the show there is of course the incredible diversity if talented bands and musicians playing pretty much 24/7 on lower Broadway. Seriously where else in America is a place where ten GREAT bands are playing at 10 AM seven days a week in front of for the most part empty venues. I was talking to a friend of mine who said most of the bands are working for tips and are lucky to come out with $65 for four hours work – I can’t overemphasize how for the most part good these musicians and songwriter are – the love of the music is in the air there – it’s really a part of our American heritage – and good to see its alive and well.

Below I posted a few videos I took which will give you an idea what I’m talking about.

Just got back from Sweetwater’s GearFest 2012. As with everything else Sweetwater does this year’s GearFest event was (IMHO) first class from start to finish. GearFest has been in the five years I have been attending the show steadily growing and attracting an ever-increasing number of out of state visitors. As a result GearFest is turning into an important Midwest trade show.

In addition to being able check out the latest products in pretty much every product category you can think of you can also attend a large number of clinics, presentations, artist signings and more – all free, It is simply put a fun informative show hosted by one of the industries class-act retailers. Here is the link to this years show schedule: http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/gearfest2012/

One of the cool things about GearFest is that the manufacturers demos at the various booths are presented by many of the industries “best and brightest” product technicians, marketing people etc. Sweetwater does a fantastic job for both their vendors and their customers. As a result the manufacturers displays are on par with what you would typically find (albeit scaled down) at NAMM or AES. You have in one place the opportunity to get your product questions answered at all technical levels and then take advantage of special show pricing and Sweetwater’s great customer service.

Whether you are designing your next project studio or just want to check out the latest and greatest products it’s all here in one place.

I just posted a few videos of some of the product demos I saw at the show:

Feeltune’s Rizome

See also http://en.feeltune.com/products.html

Peterson Tuners BBS-1 Bodybeat Sync metronome

See also http://www.petersontuners.com/index.cfm?category=163

Great River Electronics 2012 Product Range

See also http://www.greweb.com/

Eventide Stompboxes

See also: http://www.eventide.com/AudioDivision/Products/StompBoxes.aspx

This is just a few of the many great products I saw demoed at the show. I wish I had time to shoot more video demos but these will hopefully give you a taste of the GearFest vibe.

TASCAM DP24 Review
– by Steve Sattler

The TASCAM DP24 is the latest flagship Portastudio from the company that pioneered portable multi track recording over 25 years ago. The TEAC Portastudio 144 was the world’s first four-track recorder based on a standard compact audio cassette tape.

When it made its debut in 1979 the TASCAM Portastudio was a revolutionary creative tool. For the first time there existed the possibility to affordably record several instrumental and vocal parts on different tracks of the built-in four-track recorder and later blend all the parts together while transferring them to another standard two-channel stereo tape deck (remix and mixdown) to form a stereo recording – this at a time when the idea of computer based DAW work stations being pervasive and affordable was relatively inconceivable.

Fast forward to 2012 TASCAM brings us the DP24 which has incorporated into its relatively compact chassis over twenty five years of technological evolution. The DP 24 directly succeeds the TASCAM 2488 and was released this year in January at this year’s Winter NAMM show. TASCAM’S long history of tape based recording technology is evident in the DP24. Anyone familiar with tape based analog technology will quickly see that fact and will probably appreciate TASCAM’s clever integration of analog and digital recording technology in the DP24.

The DP24 is clearly designed as a songwriting and composition tool. As a songwriting tool the DP 24 is great as you can have your drum machine, Keyboard, etc. ready to go with having to set everything up every time you want to record. The DP24 is in short great tool in short for capturing ideas on the fly. For me personally I’ve always been an early adopter of computer based technology and as such spent years working in pro tools and related DAW platforms As a songwriter I have found that the complexity of working on computer based recording system often gets in the way of the creative process. The DP24 on the other hand offers refreshingly easy to use tactile hands on recording experience designed around the basic premise of capturing ideas quickly and easily.

