Picture if you will a city full of sunshine, 92 degrees, palm trees, and gear... lots and LOTS of gear!
Now imagine more cliché introductions to an NAB round-up articles, because from here on. I'm just sticking with the gear!
Microphones:
Audio Technica's booth was always busy, with everything from shotgun mics, lavs, and studio condensers to headphones and wireless systems on display. One featured product was their new AT2020 USB, an affordable studio-quality condenser mic that plugs directly into a computer's USB port. Sennheiser was showing off their MHK 8000 series of high-end modular small diaphram condensers; as well as the MHK400 camera-mounted shotgun mic which offers natural sound, long battery life, and rejection of handling noise. DPA and Schoeps are two microphone companies which are renowned for their natural reproduction of sound, both in the studio and in concert halls the world over. Now they bring their considerable microphone manufacturing prowess to the film/video production sound market with DPA's new model 4017 shotgun mic and Schoeps' CMIT 5U. DPA was also touting their tiny and lovely sounding 4080 lav.
Holophone was there in force with a huge "booth" that included a performance stage and an RV. Among their higher end surround microphones was the new PortaMic 5.1, a lower budget portable surround mic that mounts on any professional video camera and provides instantaneous capture of 5.1 surround sound as well on on-board Dolby PLII encoding to record the 5.1 signal onto the camera's stereo audio tracks.
Software:
SmartSound's expansive display of their Sonicfire Pro 5 soundtrack software and the music libraries available for it was quite impressive! This version represents a nice upgrade as several powerful features have been added to make it even easier to get exactly what you're looking for in a soundtrack. The best part? It's free to registered SP4 owners!
Minnetonka Audio Software offered a great demonstration of their powerful audio conversion/processing/encoding software called AudioTools AWE (audio workflow engine). It allows you to create entire chains of various types of processing, incorporating a host of great sounding processes that are included, VST plugins, optional Dolby codecs, and even external hardware processors; then batch process audio files in the background while you work on something else. Solid State Logic (SSL) is regarded as one of the premeir makers of high-end mixing consoles in the world. In their recent effort to reach the home and project studio markets, they have developed their new Pro-convert software for moving projects between various DAW platforms and audio editing applications freely without the loss of settings that is usually the unfortunate fact of life when taking your project to another studio or editing suite. With an impressive list of applications and an array of options for file properties, fades, automation, etc., it looks quite promising! Studio Suite 8 from AlterMedia isn't just for studios. You can organize your contacts, project progress, calendar, libraries, and equipment all in one place.
Accessories:
I love those little things that make my life easier! LogicKeyboard is a company that makes such products. Their color coded, application-specific computer keyboards and keyboard overlays (called LogicSkin) come in a wide variety of form factors for an amazing array of content-creating applications. Also, the friendly folks at K-Tek were happy to see us and immediately showed us their new K-Mount shockmount, which is slated for review this July.
Controller:
Honestly, my favorite stop was probably the Euphonix booth. They are probably most widely associated with huge mixing consoles used for film audio and music production. And there's just nothing like mixing audio through a console. I have been a fan of their high speed, high resolution automation for years. Well now they have taken that exact same automation protocol and brought it within reach of "the rest of us" in the form of their new Artist Series control surfaces. There are two modules offered: the MC Control includes a fully customizable color touch screen, numerous buttons and knobs, and four motorized faders, and the MC Mix offers eight faders, knobs, channel displays, and its own host of programmable buttons. The two units can be used separately or in combination to create your own custom control editing/mixing station. The Artist Series controllers are connected to a network via ethernet, and can therefore be used with any computer on the network. Switching between video and audio applications alike is seemless -- the controller software automatically detects what application is being used and loads the appropriate control setup automatically on the fly!
John Howard has been perfecting sound as an audio engineer for over 10 years. When he's not reviewing gear and software for Microfilmmaker Magazine, he's in the studio recording vocalists and bands, as well as doing post for TV shows and films, through his audio post/recording company, Oakwood Sound Design.
