Another One Down... (NAMM Report 2014)
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Another January, another winter NAMM. Thoughts, in no particular order:
1. Once again I’ll state the obvious: Anaheim hates you if you’re not there to go to Disneyland. I will again propose that NAMM move to the LA Convention Center, where at least if we have to put up with bad food and no parking, we can do it somewhere we don’t have to drive two hours to get to.
2. The little synth pictured above. This is the Murmux Semi-Modular, a new product from Freaqbox, who are nominally guitar pedal people. Bog standard, mediocre silk-screening, a case that is way bigger than it has to be, and tweed, of all things. Somehow, that combo works. There is also a non-modular version called The Initiate, and one with a big ol’ foot-pedal keyboard, if you’re in to that sort of thing. There is zero shortage of simple analog desktops, and this is one of them, but the filter is to die for, and the big-ass knobs… PEW PEW PEW!!! No idea what the MSRP is, or availability. But me likey.
3. The Waldorf 2-Pole. Mono I/O, no MIDI, no USB, no runs, no hits, no errors. Another box that is way bigger than you’d think. It sounds farking awesome. $250-ish. Outstanding.
4. Bitwig Studio. I’m now running this jank. Haven’t dove in to it in detail yet (i.e. made a track with it) but it shows promise early on. It’s good Ableton has some competition now. All consumers benefit.
All in all, NAMM 2014 was exactly like NAMM 2013, only more so. A good time was had by all. Anything you see in the firehose of social and normal media that caught your eye?
28 comments
That which caught my eye:
~ Moog Sub37. Everyone talks about the paraphonic thang but only shows like, two seconds of it in action. Give me a 4 minute minimum vid of just the paraphonic in action, please
~ Arturia BeatStep sounds awesome, especially at its price point
~ Moog Theremini... not sure if it'll make me truly interested in the theremin or not. But dang, MIDI and USB and pitch correction? :) I'm probably in.
~ Admittedly, I am interested in the Nord A1. I'll stop there, before I admit I wish the new Korg keytar were cheaper.
This caught my eye. A must if u still have the CMU. The price is so low it'd be a crime if ya didnt... http://beatnic.jp/products/cmu-800-midi-interface/
yes the CV gate will still work...
no you dont have to open it up and play operation with it... ribbon cable plugs right into it...
Subchubby ladder 37: paraphonic is not two complete voices. it only allows varying the oscillator's pitch.. same filter etc. so, 2 oscillators w/different pitch but all else is the same. interesting.
somehow the future-retro stuff slipped by everyone.. (Zillion) algorithmic midi sequencer.. probably based on the remix function in the future-retro Revolution.
some midi/din sync thru boxes and a sync shift type of thing.
https://25.media.tumblr.com/e1f3ae51841d93dceae2518b13258f07/tumblr_mzxopmCTL61tq7gtzo1_1280.jpg
it's all kinda interesting but details are slim.
i'm interested in the eurorack stuff: Verbos Electronics harmonic oscillator, makenoise mystery module (wave guide oscillator), erbeverb possibly, serge/tiptop WAD, the SNazzyFX Telephone Game analog looper thing and lastly the SSF/WMD random module...
soooooo much eurorack stuff. ridiculous amount of things. awesome
still waiting for someone to get on the ball release a small 25 key knobby full featured FM synth. they could have gotten in the game 5-10 years ago with the analog stuff and done just fine in the market. they were late to the game! and now they're sleeping at the wheel when they could be cashing in with an FM hotrod.
or perhaps that's just what i say because i'd love one that is covered in knobs and fits in my lap. Korg could slice off the FM bit of that kronos and package it up nicely for those of us who don't want cadillac sized $7k workstations that have every possible type of synthesis under the hood.
semi rant.
the waldorf filter does sound damn good btw. the demos are good.
The 2-Pole is pretty much a no brainer. Going to end up with one of those. The BeatStep is also probably going to end up in my kit. At that price, I almost have to get one. I use a padKontrol a lot when I'm out of the house and holed up in hotel rooms. To have that with a few knobs and have it also work as a simple cv/gate sequencer is nice. I've got an extra 32hp cube that I've been contemplating making into a tiny portable monosynth for taking on trips. The Arturia pads will add to that nicely.
I missed that Murmux synth. Looks great. I'm sold on it just because it says "Black Science" on the side right underneath what looks to be a sigil from the Clavicula Salomonis (or some such related mediaeval grimoire). It'll probably cost $2000 and break my heart. Oh, well. I've got eurocrack to buy anyway.
