LIMS 2009 PC Music Guru Show Report

Tags

Articles

Four fabulous days were spent talking nonsense to passing punters in a huge hall inside the Excel exhibition space. This is the second year of the London International Music Show and how it differs from Music Live! or the British Music Fair, or the Plaza is anyone's guess but all the usual exhibitors were in attendance. Most of the visitors seem to prefer thumping drums, banging keyboards or whacking guitars than talking intelligently about computer based music technology - and who can blame them? It wasn't packed by any stretch of the imagination although tube strikes may have had something to do with that, but there were enough people to make it interesting.

I was ever present on the Steinberg stand (a very modest stand this year as they were just "trying it out") representing Rain Recording who provided the stand with their kick arse demo rig. The Rain ION Core i7 system, organically farmed on the hills of sunny Norfolk, cooled by local moonshine, aluminium casing over living tissue cyber-mechanisms, integrated tic-tak dispenser, performed flawlessly over the entirety of the show (except when Mick tripped over the power cable) and it made you feel more spiritually alive just being in its karma enhancing presence.

I didn't have a great deal of time to wander around and to be honest very little caught my eye as something to get excited about that I hadn't seen before. Although hanging out with Steinberg what i did discover is a ton of useful things in Cubase 5 that i never knew existed. This has prompted me to think about putting together a series of "Cool Cubase 5" articles and maybe some simple tutorials on how to get under its skin - stay tuned for those :)

http://www.rainrecording.co.uk

Here's a quick round-up of what i thought was worth taking a picture of:

Steinberg

Was great watching a real product specialist demoing Cubase 5. There's tons in there that i've only just skimmed over in my usage of the software and also in my review. Things like being able to "play" vocal lines using the pitch correction plug-in - you dictate the pitch on playback using a MIDI keyboard. Being able to take a drum loop, detect the hit points and then dump it into Groove Agent One and it automatically splits itself across all the pads. The way the media bay and preset selection has integrated itself into the track inspector - the media bay is far better now by the way and we used it all the time to find loops and bits of audio to use in demos. It's just all there, instantly auditionable, drag 'n' drop - bosh, done. VST Expressions was another feature that had passed me by. it uses multiple articulations, present in many sample libraries, and selects those alternative sounds whenever the score dictates. So, load a violin instrument into Halion Symphonic and it comes with legato, staccato and pizzicato articulations built into the one instrument. Bring up the score edit, add "pizz" to the score and it automatically changes to the pizzicato instrument to play it. Lots more sample libraries are becoming compatible or you can edit in your own support using whatever MIDI command changes the samples - fabulous. Lastly I got the chance to use (and show people how to use) the CC121 controller. Initially i wasn't blown away but slowly i came to realise how darn useful it was. The key, i think, is that it's completely dedicated to its task - it's not a mappable MIDI controller - it controls volume, pan, transport and EQ, that's it. So, no matter what window is in focus or what else might be loaded up it will always control the volume, pan, transport and EQ. Simple, easy, fabulous and with one extra funky knob that will control whatever you have the mouse hovering over - nice. http://www.steinberg.net

SADie

Is SADIE interesting? Not really sure, it's one of those posh high-end systems that passes most of us by but has a rabid following in the broadcast and audio editing industries. I just liked how the interface was desgined to have a laptop sit on it - great idea :)

http://www.sadie.com

Allen & Heath

They had the Zed16 on show, a full on, big footprint mixing desk with Firewire routing into and out of your computer. Good to see it in the flesh.

http://www.allen-heath.com

Propellerheads & Lexicon

"Record" was all over the Sound Technology booth and looks as good as we expected it to - still not ready for release yet but they are getting there. Also quite interested in the little Lexicon box in this picture. Aha, it's an I·ONIX U22 "Desktop Recording Studio" http://www.lexiconpro.com/ProductIndex.aspx?ProductID=154 which is part of a range of new Lexicon USB interfaces that have the natty feature of being designed to sit between your keyboard and screen - i've been banging on about having a MIDI knob controller that sits there for years so i think it's a fab idea (unless someone goes for my MIDI knob controller idea and then the I·ONIX would be in the way!). I wonder what the chances are of getting one of those to review? (quite high apparently - stay tuned).

http://www.propellerheads.se

Revalver

Never seen this at a show before and in fact I thought it had vanished years ago. Revalver was the first good guitar amp simulator, before Amplitube and Guitar Rig were even thought of. For a time a version came free with Sonar software but it looks like it's been picked up by Peavey and given a good overhaul. Now on version 3 it comes with 15 amps, 12 preamps, 9 power amps, 19 stomp boxes, 11 effects and over 150 speaker simulations - a lot of stuff but it's price tag has jumped from the $50 shareware level to nearly $300.

http://www.peavey.com

Presonus

Hooray, got to play on the StudioLive 16.4.2 digital mixer and i have to say that it's much physically smaller than i imagined. Anyway, it's a 16 channel digital desk with 4 subs and stereo mix (hence the 16.4.2) with a bunch of DSP effects inside including the "Fat Channel" which is an EQ, compressor, limiter and gate on every channel. The StudioLive gives you up to 22 inputs to the computer, in reality that's 16 direct analogue inputs and 18 outputs - that's a fantastic range that sits it well above any other digital mixer interfaces i can think of. You can read all the details on the website but what i liked was the used of the meters to show you the Fat Channel settings - so the flickering output meters turned into the EQ, compressor settings at the touch of a button ("military grade" buttons apparently). There's stacks of stuff in this beastie and i can see it being great for recording bands. I can't seem to work out if it can also be a MIDI controller - maybe it doesn't need to be. It's nearly £2000 and yet they completely sold out of their first shipment before they arrived - stunning.

http://www.presonus.com

Vox

I'm always hoping that Vox is going to come out with something brilliant. I had a ToneLab which i really liked but rarely used and i enjoyed an old vox amp at a rehearsal studio back in my gigging days, but there's just not been anything in recent times that's set me on fire - i'm not certain this will either but it was interesting enough to take a picture - JamVOX! Right, it's a butt ugly little amplifier box with some cool amp simulation software and a button that removes the guitar from any playing track so you can play that part yourself - a bit like GuitarHero i guess. So it's a bit like the Line6 Guitar Port software but with Vox sounds. It's kinda cool for jamming and practicing, but i'd like to see the plug-in software released separately as that might be fabulous - the box really isn't, i don't know what they were thinking.

http://www.voxamps.com

Focusrite

I almost didn't notice it but Focusrite have added a smaller box to their Saffire Pro range called the Pro 24. Same technology as the Pro 40 but offering 16 in and 8 out which in reality is 4 analogue in and 6 analogue out plus ADAT in and S/PDIF. At £249 it's at the higher end of its class but you can't doubt the Focusrite quality and it certainly puts the older Saffire boxes to bed. Nothing really new or different about it though (still thinking of the Lexicon).

http://www.focusrite.com

Puresolo

Mentioning this product has nothing to do with being tempted over to the stand by a beautiful woman offering chocolate. In a nutshell it's an iTunes type online store that sells you sheet music with backing tracks so you can learn the song and play along. It's quite nifty, you can choose which instrument you want removed from the music and then record and upload your playing to a myspace style website. Very consumer - they didn't know anything about ASIO drivers or latency - it's just a web application. It's a good way to show off your playing skills i guess. That's enough for a couple of chocolates :)

http://www.puresolo.com