AES (or CR's Big Day Out)...

Well, my day at AES is now over. I’ll state for the record that I don’t have the foot skills necessary to stand around and talk to people all day. My dogs are barkin’ right about now. That aside, I could easily make this entire post about my observations viz. that special sub-group of audio professionals that would populate a convention like this, but I don’t really see how that would serve any purpose. Also, I had planned to take a bunch of pictures of Audio Engineers in their natural environs, but the Soundcraft guys thought I was an industrial spy, and set the Moscone Center security on me, so my photo-taking adventure was curtailed. (Thanks, Soundcraft. Your console sucks and you’re a bunch of fucking cunts.)

That being the case, I’ll just give some color commentary about the things I found interesting, and leave the actual product research to you.

This is Geoff Tanner. He is very English, very easy to talk to, and has forgotten more about making audio products than the vast majority of us will ever manage to shoehorn in to our tiny human-sized brains. I spent a very enjoyable time getting a demonstration of his new console, and I’m a better person for it. It’s like getting communion from the Pope. Except I’m not Catholic so that metaphor is shaky at best. Several more pictures of the console on my Flickr page.

This is the Blue Robbie mic pre. This isn’t new or anything, but this is the first time I’ve seen one in real life. Let me just state for the record that I thought it was a little tiny thing. It is not. That knob is the size of a coffee cup. There is something terribly awesome about this thing. I had a Blue engineer hold my iPhone next to it for scale. This was, by far, the biggest surprise of the show.

This is the entire Purple product line in the Mercenary booth. I love the way Andrew does business, and I love their products. I want a whole Purple studio (but apologies to Andrew, I think I’d like Geoff’s mixer). The boat on the lower left-hand side is full of Purple’s new aux buss. It isn’t a normal 500 rack, but rather has a special connector and a shitload of DB25 connectors on the back. Also note the graphic EQ. Unlike an API 560, which is sort of a special-effect cart, this is a proper graphic, and very, very cool. I want. And the comps. Mmmmm.

Other cool things I saw:

innerTUBE Atomic Squeeze Box: Very, very smooth compressor. The fellow that makes ’em gave me a whole demo, and I kind of chuckled at how his idea of “extreme” and mine differ (“it goes to 20:1!!!!!”) but an extremely smooth box. Also, they have their own mic built in to the body of a Mag-Lite which is, aside from being on the eccentric side, an excellent sounding mic.

Avedis Stuff: Avedis makes some really nice shit. ’Nuff said about that.

Bricasti Reverb: Fucking forget it. There is no other hardware reverb worth talking about. IR reverb can suck a dick. Lexicon might as well throw in the towel. It’s over. Bricasti won. Next. Also, they had their new remote there, and boy, howdy, that thing is t3h s3xy. Straight up.

Lexicon PCM-96: Speaking of Lexicon, I lol in their general direction. I wanted to like this box so bad. I almost had Adam talked in to buying a pair for “research,” even. Dave Gamble of Sonalksis and I went over to demo it, and Dave was able to hard-crash Logic in about 8 seconds flat, without even actually trying to do so. I kind of felt bad for the engineer. Plus the booth was shoe-horned in with the whole Harmon dog ‘n’ pony show (yeah, fuck you, Soundcraft, you whiney little bitchfucks) and that colored my opinion to begin with. Enjoy the world of car stereos, guys. The PCM-96 is made out of fail.

Anyhow, that’s the general lie of the land. If anyone has any specific questions I’ll be happy to attempt an answer, with the caveat that once I took a spin around the show floor, I spent most of my time among the tweaky boutique manufacturers, so if you want to know about the latest set of headphones from AKG, you’re gonna have to look elsewhere.