I was instantly geeked about the Sub 37 until I realized that it wasn't a full divide-down architecture, just dual paraphonic. Yawn. And also, psht. A full 37 note paraphonic Moog box would have interested me greatly, but this thing makes no damn sense to me. Who is it for? But, it's nice to see a board with aftertouch, I guess.
Speaking of which: the Korg Taktile controllers looked fairly nice. But, for that money I'd rather by an old synthesizer off of eBay so that I can get aftertouch. Not to mention a bonus synthesizer that is more interesting than a cut down Triton. If the Taktile had aftertouch (even just channel aftertouch, I've given up on affordable poly aftertouch), I'd be all over it.
The only other thing that I saw that looked interesting to me was the Livid/Dubspot mixer style MIDI controller. I have been thinking about DIYing up a controller for live work, and this thing is roughly 90% of what I'd really want. Livid makes solid kit and the MSRP seems reasonable. I might have to stretch the budget and get one before the summer gig season. I'll want to try one out first, though.
Overall, though. Yawnsville all around.
- William
The reason there are no more extensive videos of the Sub 37 is that the unit they had at NAMM was only partially working. Hard to do a demo of something when only half the features work. That said, yeah, it's just a Sub Phatty with all the possible parameters sent to the front panel. Take that as you will.
As for the theremin, aside from its major failing of being a theremin, something that is quite difficult to overcome in and of itself, it's basically the Animoog code in a big plastic box. YMMV.
-CR
The Sub 37 is everything I would have liked the Sub Phatty to be, and I'm really impressed that Moog actually went through with it and didn't say "gotcha" on any point. The paraphonic feature doesn't really interest me, but if I find $1500 under a rock somewhere and decide I need a (basically) mono synth from Moog, this is way more appealing to me than essentially any other Moog of recent history.
If the Beatstep delivers at $100 then that's a no brainer. Any idea on if it has tap tempo?
Also is it just me or does Amos from Moog look a lot like a taller, skinner, younger, Bob Moog? Not only how he looks, but he seems to have a very similar way of speaking.
I want to see someone who can actually play a theremin, playing that theremin. In a place that is not a crowded, noisy show floor. Somebody to prove it's not just a toy.
And I want more details: MIDI in as well as out? (That'd make it unique among theremins, even if it is just Animoog inside.) With calibration stuff buried in menus instead of a big fat knob on front, does that mean it's more or less set-and-forget instead of constant fiddling like my Etherwave?
Bitwig is intriguing, but I'm such a Maschine convert right now that I'll just hold off. It's probably best not to go for version 1.0 anyway.
BreakTweaker or BeakTwerker or whatever from Izotope is sad. At $20 I'd pick it up and use it once or twice. At $200 I'm just shaking my head.
I am not the target market for the Sub 37; it just seems like too much scratch for too little synth, but then I'm not big into analog fetishism anyway. 2-Pole is pretty sweet though.
If Waldorf offers up the 2-Pole at $200 I think it's a shoe-in. You're talking about $170 shipped post 15%-off coupon from one of the major retailers.
Now if Peter and James would just ship my damn Anode.
After seeing this I stopped by the FreaqBox booth today. Damn that thing actually sounds pretty good, like a vintage Moog oscillator thickness/filter overdrive sound. But it's a super-simple architecture, and it'll have an uphill climb at ~ $900 for the initiate, ~ $1100 for the semi modular.
Yeah. The pricing is not great. For the bone stock synth sounds, though, I don't think I've heard better . It blows the doors off at least two of the Studio Electronics synths, and is in the hunt for the real SEM.
-CR
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Elektron Analog Rytm. It's not something I'm in the market for, but it's an impressive box nonethless.
Otherwise, there was a shitload of interesting eurorack stuff. But what I'm looking most forward to is getting my hands on bitwig...
1. NAMM should be moved to Vegas Convention Center. Parking is a total non-issue here, and more importantly, it's under five minutes from my house. Y'all can come stay with me, I have a big-ass pool.
2. I played the Freaqbox bass pedals for a long time, and my friend and I were inadvertently drafted to give design feedback. It had some minor issues (the attack didn't really go to zero, nor did the resonance), but it sounded nifty and looked unique, and the multi-octave sub octave was nice. But they told us the bass pedal version was around $3500. Ferreal?!?
