Weetnotes® S

February/March 2007 Issue | Vol. 73 S weetNotes® (800) 222-4700 • www.sweetwater.com Making music happen for over 27 years! INSIDE THIS ISSUE: NAMM Show ’07 ........... 1,10,11,12,13 Akai DPS24mkII ............................ 2 Native Instruments Kontakt 2 ............ 3 M-Audio NRV-10 ........................... 4 Focusrite Liquid Mix ...................... 4 Guitar 101 ...................................5 Customer Studio ........................... 5 By Mitch Gallagher AKG C414 LTD Inside Sweetwater ......................... 6 It might have been snowy and cold at Sweetwater’s headquarters in Fort Wayne, but it was Digitech RP Series ........................ 6 raining new gear at the recent Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, California! The annual Mackie VLZ3 Series ....................... 7 National Association of Music Merchants tradeshow is the biggest U.S. music industry show; Expert Center.. ............................. 7 this is where manufacturers come to show the new pro audio and music products we’ll all be Moog Little Phatty Stage Edition ........ 8 lusting after this year. The 2007 show certainly didn’t disappoint — there were more product Rock n Roll Fantasy Winner ............. 8 introductions at this NAMM than at any I can remember in recent years. Here’s a small sampling Inside the Sweetwater Difference ....... 9 of some of the products the Sweetwater tradeshow crew came across; for a complete TechNotes .................................14 listing, be sure to visit www.sweetwater.com/publications/reports and tune in to our daily ® Sweetwater Disc Services ...............14 inSync internet newsletter (www.sweetwater.com/insync) for ongoing coverage and Studio Notebook ..........................15 updates on all the new products introduced at NAMM. Digidesign Pro Tools 7.3 and Velvet ...15 The A-Designs EM-PEQ is an EQ module based on the classic Pultec EQ and using the class AB amp from the Pacifi ca mic preamp for makeup gain. It fi ts in any 500 series-compatible rack, including the new R52, a single-space dual module chassis also introduced at the show. A-Design’s popular REDDI DI box received a nice enhancement based on customer requests, a 1/4" thru jack on the front panel. AKG was celebrating 60 years of microphone innovation at this show with the announcement of the C 414 LTD. This special version of the venerable C 414 features hand-selected capsules and components for optimum sonic performance, plus a nickel fi nish and brass grille — very sharp! The C 414 LTD comes in special packaging including a limited-edition black soundtools case, windscreen, spider suspension, pop fi lter, and certifi cate of authenticity. Each mic is hand-assembled and individually tested. Alesis MasterControl Alesis was showing two new control surfaces with built-in FireWire audio interface capability, the MasterControl and the io|Control. The MasterControl provides up to 192kHz sample rates, two phantom-powered XLR mic inputs, six TRS line inputs, S/PDIF and dual S/MUX ADAT lightpipe inputs, nine faders, and a built-in talkback mic. The io|Control supports up to 12 channels of input to computer, including two XLR and two balanced 1/4" as well as eight ADAT digital inputs. The io|Control also has a jog wheel, six assignable buttons, and four endless knobs. Arturia Jupiter-8V Apogee’s Symphony system is amazing; it offers 1.6-millisecond latency and tons of I/O for native DAWs. But what if you’re on the go? Then you need the Symphony Mobile, an ExpressCard for Apple’s MacBook Pro that delivers the same low latency as the PCIe version with up to 32 channels of I/O from Apogee converters. The Jupiter-8V from Arturia is a virtual synth modeled after Roland’s analog Jupiter 8. It comes with 400 presets and has a step sequencer, analog and digital effects, and more. The Origin is Arturia’s fi rst venture into hardware — it’s a digital modular synth with 32-voice polyphony, two ins, and 10 analog and stereo S/PDIF outs. The synth engine is loaded with — continued on page 10 — continued on page 10 PPageage 001,10,11,12,13.indd1,10,11,12,13.indd 1 22/2/07/2/07 88:25:25:25:25 AAMM SWEETNOTES | FEBRUARY/MARCH 2007 | PAGE 2 from the editor NAMM Extravaganza! It’s January, and that means NAMM — the National Association of Music Merchants’ big winter tradeshow. Each year, manufacturers gather at the Convention Center in Anaheim, California to show their latest wares to the world’s retailers, the press, and a few lucky visitors (the show is closed to the public). As I write this, I’ve just stepped off the plane, returning back to Fort Wayne. Despite being faced with snow on the ground after sunny, warm California, and being exhausted from pounding the fl oor for four grueling days, I can’t help but feel excited. Call it