Several days have already passed, but now I have managed to write a few lines about my impressions from Frankfurt, MusikMesse, the largest exhibition of musical instruments and audio equipment in Europe.
The new products I saw were mostly prototypes or had already been presented at NAMM earlier this year. However, one of the sensations was Nord Wave, the first VA synthesizer combined with a sampler made by Clavia based on Nord architecture. Nord will greatly assist artists who do not like to set up a laptop on stage for playback of intros, either for image reasons or for safety and stability. The sampling engine knows all the important features (cross-fade, layering, looping), although these parameters can only be programmed through the interface of a connected computer. At first glance, I thought it was a Nord Lead 2x and I hope the interface will not remain as it looks now as that would be a step back in technology. It is expected to be released in the fall of this year, so they have some time for development.
Also at Clavia, the new organ C1 could be tried, which I don't really see the point of. To be honest, Clavia surprises with its maneuvers: at the moment they have in-house competition between C1, Electro, and Stage; they have discontinued the Nord Lead 3, leaving only the outdated 2x, and they have also discontinued the G2X from the modular series. Mihai says they are "crazy" but that is what helps them to be leaders in synthesis technology. Let’s hope someone has a clear head in management and they won’t go bankrupt.
Waldorf will probably be revived. They presented a pre-prototype called Stromberg which will be available from early 2008 and will have, in addition to the virtual-analog engine, sampling functionalities, will be compatible (for reading) with Virus and MicroQ patches, and can be expanded with special cards with tube modules and analog filters.
In terms of synths, the most interesting for us was Solaris from John Bowen. It should be noted that John Bowen worked at Moog Music in the '70s, collaborated with Dave Smith on the design of the Prophet 5, and was a sound designer for the factory presets of the vast majority of products from Sequential Circuits. He also worked at Korg, where he participated in the development of the Oasys interface, but left around 1998 (notes: Korg worked a lot on Oasys) to join Creamware, participating in the development of the Scope system.
In this new virtual-analog product, Solaris, John tried to combine the flexibility of a modular system with ease of use and ergonomics. It was evident that he somewhat succeeded: even at first glance, the interface already offers 5 screens of 2x40 characters, a larger graphic display (240x64 px), and 40 knobs. I also saw at the presentation that each knob has multiple functionalities that can be changed by pressing it (paging), and the screen displays the name and value of the currently selected parameter. The parameters are not the usual ones: there are sets of emulations for different modules from well-known manufacturers that can be selected by the names of the circuits used... so it requires some knowledge in the field as the parameter values are not just factors (0..128) or percentages (0..100%) as is customary with the vast majority of VA producers.
The product is planned for the long term, updates and extensions will be developed for many years (at least that’s what the presentation material says), and at the moment it contains the following modules:
- sound sources are: standard, CEM, Wavetable, sample playback, and external source
- modulators: 4 mixer and filter sections, 5 LFOs, 8 envelopes among which 2 can be repetitive (looping), effects section
- standard filters (12/24dB LP, bandpass, and highpass) and special emulated filters from CEM, Moog, etc.
- additional processing modules: 2 vector synthesis mixers, arpeggiator, sequencer.
Among audio interface manufacturers, the most interesting new products seemed to be from ESI. The manufacturer of the well-known Juli@ and Maya cards is preparing a series of new products: a FireWire card at a very affordable price (DuaFire), a MIDI keyboard/controller with very attractive hammer-action (K.ON), nearfield monitors (nEar08), and an extremely high-performance digital interface (MaXIO 032).
Personally, I also liked the booth from T.C. Electronic where a large collection of outboards was tested, especially for vocal effects. It seems that currently they want to strengthen their product line for guitarists. Although at the Messe the hangar with synth/recording tools was different from the hangar with guitar technology, a lot of people gathered for the presentation of TC Electronic guitar effects.
I also had the opportunity to touch the mini MIDI/transport/breath control console from Miditech: MTB Command (uses the "Mackie Control" standard, programmable for controlling VSTs), which will appear around the end of July, and around the end of May, Phonoface, an audio-USB interface with a preamplifier for turntables delivered together with Magix Music Cleaning for restoring tapes, magnetic bands, and vinyl records, will be available. As is customary from Miditech, both products will have an attractive price.
Speaking of control interfaces: the most interesting seemed to be Dexter from Jazzmutant: a touch screen that is compatible with the most well-known DAWs through which the mixer or effects can be controlled. Dexter presents on this touchscreen his vision of these interfaces, which through the concept of "zoomable controllers" also accept high precision.
In the following, we present through pictures what we saw and what we liked:
The new Rhodes:
"M Liminal" from Fazioli:
The great modular Doepfer A100:
We had a little time to try the Tube-Tech outboard line:
