NAMM 2010 Show Report

NAMM, the International Music Products Association, returned to Anaheim, Calif., from January 14 to 17, for its 2010 Winter Show to an uncertain market. Even in these economically challenging times, the 2010 expo attracted 1,373 exhibitors and a respectable 87,569 registrants, indicating a surge in market enthusiasm.

Yet we live in interesting times, and the lines between pro and MI continue to blur, with one such example being the acquisition of Midas and Klark Teknik by Behringer's parent company last month. This year also marked the first time Peavey exhibited its MediaMatrix line at the show, and with other top-end companies at NAMM—such as Aviom, Community, Crane Song, DPA, JBL, Manley, Neumann, Renkus-Heinz, Solid State Logic, Studer and more—most audio pros would feel right at home walking the exhibit floor.  


“This year’s NAMM Show marks a critical turning point for the international music products industry,” says NAMM president and CEO Joe Lamond. “A strong NAMM show signals the beginning of a comeback with buyers returning to their hometowns with renewed energy, passion and hope for a strong 2010, and exhibitors enjoying strong floor traffic and sales as they introduced hundreds of new and innovative products to the market.”


Overall, the show's vibe was gratitude that 2009 is over, and with the arrival of 2010, everyone seemed ready to move forward with new ideas, new technologies and new optimism. Even the weather cooperated, with blue skies and warm weather with rain beginning just as the show closed. This time around, there was no single "must-see" dazzler at NAMM, yet there were plenty of interesting new products.

Working Together
An interesting theme at this NAMM show was strategic partnerships, with many companies seeing the value of working together. For instance, Peavey and Muse Research have partnered to put out a new product, the MuseBox, a virtual-instrument-and-effects hardware host along the lines of Muse's own Receptor.

Waves and console maker DiGiCo announced it is working together to integrate Waves' new SoundGrid technology into DiGiCo's single FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) Stealth Digital Processing products for the live sound industry. SoundGrid allows running large numbers of Waves' audio plug-ins using standard PCs via Ethernet, with super-low latency.

Avid and Hal Leonard struck a deal that will bring Pro Tools, M-Audio products and more into Hal Leonard's distribution chain. Interestingly, all the Digi and M-Audio products at the show were being shown at Hal Leonard's booth.

Another partnership was between Ableton and Serato, who announced The Bridge, software that acts as a go-between for Ableton Live and Serato Scratch Live/ITCH.

Universal Audio, a company with a long history of collaboration, announced several new partnerships to develop plug-ins for its UAD-2 DSP platform. Working with Manley Labs, UA expects to release an emulation of the Massive Passive stereo equalizer sometime in March. Collaborating with stompbox maker Dunlop, UA is also developing models of classic effects from Dunlop and MXR. A more far-reaching arrangement was made with the Harman Group, which encompasses numerous pro audio manufacturers. UA announced forthcoming plug-ins that model Lexicon reverbs, AKG spring reverb, dbx compression and other processing, and even Studer tape machines. Speaking of tape, pioneering manufacturer Ampex is returning to the pro recording market after a long absence to partner with UA in emulating not only tape machines, but the tape itself.