We’re here with Dave Neal from Harman’s Mixer Group, which includes the Studer and Soundcraft lines. We went to their press conference this morning and saw the rundown on Vista 5 and Soundcraft Vi4. Dave, what’s new with the boards?

Well, Tom, NAB started with a big crowd on the booth the whole time, and it hasn’t stopped yet. Apart from the new boards with different channel sizes we’re offering some great Surround solutions aimed at HDTV, because time is ticking and there’s a lot for people to be working on for the transition to digital. We’re seeing some great people and having a terrific show.

Although Universal Audio doesn’t have a booth at the show, they are on the floor checking out the latest gear and spreading the word about their products. I talked to Matt Ward about what he liked about the show, and he said although it wasn’t exactly their market, all audio producers can use high quality mic preamps, compressors and plug-ins. And UA knows ALL about that!

photo caption: Michael Reeves, Dolby’s Director of Sales, Live Sound

The Dolby Lake processor was in the Dolby booth for the first time ever, and it was generating some buzz. Not only is the versatile unit being used for live sound, but they’re going like hotcakes to studios like Skywalker, Talking House and more. Even more surprising is that Home Theater installers and owners are loving the high quality converters so much that they’re selling 10 units a month for just that purpose. Watch for a review in Mix soon.

So Kevin, we found Sinbad, and he’s ready to talk. He’s a self-professed tech geek, who’s been telling us why we need music back in the schools…Sinbad?

Music is the language of a culture. If you eliminate the arts, you eliminate the people. Our generation should be ashamed that we let music be taken out of our schools. I am enjoying being here in Vegas.

Dawn Birr from Sennheiser is on our Podcast today as is Joe Ciaudelli. They have some cool new wireless products and have a lot to say about “white space”, the disappearing bandwidth that audio pros are very concerned about. Read the April issue of Mix for more info on this important topic and be sure to check out the Day 2 Podcast for Sennheiser’s take on the matter.

Jason Frenchman from Aviom just made the trek from the Central Hall to let the world know about the i/o module out and ready for an event near you. Jason, whaddya got?

Thanks, Tom. It’s certainly worth the trip to chat with MIX and its readers. Many folks know Aviom for our signature personal monitor mixing system, but at NAB this year, we’re showing something a little different. For more than a year, we’ve been talking about our new, high-speed audio distribution platform, Pro64. We started shipping the line-level boxes of the series last month and, now, we’re introducing the key to unlock the whole package - the 6416dio digital i/o module.

What’s cool about Pro64 is that the network lives everywhere and this box provides 16 digital input and outputs anywhere on the network. What’s more, it takes advantage of our high-speed A-Net audio transport protocol, so you can send up to 64 channels of audio over a single Cat5 wire. Of course, we’re talking about high-fidelity digital audio, with virtually undetectable latency. Amazing for live sports events or any other application where you need to get your audio from point to point, super-fast.

Aviom’s grown a lot lately and, with Pro64, we’re ready to bring this great technology to broadcasters and audio professionals everywhere.

Comedian Sinbad was at the show today making the rounds in the Radio Hall. I talked to a manufacturer yesterday who said Sinbad is an audio geek at heart and has some serious tech chops. I didn’t get a chance to chat with him this time, but I’ve got questions for the man next time we meet.

Just got back from the south hall, where I found a whole bunch of music peeps way back around row 100,000…there were tons of music library companies demoing some very cool new collections, and-surprise-MOTU was here for the first time, drawing huge crowds to their demo stage. I remember my first NAB show in 1996, watching Sonic demo guys giving away software to anyone who could tell them what MIDI stood for…times have changed!!

Caught a demo of Bias Peak 6, since I didn’t get a chance to check out the Messe debut-features include an enhanced playlist featuring new cross-fade options, volume envelopes; new DSP sound design features; and editing and delivery enhancements.

Next up, gonna continue the theme and check out the new audio goods in Final Cut Pro 6 and Adobe’s Creative Suite 3.

ps: 1,883 steps and counting…how many are in a mile???

Steve Modica from Small Tree Communications has just stopped by. Seems a few former SGI employees from Minnesota and Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, have banded together and come up with an Ethernet connection scheme that works for everyone. But I’ll let Steve tell you…

Thanks Tom…

Small Tree started out writing drivers to put Macs onto high-speed networks. Recently, a number of new technologies have arrived like AOE and iSCSI that allow people to connect to high-speed storage using inexpensive Ethernet. Pro Tools customers have known about this kind of thing for some time.

Small Tree has begun offering a line of products called “SOE” (Storage Over Ethernet), where we can provide customers with the correct technology for their specific situation. Whether they require the high-speed scalability of iSCSI over 10Gb Ethernet, or a simple AFP NAS server, we can get them connected with what they need without shooting their budget. We like to say, there are a lot of EtherNOT technologies out there, but EtherNOT never wins

photo caption: SSL’s Niall Feldman at the new C1oo HD-S console

Wow. At NAMM, in only its second year at the show, SSL showed five new products. Now here at NAB, they’re at it again. The entire C-line, the 100, 200 and 300, have been upgraded and expanded to showcase the HD capabilities with new V4.0 software, additional MORSE routing capabilities, updated Century processing, and DAW control across all of them, incorporating the technology first introduced in the AWS 900 and put on steroids with Duality. The C200, the music board, has a new surface, but we didn’t get a chance to see it cause they sold it before the show! More to come, including the integration of Soundscape. Be sure to check out the Podcast tonite for a full overview. Right now, the folks at Small Tree Communications have stopped by…