AES + SF = Gear

Oct 13, 2006 12:20 PM, By Gino Robair and Mike Levine

             

A report on the 2006 AES Convention.

The weekend of October 6-8, 2006 was sunny and warm in San Francisco, which on its own would mean crowded streets and insane traffic. But on this particular weekend, it was a complete madhouse. Besides hosting Fleet Week, a free bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park, and a cosmetic surgery convention, Baghdad by the Bay was home to the 121st Audio Engineering Society Convention at Moscone Center.

As nerdy as the organization's name might sound, its convention is not merely a white-lab-coat affair. Running concurrently with high-level seminars, workshops, technical tours, master classes, and other events is a trade show where companies selling pro-audio gear—whatever that means these days—present their latest, greatest, and recently upgraded wears.

Although the AES show floor bears a slight resemblance to events such as NAMM, star sightings are of a different caliber. Instead of long lines of eager musicians waiting for the signature of their favorite rock star, this show features long lines of people waiting for the signature of top-notch recording engineers, who often save the butts of NAMM's rock stars. For example, Geoff Emerick, who manned the control room for the Beatles, among other musical giants, spent two afternoons at the Harman booth autographing his book Here, There, and Everywhere, co-written with Howard Massey.

A few notable musicians were also seen on the show floor, including ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons (who presented the TEC Awards Les Paul Award to fellow guitar legend Steve Miller) and producer/drummer Narada Michael Walden. But it was difficult to not bump into the likes of Al Schmitt, Elliot Scheiner, Joe Chiccarelli, Michael Wagener, Dave Martin, Chuck Ainley, and numerous other platinum producers and engineers as you wandered the show's seventeen aisles.

Brothers of the Beard: bassist Jack Passion with guitarist Billy Gibbons.

This was also the first trade show where the editors of EM and Mix magazine combined video and podcasting efforts, and the results are archived online. The video presentations by EM's Steve Oppenheimer and Mix's Tom Kenny offer an editor's-eye-view of product demos from a number of manufacturers. EM's Mike Levine and Gino Robair teamed up with Mix's Kevin Becka to podcast interviews with leading engineers and manufacturers, to give you another perspective of the trade show experience. So check out the links at Mixonline.com to hear what the pros had to say about the AES show. In the meantime, here are a few of the new products that caught our attention over the weekend.

Hardware

Baskery singing into Ehrlund Triangular Condenser mics.

At the API Audio booth, the Ehrlund Triangular Condenser Microphone from JJ Labs($TBA) was on display. It has a single triangular diaphragm that the company says works like four membranes at once: the center is equivalent to a traditional 1-inch diaphragm, plus the three corners. No other specs were available, but the mics sounded pretty good being demonstrated by Baskery, a trio of Swedish bluegrass singers.

Auralex displayed a new, more affordable way to purchase its AudioTile absorptive panels. It's a 24-piece pack ($159) that offers enough of the interlocking absorbers (designed by Russ Berger), to treat an 8' x 10' ceiling or wall.

The base unit for the beyerdynamic Headzone system.

Beyerdynamic announced a new product called Headzone, which is a headphone-based 5.1 surround-mixing system. It consists of a standard set of headphones modified with a tracking device, a computer breakout box that uses DSP to produce a surround image, and an ultrasonic tracking system. When you move your head, the system follows your head movement, and passes that information to the breakout box, which adjusts the audio signal accordingly, keeping your orientation correct vis-à-vis the 5.1 soundscape. All the DSP is handled in the breakout box, and doesn't tax your computer. Headzone is due to ship in November, and is expected to sell for just under $2500.