the osmotic effect of all that new gear, but I get really stoked at NAMM each year. This year, in particular, was very exciting. There was more traffi c, more noise, more people at the show than at any NAMM I can recall for the past 10 years. And there was more gear. We’ve got well over 200 new products in our online show report (www.sweetwater.com/ publications/reports), and we’re still adding items as I type this. While I won’t say that there was any one item that dominated the show, Mitch Gallagher overall, there were tons of great new offerings and interesting news. Editorial Director Things just keep getting better. One example: MOTU was showing their Mac Pro computer running 1,000 simultaneous plug-ins in Digital [email protected] Performer! Another: Apogee showed an ExpressCard interface for the MacBook Pro laptop that allows for 1.6-millisecond latency with native DAWs. There was new software, new audio hardware, new keyboards and synths, and tons of great guitar and bass gear. I came away seriously lusting after four or fi ve new amplifi ers and a bunch of virtual instruments! I was pleased to see that many manufacturers had the focus squarely back on the music; there were numerous live performances in booths, lots of after-hours concerts and musical get-togethers, and real interest in providing musicians with the tools they need to make better music, and to do it faster, cheaper, and more effi ciently than ever before. You’ll be seeing all the great new NAMM products hitting the market soon (if they haven’t already). Check in to Sweetwater.com and stay in touch with your Sales Engineer for the latest availability info and news on all the NAMM show new product releases Twelve Tracks of Pro Audio…To Go! There are a ton of misconceptions in our industry. One example: When you hear the name AKAI, you might think of MPC grooveboxes and hardware samplers. Another: Standalone studios-in-a-box are great as scratchpads for song ideas, but not for serious studio-quality audio production. It’s true that some of these units are built and priced to appeal to beginning recordists, and may have some limitations for pro studio work. But with the brand-new DPS24 mkII, AKAI breaks free of all these misperceptions! We’re talking one powerful studio production center. The DPS24 mkII is truly innovative in that it packs studio-quality sound with most of the features you’d fi nd on a good digital mixing board into a unit that could easily fi t on your kitchen table. Capable of recording and playing back 12 mono tracks of uncompressed 24-bit audio at 88.2 or 96kHz (24 tracks at up to 48kHz), the DPS24 mkII is a mobile studio dream come true. In a single box, you get a very portable unit that’s loaded with everything you need to make professional recordings. As you record, you can monitor the waveforms on the LCD screen. The DPS24 is well equipped to handle audio for video as well, with word clock I/O and on- screen timecode display. Speaking of connectivity, you’ve got 12 XLR/line ins, 12 more 1/4" ins, hi-Z instrument in, ADAT optical, MIDI, and more additional analog and digital options than we have room to discuss here. This is really as close to a self-contained DAW as you can get. There’s no need for a laptop or an interface — just the DPS24 mkII and your mics and instruments, and you’re ready to start tracking anytime, anywhere. The attention to detail is what elevates this unit above most other standalone recorders. Have a certain preamp that you won’t record vocals without, but don’t want to send the signal through a second preamp circuit? Not a problem! The DPS24 mkII is equipped with direct inputs that send signals from external pres directly to the converters, completely bypassing the on-board preamps. Another nifty feature that far surpasses what we’ve come to expect from most standalone recorders is the inclusion of dedicated nearfi eld monitor outputs with talkback and mono switches, so you can communicate with the talent or check for phase correctness even when recording on location. The concept of integrating truly pro-oriented features in a box that’s so portable and affordable is a stroke of genius. Everything that makes standalone recorders practical, the DPS24 mkII has it in spades. > > Akai DPS24mkII • Sweetwater price $2799.97 • www.sweetwater.com/dps24mkii Moving? Moved? Want more than one copy? Call, fax, or email us your new address and don’t miss an issue of SweetNotes! PPageage 002.indd2.indd 2 22/2/07/2/07 111:15:541:15:54 AAMM SWEETNOTES | FEBRUARY/MARCH 2007 | PAGE 3 Sound Design: Making Kontakt By Daniel Fisher A recent sequencing project has required me to replicate instruments from various samplers and synthesizers using Native Instrument’s Kontakt 2 on a Mac mini.

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