3. I didn't play all of them, but I was impressed by the Studio Electronics Boomstar (though the name makes me think it's a an 808 kick emulator). I played the 303 version (mainly because it was in front of me and running), and though I'm not what you'd you call a 303 guy, it had a ton of low end and numerous kickass ways of distorting obnoxiously. They also had new versions with CS-80 filter and Korg System 700 filter, but it seems it would make far more sense to charge $100-200 more and just include all six filters with a selector. Who's gonna buy multiples of these things?
4. Whether it's $99 or $129, Arturia Beatstep is an insane no-brainer. It basically does everything an ARP sequencer does (and stores 16 patterns), and the last I checked, those were going for $2k and up. (ok, it won't do two separate 8-step sequences simultaneously, I but suspect you could get around that by buying two Beatsteps and saving $1800. Or a baker's dozen of them.)
5. Been hammered into the ground, but regardless of the ridiculously cheap MS-20 Mini, the full-size kit one for $1400 is still an unbelievable deal in today dollars. I played it, and it's more fun than a barrel of monkeys with superballs. By all accounts, only 200 will make it to the states, so you and me probably won't get one, but two Korg reps agreed with me that if everyone wants one, they'd be silly not to make more.
6. Roland: at least you won the "here's a whole lotta nothing/there isn't an MI company with their heads further up their ass" award, so like, nice work alienating whatever supporters you still have left.
BitWig all the way. It is about time.
And now I want a t-shirt that says "I have a big ass pool" on it. Even if I don't.
I can't get excited about the Arturia thing until it's been out awhile. First-run Arturia hardware is still a hit-or-miss endeavor. I picked up one of their 49-key keylab controllers the other week - dead keys, not-equally-responsive pads, and fader caps that basically went flying off if not handled with a delicate touch. That went back straight away. My DX7 II FD, well, that still works just fine for keys.
Arturia software updates have killed Ableton sets for me before. I lost a lot of work, and the good folks at Arturia couldn't figure it out. Also, Arturia's MiniLab will crash Ableton on a regular basis, i would never gig with the VST running. IMHO, wait for BeatStep to stabilize.
I wish the Theremini didn't look like a big suppository.
The MIDI out is kinda cool, but it seems like it'd be most useful to do MIDI out and have the antennas be a bigassed continuous controller, instead of note-out (because, hell, there are far easier ways to control a mono synth than waving your hands around). I mean I love my etherwaves and they sound pretty great for that theremin sound, but I kinda don't think they need to be anything more than they already are, and the Theremini appears to be targeted squarely at the kind of indie bands that have backwards haircuts, tv trays with lots of effects pedals, and some sort of press kit with the words "freeform electronic improvisation." It'd be cool if it was like $150 but at the, what $299 price point? Meh.
I haven't decided yet if Roland has greatly overestimated the number of wedding bands that need an 808 clone, or if we've underestimated the number of people who simply don't give a shit that it's not a true analog signal path. It's a big yawn either way, but being Roland I'm sure they don't care, will sell enough of them to justify the R&D costs, and continue to make their bank off of stage pianos or something.
So breaktweaker is finally out. This is the killer plugin for, like, 2004. For BT. If you're not BT and it's not 2004, then there's no real use for it. On a whim I played with the demo over the weekend. It's pretty limp. Underwhelming drum synthesizer (a few neat features, but everything still sounded pretty plasticky) tied to a sequencer that lets you do BT-style microedits. Which nobody needs to do, ever, in their lives. Might be cooler if you could actually, um, tweak breaks with it, but really it's just another drum box with high clock resolution and some macros for making kick drums sound like farts. I'd maybe shell out for it if it were a reaktor ensemble and was like $75, but that $249 price point (or $300 if you want the add-on libraries) is basically insane.
ditto on breaktweaker. overhyped, overpriced.. underdeveloped and gimmicky. played w/the demo for a while. very "meh". which is surprising given how much i like some other izotope products.
I overlooked the Waldorf unit as meh, but looking at it now at your req, looks like a fairly competent little box for those in the market...
bitwig: will definitely check out, have yet to hear anything about it's PDC, it's actual sound engine, or cpu efficiency, .... but looks like it could be a hell of a lot of fun and it's nice to see someone push ableton to fix some of their glaring problems they refuse to admit.
breaktweaker? yeah, seems like it would have been great for BT in 2004, would like to test drive it with some other non percussive type sounds, but for over 200bucks, seems a little frivolous. Izotope makes some great products... seems like low lying fruit for them to make a really good vocoder, as they have done the r&d on synth engines and vocal manipulation, multi band eq's etc....
felt a little underwhelming this year to me, but I am not in the place right now to be dropping thousands on gear anyway, so probably a good thing... my favorite purchase last year was probably iconnectivity's midi2+.... thing actually works, and in aggregate! (had nothing but bad luck with that in the past)....
