This year is the 30th anniversary of Mackie, and to mark the occasion, founder and namesake Greg Mackie came back to visit the company, cut a giant cake emblazoned with the famed running-man logo, and reminisce about the company’s first product, seen here: The MicroMix, built with bulk excess spare parts lying around.
At the Avid booth, Tony Maserati reminisced about recording The Notorious BIG and Faith Evans—with Evans’ wriggling three-year-old, China, on his lap at the console.
L-Acoustics’ big sneak peek is small: the 4-inch X4i, intended for installation, HOW, theatrical and more. Depth is about a 2×4 and a side of Sheetrock.
RME’s focus this year at the show is squarely on education, but its Digiface AVB (top) and Dante models are now shipping. The Digiface AVB uses AVB to transfer up to 256 channels of audio between a PC and audio network, while the Dante does that and more.
Native Instruments introduced a number of new items, including KOMPLETE KONTROL M32, a micro-sized keyboard controller, and KOMPLETE AUDIO 1 and 2, a pair of simple, two-channel audio interfaces that come with a ton of software (a pair of 2s are next to the keyboard, while a 1 is beneath them).
PK Sound founder Jeremy Bridge pauses with the robotic Trinity line array (yes, robotic). Live sound engineers for the likes of Katy Perry and others will be speaking at the PK booth this week about the system.
Nexo is introducing its new GEO M12 and MSUB18, out now. Building on the M10, the 12 features more low end, no more panel in back covering the active/passive switch, and more angle splay options than the M10.
This one is pretty wild—it’s Ultimate Ears’ new roll-your-own process for making your own custom ear molds for high-end consumer models (same tech as pro IEMs, but different design since user needs are different). You get a kit with a squishy rubber insert and put it in your ear (left), then attach a small gizmo that will cure the rubbery part while it is in your ear, essentially creating a mold in less than a minute (center). Yes, it gets hot. Then you send it to UE and get your custom ear molds in 10 days or less (right).
Mixing FOH for Dynaudio’s unique shipping container studio/performance space, an engineer used a tablet connected to a Waves LV-1 mixing system outside the convention center.
Anaheim, CA (January 25, 2019)—Every year, the MI field—and now increasingly the pro-audio industry—descends on the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA. Day One of the show was an eye-popping, ear-opening, foot-busting trek through a whirlwind of new product introductions and updates. Here’s just some of what we saw.
