NAMM2K: Alberts Angle

US 07/02/00

Los Angeles, February 6th, 2000 First, a general impression of NAMM 2000: I thought the show was rather tame and tasteful, with very few of the skimpily clad models and other cheap tricks you can find at some trade shows. There was a model on a motorcycle as you first come into the convention hall, but that was about it. I used to demo electronic pianos at the Consumer Electronics Shows in Chicago, and there was tons of sexploitation at those shows. Perhaps the porn-star area of the CES show had something to do with it! Anyway, the NAMM Winter 2000 show was clean family fun, and I personally like it better this way. My favorite display: the booth (I forget their name now) where they submerged one of their speakers in a fish tank, pointing up. As they piped signal through it, the movement of the speaker created a nice little fountain of water. Excellent. On to the gear (not a complete report at all, just what liked the best): ROLAND Here's the skinny on the new Roland XV synths according to the Roland sales rep I spoke with: The JV-1080 will continue to be manufactured, with the JV-2080 being replaced by the XV-3080. The XV-3080 will have the same list price as the current JV-2080, which I believe is $1,795. The XV-5080 will become the top of the line and sell for $2,495. (These numbers according to the sales rep). The XV-3080 is to be available in March, and the XV-5080 in May. There is a new line of 64 meg expansion cards coming out, which will list at $395. I heard the piano card and the drum kit card, and they both sound really, really good. Speaking as a pianist, I liked the piano card a whole lot, as it had a nice full sound and a wide range of expression. The new XV line will be able to use both the older expansion cards and the new expansion cards, in these configurations: the XV-88 will hold two JV80 cards and two new SRX cards (2x2), the XV-3080 will hold four JV80's and two SRX's (4x2), and the XV-5080 will hold four JV80's and four SRX's (4x4). One of the nice new features of the XV modules (and I assume keyboard version as well) is that the user will no longer be limited as to which channels can be drum channels. ANY or ALL channels can be drum channels, allowing the user to turn the synth into one big drum machine if desired. I heard guy demo these synths and they sounded great to me. If you like the current JV series you're going to love the new ones. These are a big improvement over the old technology: 128 voice polyphony, stereo samples, bigger expansion cards being the biggest changes. I thought that the XV's were one of the best sounding things at the show. Now for the VP-9000: this is something new and fresh, no repackaged technology here, definitely not your Mom and Dad's sampler. The demo had a definite WOW factor. Their claim to eliminate multisampling would appear to be true. It is kind of hard to describe what this thing does, but to call it a sampler is not quite accurate. You do sample with it, but after the sample is inside things are quite different than with a normal sampler. It comes with a 250 meg ZIP drive, and the ZIP disks can be read by your computer, allowing you to load AIFF or WAV files directly off your computer onto the ZIP and then into the VP-9000. What the guy did at the demo was have two vocal samples, one male and one female, singing lyrics. What you can do with this sampler, in legato mode, is play back those sampled phrases, but with any pitch you want. So you just play a different melody than what they sang, and the words come out right, the pitches come out right, and there are no artifacts. You can also add harmony by playing more notes, and it all comes out sounding perfectly in tune and like that's what they sang. All in real-time. This was an amazing demo, very very cool and innovative stuff. There are a lot of possibilities with this technology. KORG Unfortunately, I couldn't try out the MS-2000 because someone was hogging it. You know the type: some guy with headphones pretending no one else is in the room, never looking up. Pain in the butt. Anyway, I was a bit dissapointed in the Korg room, as it was rather small and dark and just didn't seem to show off their stuff as well as it could have. The Triton was there, which of course sounded excellent. KURZWEIL The Kurzweil room started with a hallway with synths on both sides that then opened out into a lounge-type room. It was a nice way to display their products, and made for a good room to listen to the demo performances. I spent some time with the K2600 and the PC2. The K2600 is an upgraded 2500. I think you need to be very familiar with the K2500 to really know and appreciate the improvements in the new version, as from playing the thing it sounds the same and the OS is pretty much the same. If you know what the K2500 sounds like, then you know what the 