More than 1,200 companies are exhibiting at the NAB Show in Las Vegas this week, so here's some of the most interesting new audio offerings we've seen on the show floor.
Las Vegas, NV (April 19, 2023)—This year’s NAB Show has been rocking and rolling ever since it opened its doors on Sunday morning. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) announced that this year’s Centennial Edition of the show has a preliminary registered attendance of 65,013 who are onsite to visit the 1,208 exhibitors inside the Las Vegas Convention Center.
While there’s thousands of attendees here to see the latest and greatest in production, from broadcast to content creation, there’s surely something for everyone whose line of work involves the production of high-quality audio, video, content and more. Here’s just some of the audio offerings we’ve been spotting on the show floor this week—make sure you don’t pass up Part One!
Røde unleashed its biggest group of new products in the company’s history—so many that only a handful are in this photo. Clockwise from the top left is the new Rødecaster Duo all-in-one audio production solution, providing all of the features of the Rødecaster II in a more compact form factor with fewer audio inputs. Next to it is the Streamer X, a livestream-centric solution that adapts some of the Rødecaster’s most applicable features to streaming needs. Below that is a set of Wireless ME wearable microphones for content creators, and to the left is the new Wireless GO II charging case for Wireless GO mics; it holds transmitters and the receiver, and facilitates three full recharges for up to 30 hours of continuous use.
Pliant is launching the latest addition to its CrewCom line—the CCU-08 Control Unit, which provides eight 4-wire intercom connections and supports up to 82 Radio Pcks across all RD bands. Up to four Control Units can be combined into a single system, with its Sync port allowing different systems to work together in the same area without RF conflicts.
Waves is on-hand at the Audinate booth, because its Waves Cloud MX Audio Mixer is now Dante-compatible via Audinate’s Dante Connect, offering advanced audio processing and mixing for cloud-based broadcast productions. The cloud-based solution allows up to 256 channels of audio to be captured at remote locations and then mixed, processed, and delivered from anywhere in the world. Accordingly, it’s aimed at broadcasters looking to reduce costs and complexity, allowing minimal equipment on-site to send audio out for production.
In the sizable Sony booth, the company is launching the DWT-P30 Digital Wireless Transmitter. As a wideband transmitter, it covers UHF 14-38 in one unit (470-618 MHz), and offers 5,384 selectable channels in 25 KHz steps. Intended for ENG stand-up and digital boom pole applications, it provides +48v phantom power, has four Sony codecs, uses AES 256-bit encryption (one-to-one or within a group), has an OLED display and more.
Also at the Sony booth is the recently released C-8 uni-directional condenser mic, designed to have a rich mid-low frequency range. It has a low-cut filter, -10 dB pad switch, dual-diaphragm configuration and is constructed with noise elimination in mind.
Hollyland has a batch of new creations on-hand for traditional pros and content creators, and aimed at the latter group is its new Lark C1 wireless lavalier microphone set for iOS devices. The Lark C1 wireless lavalier microphone comes with an MFi-certified RX lightning interface that plugs into your device, making it literally ‘plug and play.’ That connects to two Lark C1 lapel wireless mics that recharge in the case and have a 200-meter range, as well as onboard noise canceling.
The power of audio is readily apparent around the NAB Show floor, even at booths that have nothing to do with audio. Everywhere you go, there are musicians plying their trade, whether it’s string quartets performing in TV camera booths so that cameras can be tested focusing on real people, or this quartet at the booth of lighting and camera lens specialists ARRI, making passers-by stop to hear wailing guitar solos on some truly heavy 1980s hard rock covers.
