AES Convention 2011 Day 1

This years Audio Engineering Society convention had the smells and flavors of previously happier events. A stark contrast than 2009’s AES convention when the audio industry took another major hit with the slump in the economy. However this year the vibe of the conference was much more positive and more importantly filled with potential buyers.

Today I had the opportunity to visit with Sennheiser, Solid State Logic, Sound Devices, Auralex, Izotope, Gibson Guitar, Antelope, Fraunhofer and TC Electronics. Here are some highlights.

Sennheiser had a sneak peak at their new KH810 sub with KH120 monitors. They sounded crisp for a near field monitor with good high end response. I also got a chance to check out their new K-Array KB1 that is a subwoofer cab about the size of a small guitar combo amp with a long tweeter array that sits on top. Small footprint, great sound. MSRP is a bit much though, $2199 but you get a kick ass PA instead of a combo amp.

SSL had a really nice look at Nucleus, which was a HUI with two SSL preamps installed. The HUI interfaced well with Logic, Live and Pro-Tools. Speaking of Pro-Tools, the Duende plug in package is now available in native formats.

Sound Devices had a nice feature upgrade to their 788T MultiTrack digital audio recorder called “Mix Assist”. This was an automixer feature that allowed the unit to automix up to 8 channels of dialog.

Auralex is unveiling a new panel tomorrow in Saturday Oct 22nd at 3:30 pm in Rm 1E06.

We also had a great talk about their green initiative.

Izotope debued Ozone 5 today. EQ looks slick as well as the impressive spectrum analysis.

Gibson Guitar featured the new Firebire X guitar with a ton of onboard FX and autotuning. The Autotuning feature was really neat where they actually installed robotic machine heads.

Antelope audio had a really high sampling rate with solid clocking unit. One was the Zodiac which has an endorsement from Jim Anderson and their new Eclipse. I am going to feature two of their units in an upcoming post.

Fraunhofer IIC was demonstrating an impressive low bit rate MPEG surround product that had surprisingly low loss due to their compression. They also exhibited a Personal Broadcast Dialog enhancement technology that allowed consumers to adjust the dialog on their own. A fantastic addition to the market place of consumer audio. I will be doing a longer post on this as well.

Finally I stopped by TC electronics where they debued their native LM6 plug in.

Good vibes, good energy, good products all the way around. See you tomorrow.