The DP 24 is also great for live recording you can record for example eight tracks of Drums, bounce down to two tracks continues with your instrument tracks and vocal, multiple takes etc. The DP 24 can I am sure also lend itself to be a useful addition to fixed install, house of worship applications etc.

As far as the HD / “Content Creation” market the lack of an available (at least from TASCAM) of a battery power supply means the DP24 really does not have any direct application as a field capture device (at least as a self-contained unit)

According to TASCAM many end users are using the DP 24 to record live to Video Many of the people who use the DP24 are using it for live events, like concerts. They will mix the tracks inside the unit, output a stereo mix, and then cut a music video to the captured audio later.

Taking a quick overview of the DP24 Tracks 1 – 12 are mono tracks 15 – 24 are stereo – There are on the back of the unit a bank of eight XLR /TRS combo jacks for microphone and line inputs (with switchable phantom power) MIDI In /out, an effects send, monitor out etc. .

The unit features an easy to read color TFT screen that while there are some inherent limitation in its 3“screen is usable. Build quality is solid – the 19 Faders buttons and switches on the front of the DP24 all feel substantial. Bottom line nothing about the DP24 feels cheap. It’s definitely a well thought out and well-made piece of technology and solidly constructed enough to take a reasonable amount of “real world” abuse.

The DP 24 also has a dedicated Guitar input along with some built in Guitar effects which is useful as well as an instrument tuner a relatively sophisticated set of Dynamic and EQ options, Master effects etc.

Like I was saying the DP 24 really is the result of 25 years of technological evolution. Consequently the unit incorporates not only much of the recording interface you have found with tape / analog based recording technically as well as most of the advantages (albeit in a scaled down feature set) found in computer based editing – you can have for example up to eight “virtual tracks “allowing for multiple takes basic waveform edition, punch in Track bounce down etc. While all this is useful and like I said cleverly integrated into the DP24’s feature set for any kind of dense editing or waveform manipulation I suspect it will quickly be apparent to the end user that working on a computer based platform will be more productive.

In general over the years Japanese technology while marvels of engineering have been offer hampered by confusing manuals which is usually the result of said manuals having been converted from Japanese to English That said the DP24’s Manual seems better than most. The quick startup guide had me up and running recording in about 15 minutes. On the other hand I suspect the finer points of the DP’24’s feature set would I suspect take a fair amount of time to master.

On the minus side while you can export wave files via the on board USB port TASCAM does not make available a software interface for the DP24. I honestly think this is the single biggest shortcoming of the DP24 as the availability of computer based editor librarian would make the DP24 an incrementally more effective and productive tool, as well as I suspect attract a more professional level end-user. Further, there is no S/Pdif output on the DP24 which means 24 bit mastering is NA.

Finally as the unit records to SD cards you are limited by the size constraints and cost of the SD cards themselves (At roughly 2 MB per track minute I expect the end user will find themselves going through SD cards at a pretty fast pace). It would have been great if TASCAM had added the ability to plug in a USB or Firewire Hard Drive direct onto the DP24 for file storage.

In conclusion the DP24 with a $799 street price is at a price point where you could alternately buy a laptop and have a number of different of software based DAW platforms to choose from for close to the same price (let alone choose from the growing number of tablet based software and hardware options).

On the other hand what you do get for $799 is a very high quality, technologically mature piece of technology that does what it’s designed to do extremely well. You get all the tools you need to do sophisticated multi track recordings “in the box,” all packaged in a relatively easy to use interface that lends itself to a wide variety of creative applications. From that perspective the DP 24 is a relative Bargain

BY GEORGE PETERSEN
I often go flea marketing on Sunday mornings and one of today’s odd discoveries—no, I didn’t buy it—was this Digidesign 003 Pro Tools LE hardware DAW controller/interface.

Sadly neglected and somewhat abused with missing knobs, etc., this artifact was marked with a piece of white tape as serial #14. As an audio archaeologist, this was interesting to me as it was obviously a prototype/alpha version of some sort. Clearly, there’s no outer case and the silk screening on the front panel is somewhat different than the later production models. (CLICK ON PHOTO FOR LARGER VIEW)

The annotated stickers in the upper right corner on the unit’s top surface have hand-written scrawls about an ADAT rework, a main software rework, a PLL issue and something about headphones and the monitor fader.

