More NAMM reports:
Rollerator's NAMM Trip Comments
Okay, headed to the NAMM show and here's my report:
Alesis Ion - Disappointing to me. Seems cheaply put together and designed to be a low end VA. The sounds were thin and it didn't have a lot of style appearance wise either. The display reminds me of an old DOS screen monitor. On the plus side, I liked the way the display went to a graphic depiction of the ADSR as you changed the envelope and jumped to display the knob group that you were adjusting whenever you adjusted it. It had four banks and a user bank, but there were only sounds in the Red bank. Nothing to write home about and it's officially off my list of wants for 2003.
Waldorf AFB - pretty cool concept. Lean and clean two rack spaces and sounds pretty good.
Hartmann Neuron - Enjoyed meeting Axel Hartmann (interesting guy) and his gang. He personally demoed the Neuron and it is the most exciting thing I have seen in a long time in the synth world. Sure, it's expensive as hell, but it sounds sweet and it really is something new in a field of repackaged technology.
Access - Nothing really amazing here, but I did spend a good bit of time talking with the boys from Access and TSI and they are committed to adding new functionality to the Virus C for the coming year and have some interesting and exciting updates in store for C owners. A new synth should be showing up from them within the next year or so and it will feature some of the fruits of the research that Access has done in amp other modeling for other companies. FM seems to be on the horizon and more tactile control with either better knobs or some other kind of "more natural" (that's what they said) feedback/control.
Korg - featured a really nice collection of old Korg synths in their Museum. I finally got to see a PSR3300. I couldn't believe how huge it was! Anyway, nothing really new in the EA, ER, ES EM arena, though they said they "hoped" something new would be coming soon. The most exciting thing I saw was the new Trance EXB-09 card. The sounds were stunning and much better than anything on the other Triton expansion cards. I will definitely be adding it to my collection!
Yamaha - The sleek silver Motif Rack was featured prominently and sounded as awesome as I expected it to. $1,295 list and just over $800 if you haggle aggressively. The P-250 is huge and heavy, but would be my first choice for a digial piano.
Creamware - Finally got to meet one of my favorite keyboardists at the Creamware booth, Geoff Downes of Buggles, Yes and Asia fame. He demoed the Noah. The Noah will feature USB 2.0 that will stream up to six virtual plug-in instruments simultaneously. Six is currently the planned limit, so if you want to use more instruments/FX at the same time you would have to add a second Noah. Geoff was playing with three of them at the show. The Noah will not come in a keyboards as originally planned at last year's MusikMesse, but will be a box only, two space rackmount.
The sounds are awesome, and Geoff played a couple of Asia tunes that sounded just like the record using the MiniMax, organ and electric guitar plug-ins. This one is not yet ready for prime time as there were MIDI problems that interrupted the presentation, but they are working the bugs out and plan to ship at the end of March or early April. This is an awesome machine and it is compatible with all of the existing Creamware Pulsar II plug-ins, so you can use them with the box if you already have them.
It will come in a 7 DSP chip and 11 DSP chip model for $2,000 and $2,500 respectively. This one will be worth adding.
Gemeni (sp?) - clearly the winner for the best babes on the floor award. I browsed Gemeni's booth and enjoyed the eye candy as I fought through the disco fog and lasers from surrounding booths.
Ernie Ball and Peavey - tied for runner up for best babes on the floor! EB had cheerleaders and all sorts of interesting dressed up characters. Peavey had this one amazing blonde who...(sorry, back to the reviews).
Roland - Was probably the most exciting booth for me. They demoed the amazing V-Synth, which is the natural evolution of the JP-8000 and is now their flagship synth. The Variphrase application allows you to freeze and manipulate the sounds at any point and then add the COSM FX and twist them in all sorts of ways. I got to spend some floor time with the V-Synth after the demo and it is hot IMHO.
The performance keyboard (I forget the model) is designed to compete with the Nord Electro. It has 3 acoustic pianos (they sounded okay, but I never like Roland pianos) and are from the RD line, 3 electric pianos (okay), some strings (again okay) and really good organs from the VK line with real (not virtual) drawbars. The demo guy could play like nobody's business and the unit sounded pretty good, but you're stuck with the onboard sounds so the Electro still wins in my eyes with the ability to swap sounds in and out and the great Rhodes, Clav and organs it features, not to mention the new acoustic piano that actually sounds pretty good.
Fantom S and Fantom S 88 - Wow!! I really like these. They're what the original Fantom should have been. Now, I need to sell mine before the world finds out and the prices tumble. The new one has, you guessed it, sampling, built in. It has 16 pads like an Akai MPC that hold and trigger samples, plus the Fantom engine and some other goodies. This one is a winner and will retail at $2,495 or $3,495 for the 88 key balanced hammer weighted model, which feels great. I played around on the 88 key S after the demo and really liked the action. It should give Motif a good run for its money now. I definitely want one!
Kurzweil - The K-2661 is not ready for primetime, but the prototype unit was on display and it's nice and light and has beefed up processing and some new voices. It will be nice for anyone who wants to avoid lugging around their K-2600 but wants all the great sounds and features. I know many have said it's just repackaging of old tech, but I think the portability and speedier processors will be nice to have.
The ROM-4 Electric Pianos for K2600 are just awesome. I talked to Dave who programmed all the sounds for this card and he spent about 30 minutes going through the whole card with me. He basically put on all the classic Rhodes and Wurly songs and programmed the hell out of the samples until they really sounded just like the records. This was one of the more impressive things I saw at the show, but then I'm a big fan of the old electromechanical keyboards. The pianets, Rhodeses, Wurlies, all sounded excellent.
PC2 ROM 2, this was also nice and had some of the best from the new ROM 4 plus strings and other stuff, but the Kurz booth got a bit crowded and Jordan Rudess (what a player) was starting his demo, so I didn't get a real good listen.
Moog - The Voyager was on display and sounded great, but the booth wasn't very crowded. I'd hoped to see a performance model, but didn't.
Spectrasonics - Bought the Vienna Philharmonic Cube at the show. The demo room was well done and LOUD, but there's no denying how wonderful it sounds. The 1st version in 16 bit is all that's available now, but the 24 bit pro version is on the way and upgradable from the 1st version. Later, a Performance add-on will also be available. This is the new standard for Orchestral samples.
Trilogy - Eric Pershing was there demoing the amazing Trilogy. It's as good as Atmosphere and Stylus. They are just winners. Maybe dedicated strings and dedicated brass to come in the future.
That's it for now!!
PS - I picked up about 5 extra Roland new NAMM product demo DVD's and 5 VHS videos if anybody wants one. You can see the V-synth, Fantom S, that performance keyboard (I think the 760??) and the open variphrase computer thing on it.
Ooops, almost forgot. I played the GEM Omega 3 and Genesys. The action on the Omega 3 is very nice, but it's a big clunky thing. I guess if you had to have a great piano and wanted to lug it around it would be good.
Kurzweil K-3000 will be about a year away, will have 128 voice polyphony (finally), 2 KSP-8's and lots of other goodies that they're not giving up yet.
Previous Topic
Index