NAMM REPORT Though it’s aimed more at the musician/composer, the annual NAMM show in Los Angeles usually has a couple of bits of kit of interest to the film or broadcast professional, even if it’s just to point the way things are going. Yamaha, for instance, have long enjoyed an unassailable position as kings of the affordable digital mixers with their 02R. With their new AW44/16 they’ve added another nail to the competition’s coffin. It’s apparently a fully-blown 02R with a builtin 24-bit, 16-track HD recorder (expandable up to 64 gigabytes of hard disc space), a simple 16-part sampler and an optional CDR burner all in a compact and rather handsome package for just £2,200. How do they do that? Though not available until June, Sony used NAMM to launch a new, mid-priced digital mixing console, the DMX- 100. Their major claim to fame in this area is the big and expensive Oxford OXF-R3 digital mixer, used in a number of top music studios worldwide. This new model, though, is intended to court both music and Post-pro users. Starting at £12,750 it’s a fraction of the cost of an Oxford but claims to have at its heart the same technology and ergonomics. It certainly looks the part with silver channel strips and a large colour touchscreen. It’s completely automated, has 24 touchsensitive, motorised faders and comes with 24 analogue inputs, eight group outputs, eight aux sends and eight aux returns as standard. In addition there are four card slots for extra input/output cards each providing eight extra channels of inputs and/outputs, digital or analogue. However, only 48 channels can ever be active at one time. It’s fully surround capable up to 5.1 including proper surround monitoring facilities. Although there’s comprehensive onboard dynamics, there are no effects as such. | It has 24-bit ADCs and can run at 88.2kHz and 96kHz, although you’re then reduced to 24 channels. One cost-saving exercise that may not suit larger facilities is the inclusion of all electronics and connectivity within the mixer itself. Sony say they have avoided noisy fans but for those wanting to keep all the noise and heat in a separate machine room, this may not do. For smaller rooms it may well not be a problem and they’ve included an internal routing matrix within the desk to reduce the need for an external patchbay. You can’t help but wonder if Yamaha have something up their sleeve as a counter, but they’re keeping very quiet. For those involved in sound design, the Roland VP9000 Variphrase Processor might be of interest. This rackmount box is the only device I’ve ever heard that can really do timestretch/compression and pitch change without gruesome side effects. It doesn’t do anything new, but it appears to do it a great deal better than anything else. The demo had a vocal phrase sung on one note recorded into the system and then played back via a MIDI keyboard to make any melody you like, in any key you like and with multipart harmonies - and it sounded great. Complete mixes were also squashed and stretched impeccably - though it is impossible to listen really critically at a show. The musical applications are many and obvious, but it would also be very handy when trying to fit an effect into a given time window, or for tuning an effect to work better with a given piece of music. For fitting voice-overs or music for TV or radio commercials, too, this box would be excellent. Price: £2,200. That’s about all the really new stuff of interest. ‘Smaller, better, cheaper’ seems, once again, to sum things up. JIM BETTERIDGE |