The artifact’s rear panel has no manufacturer’s name, no serial number or country of origin. As you can see in the picture above, the identification of the monitor out channels is different (clearer in final version) and the artifact has hand-punched pop rivets holding the XLRs, MIDI jacks and RCA S/PDIF ports onto the rear panel—a definite indication of a prototype version. Also note the additional air ventilation holes in the production version—right above the XLR mic inputs. (CLICK ON PHOTO FOR LARGER VIEW)

THE REAL MYSTERY
The more interesting story here is the mystery as to where it’s been all this time and how it eventually wound up on some junk merchant’s table.

Just another audio archaeology mystery, but if only this gear could talk…
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Interested in creating great audio for video/film?
Check out George Petersen’s current and archived articles from HDVideoPro/CineSoundPro magazine.
Wanna read more? CLICK HERE FOR MORE BLOG POSTINGS!

BY GEORGE PETERSEN
Now there’s no excuse to not begin creating great recordings, compositions and audio on your computer. PreSonus is now shipping Studio One Free, a new entry-level version of its popular digital audio workstation software for Mac and Windows. Intended for beginners who don’t yet need the advanced features in Studio One Artist, Producer, and Professional, Studio One Free provides all of the recording and editing features needed for basic music production—and best of all, it’s FREE!

To get Studio One Free, simply download the Studio One installer from the
Studio One website (CLICK HERE) install it, then choose to run it as Free when the activation dialog comes up. Once you’ve downloaded the application, you can use it immediately; no Internet connection or user account is required, no product key is involved, and Studio One Free will not time out.

LOADED WITH PRO FEATURES!
This new version of Studio One has some of the features originally found in Studio One Artist, including the single-window work environment, the content browser with Search, powerful drag-and-drop functions, Control Link MIDI mapping, sidechain routing, automatic delay compensation, real-time audio timestretching and resampling, unlimited audio and Instrument (MIDI) tracks(!), unlimited effects channels, and unlimited channel inserts and sends. Use native key commands or choose key-command sets from Pro Tools, Cubase, or Logic-or use the included editor to create your own key commands.

Studio One Free offers some of the new Studio One 2.0 features, notably multitrack MIDI editing, single and multitrack comping, and Track Transform (advanced track freezing). And of course, it includes the same state-of-the-art, 32-bit sound engine found in Studio One Artist and Producer.

Eight Native Effects plug-ins come with Studio One Free—Beat Delay, Channel Strip (which includes dynamics processing and EQ), Chorus, Flanger, MixVerb (a mono/stereo reverb), Red Light Distortion, Tuner, and Phaser—plus the Presence virtual instrument with more than 100 presets. Studio One Free doesn’t support ReWire and third-party (VST, AU, etc.) effects plug-ins and virtual instruments, but includes plenty of tools to do most basic production work.

THE CATCH…
Actually the only catch here is that PreSonus wants to you use Studio One Free and love it so much that you want to upgrade to one their more advanced versions of Studio One. In fact it’s really quite easy to upgrade to from Free to one of the advanced versions. Download the free demo of Studio One Professional, test it thoroughly, and at any time-even after the demo times out-convert it into Studio One Free with a single click. Ready to buy Studio One Artist, Producer, or Professional? Convert Studio One Free into a paid version at any time, without having to reinstall.

Yet no matter which path you choose, Studio One Free is an awesome deal—at any price—especially free! But snag this soon, before those crazy guys at PreSonus come to their senses and discontinue this amazing offering!

Studio One Free is available now from the PreSonus Studio One website (CLICK HERE)
___________________________
Interested in creating great audio for video/film?
Check out George Petersen’s current and archived articles from HDVideoPro/CineSoundPro magazine.
Wanna read more? CLICK HERE FOR MORE BLOG POSTINGS!