Clavia have a way bigger market for their stage products than they'd ever hope to have with a G3 or whatever. While we like that sort of thing, most people don't want to box-n-wire their sounds. They just want to dial up a B3 or Rhodes sound and play in their cover or church band.
While those of us out on the cutting edge prefer whacky new products that push the envelope, we are unfortunately a rather small market segment. A trip to NAMM would bring this home. The people with new ideas have 10x10 booths down in Hall E. Yamaha and Roland have their own halls. Clavia's booth is gigantic.
-CR
I love and have owned most of the models at one point or another (currently sporting an original Nord Modular keyboard), and while I would like to see a new one I don't see it happening. I mean, the geeks that are into modular are mostly into Eurorack, it seems like a small fraction of an already relatively small (compared to average church key players) market to pick the modular fans that are willing to program on a computer. I just don't see Clavia making money on it. Would like to see them make a better Wave, based on the Lead 4 engine, which to my ears sounds pretty good...but I couldn't get into the Wave.
I think the Nord Modulars can sound really great, and possibly the best argument against them releasing a new one is the unfixed "future proof" architecture...as long as you have a computer hanging around that's compatible with the editor (currently keep an old XP machine FAT32 formatted to run the editor and manage files for my old samplers).
There's also that modular synth app for iPad. Anyone use that?
the modular for ipad is very early stages imo and i don't think it has nearly the depth of sound something like the NM has. who knows what a couple years will bring though.. right now it doesn't seem at all appealing to me for every reason that one considers buying any kind of synth.. be it hardware or software.
i think clavia could be really successful if they just made the NM editor a software product. they were part of the way there w/the demo of the modular editor. if they could just finish that job.. flesh it out into standalone/VSTi/AU... even if you couldn't edit your patch when in VST mode other than knob twiddling.. it'd be fantastic.
a lot of people would buy a $199 nord modular in software form. especially if it was compatible w/all the existing patches on line. there are thousands of them.
it's a much more fun interface to patch in than any of the other software modulars imo.
The thing about NAMM I find curious is the increasing presence of pro audio gear. I saw pictures of Daking and Chandler stuff, etc.
I guess it shows how the lines between AES and NAMM are dissolving. Interesting cultural development from the bird's eye view.
- c
Don't even know why Clavia would need to make a software modular with all the other software modulars on the market.
(unless you specifically need compatibility with previous Clavia modulars, or there's some specific charm to the Clavia sound that I'm missing...)
@nulldevice - there is particular charm to the sound but mostly it's the interface. there is no software modular that is as enjoyable, logical as the nord modular.
there's nothing that allows for add/remove modules and patch in the same way. reaktor is great but it's hardly any fun compared to the nord modular editor. NM editor is fast and there's no hidden structure/interface paradigm.. what you see is what you get. drop a module in the window.. patch it to something else.. that's it.
it's just better than every other software modular.
@nulldevice: I enjoy the insight of boobs (always wanted to say that) on this matter but for me personally the beauty of the NM was the ability to detach from a computer. In my case, I have a Micro Modular, which is a little hardware widget. Patch 1 can be a Minimoog bass patch for your midi keyboard, patch 2 can be a crazy Mutron clone for your guitar, patch 3 can be a vocoder for your mic/keyboard. No GD computer necessary once all the code is stored into the device.
All this in a little tabletop widget you can put on a pedalboard. Clavia nailed the concept software and hardware-wise and there is no reason to reinvent it. These came out in the late 90's and in 2014, no such device exists. There's a void there and it's a shame.
Agreed, the best part of the Nord Modular was that it could function standalone once you did your programming on the computer. The problem with Clavia approaching this exclusively as a software product is that of course, piracy is a concern. The Nord Modular is IMHO the best software modular interface by leaps and bounds, you'd have to be a lifelong computer programmer/Unix junky to really appreciate Reaktor over the Nord. I suppose though what's to stop someone from using the software only demo that is available? The only limitations are that it requires an older computer, mono only, and doesn't save patches...correct? I say...program away...and sample it. Just like a modular, without the hardware.
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