Alright, I TOTALLY flubbed on the Ableton booth. The wierd thing is those were questions that I wanted to ask for MYSELF! NAMM is TOTAL sensory overload. Way too many hair-band freaks walking around. Looks like too many people got artist passes. It was hard to have a conversation at times. Some of the larger manufacturers even had soundproof booths on hand to have meetings in.

Sometimes it was hard to get a good answer out of people. The first thing they do when you approach someone is they look at your pass. Mine said "Roland Corporation U.S." and "Visitor", so they either thought I was comparing or not worth their time, since I wasn't a store-owner/vendor.

I flew in on Friday and didn't sleep the night before at all. As of 11PM when I went to bed friday night, I had been awake for 37 hours STRAIGHT. So.. I did my best. Also, I didn't have internet access down there, so I forgot some of the questions. Pictures will come ASAP. (Including a 'jesus-pose' in front of NAMM)

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik I'm dying to know what this new Spectrasonics product is going to be.

Head on over to the Omnisphere thread for my massive update on this massive sounding synth: http://www.tranceaddict.com/forum/s...12&pagenumber=2

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm If Image-Line are at NAMM, ask them if they intend on developing any of the following in FL Studio 8: Proper dual/quad core support Real sidechaining Automatic plugin delay compensation

Oh they were there. I finally found their 3 foot wide section of another booth after I had walked by it 8 times. The two guys were from Belgium, and I could HARDLY understand the guy (which is probably why nobody can get a straight answer out of them), so I'm 90% certain of the following:

APDC? No, Real SC? No, Multi-Core Support? Iffy, cuz he mumbled with his thick accent and I just couldn't deal with it anymore. You can only ask "What?" so many times before you start feeling like Lil' Jon and want to leave. I think the answer was no, but don't quote me on that.

Nice looking beatslicing though. He showed me the interface, and it was pretty slick!

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Originally posted by cryophonik Anyway, can you also stop by the Waldorf booth and check out the new Blofeld synth? Thanks!

This was sad. Really. Their 'booth' was in the basement with all the other super tiny booths, across from a couple of guys advertising their hip-hop produktion skillz. I threw on the headphones and couldn't hear it well at ALL. You see, most manufacturers had the output of their product fed into a headphone amp/splitter. So, I got frustrated and walked away. The unit itself looks nice. From what I'd read in another thread here, the price is good. I like it, if only for that.

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Originally posted by daveth M-Audio: Something along the lines of, "when the **** are you going to release NON-BETA, heck, ANY, 64-bit drivers for say.. all of your products?!"

Holy crap this was great! Twice I said to my buddy "hey, let's go back over to M-Audio and make 'em squirm."

First encounter: "I'd like to as you about driver development. When will you be releasing 64-bit drivers for your audio interfaces?" Rep: [does that whistle that starts high and drops in pitch, eyes go wide] "You know, they're working on that."

lose

Third encounter: [I approach a group of THREE reps as they're talking amongst themselves] "Excuse me, question for you. How is the development of 64-bit drivers going?" Rep: [as the two others just jump away] "Yeah... about that," [guy starts looking around] "you know I really can't say." [calls to other rep] "hey where's Les?" Then he took me to Les who told me a pre-recorded message about how they are currently in development and have absolutely NO timeframe. Me: "So are we talking on the scale of a month or a year here?" Les: "No way to know right now."

lose

Good times... good times.

quote:

Originally posted by Eldritch and Daveth Issues with Virus

Sorry guys, didn't get those in time. Wish I had internet access more often. I DO know that they have an OS update coming out sometime soon, with beatslicing for external audio input that is fairly impressive. You may want to search for details on the latest OS update to see if it mentions anything else.

quote:

Originally posted by nobody because It's my turn!

Went to the Ableton booth where they simply had monitors set up to loop the videos that we've all seen on their site. They did have some kind of presentation, but I'm sure it was just redundant. So in their booth area was Cycling '74 showing off MaxMSP. Now a short while back there was news of '74 and Ableton getting in bed together. I asked him about that and got "I'm not at liberty to say anything about that." Wierd... you're IN their booth. He asked what my musical intentions were and, after giving him some BS, he told me that I would one day ditch Ableton and come talking to him. Wow, nice 'partnership' or whatever it is they have going on. Guy seemed like a pretentious nutjob and he wouldn't stop talking. I wanted to leave, so I ran as fast as possible out of the Ableton booth. Probably why I forgot to ask about Live's stuff.

Stanton has a new digital interface for DJ's. Look it up on their site, as it's on the front page. $1500 for ONE of the turntable pieces, and something like $1200-$1800 for the mixer/audio interface. It has a GREAT set of options like assignable encoders, buttons, and velocity sensative pads on the turntables (which are motorized), but the only drawback is that pricepoint. It's WAY too pricey. 4000 and some hundreds of dollars? Joking?

Saw Stevie Wonder.. Awesome! He didn't see me though. Saw Jordan Rudess, which was cool too!

Roland has a new product... the V-Accordion. I still don't believe it. It feels like I saw it in a whacked out dream, because nobody would make such a thing. They have a big, if not majority, interest in Cakewalk now. Might see some big changes.

Shiny Toy Guns at the Roland stage was totally rad. They did a short 5-song set to showcase how they use Roland gear. Nice folks. I'm in love with the chick. Rawr. Not really, but she's super cute.

Biggest 'lose' moment: Electrix wasn't there. They're remaking some of their old products after a year or two or three or four hiatus. They had a rack-mount analog filter that could be controlled via midi, but you could hear stairstepping due to digital pots as part of the circuit. Wanted to see if this was addressed. Bummer.

I learned what not to do at NAMM... spend two 4 hour days there and not have a plan of attack. It's HUGE. Next time I'm going by myself with a list of questions, and THEN walking up and down isles to see everything. That would take forever, so I'd do 2-3 full days out of the 4 total.

Last edited by 3F05Q on Jan-21-2008 at 03:14