2600 sounds like, pretty simple. The PC2 seems like a repackaged PC88 to me. Maybe some improvements or differences, but again, nothing earthshakingly new. One thing I noticed about most of the Kurzweil keyboards is that the headphone amps seem fairly wimpy. I just couldn't seem to get enough level out of them. Incidentally, the top of the line K2600 looks very nice in a sort of silvery-gold color, wish they were all that color. EMU I checked out the new B3 module, but not being a B3 player I can't really say how authentic it truly is. Sounded good to me, and definitely worth checking out if you are into that stuff. ALESIS Alesis of course had the Andromeda synth on display, but under glass. This analog synth looks great, even better in person than in the pictures. The front panel design is brilliant, and is organized in such a way that looks totally cool and is very functional. It has 16 individual outputs, one for each voice, plus two stereo pairs of main outputs. The individual outputs are on TRS connectors, so there are 8 jacks for the individual outs. There are also two CV inputs and three External filter inputs. All in all, a great looking package. TC ELECTRONICS The M-One and M-Two processors were available at several listening stations, and I was able to spend a fair amount of time with them, especially the delay. The M-Two has a nice LCD display and user interface that makes it quite easy to use. Delays can sometimes have eccentric user interfaces, but the M-Two is very easy and logical to use, once you've sorted out which data knob changes which data. The Input and Mix knobs seem a bit flimsy to me, but otherwise the units seem solid. The delay unit has up to 10 seconds of delay available (five seconds per side). The sound was quite clean and clear on both the delay and reverb. They seem like a good value for the money, and I suspect the delay may be finding its way into my studio in the not so distant future. ELECTRIX Electrix had a couple new processors on display, the FilterQueen and the EQKiller, which are half rack units that can be bolted together into one standard rack mount unit. They both feature stereo processing. The FilterQueen is basically cut down version of their FilterFactory, it looks like they removed the "Buzz" part. The EQKiller is three band EQ with sweepable mids, and effects send and return. You can dial in the frequency you want to boost or kill, or send it to an external effects processor. MARK OF THE UNICORN I sat for the demo of Digital Performer 2.7, and I can't wait for the upgrade to become available. The drum editor is very well designed, with some nifty features that are real time savers. Drawing rhythms with the mouse is a piece of cake, and once you edit one pattern to your liking (velocities for example) you can save it as a user defined preset, and simply brush it over the rest of the pattern. Nice stuff. The audio editor has some new features like time stamping, where you can move audio around without ever losing track of its original position. You can also now automatically sync drum loops to the tempo of the midi tracks without artifacts. The version they were using at the booth was still a beta version, but it seemed stable so hopefully we will see it soon. Overall, this new version seems to maintain the ease of use I like about DP while adding more features and functionality. ULTIMATE SUPPORT Ultimate has a new design of their keyboard stands coming out that does away with the welded types of the past. The new stands make use of bicycle technology, and are bolted together the same way the fork is bolted onto bikes. The stands seem quite solid, and the heavyduty X-frame is rated up to 300 pounds. They also have new locking mechanisms that make adjusting the stands and tiers a one-knob approach. The stands looked good to me, and are quite light. I own several Ultimate stands, and I think the new versions are a nice improvement over the old. RAXXESS Another little toy I liked was the Raxxess ISO-BOX, a self contained rack that is sound proofed, allowing the user to silence any loud hard drives or other gear by storing them in it. The IOS-BOX looked kind of expensive (I didn't get the price, sorry), and has a couple of fans, 1" acoustical wedge foam lining, and insulated glass door, and has a microprocessor control with LED that displays the temperature inside the box. You could make one of these yourself, but it might not look this nice! SUMMARY Based on what I saw today, we are going to have some nice new toys to spend our money on this year! The sound quality of what I heard today was very high, and it seems like the synth makers are yet again stuffing more and better into boxes while holding prices on a fairly even keel. Have a great year. Albert, Los Angeles USA http://www.misterpotts.com

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