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…

I came for the SSL but stayed for the Holophone H2.

Hanson Hsu, owner and principal of Delta H Design has jsut stopped by, with Ian Dittbrennner of Yahoo Music…so tell me Hanson and Ian, how’s Vegas so far?

Vegas is great, very curious as to what Google is doing here! They’ve got some interesting new ad sets on radio with touch screen controllers ~ interesting to see what market penetration will be. Having fun checking out the new technologies with Ian. Oh, and hanging with the girls at Mix of course….: -)

So I’m there at the Harrison booth talking with Gary, finding out that their Trion board is selling big at under $150k (four in the last nine months to Germany, another to The Post Group in L.A., and a film board to Taipei). He says that the name of the game is twice the power at half the cost, and they did it by building out the processor with AMD dual-core technology. As we’re talking, in walks our old friend Jonathan Porath, former chief engineer at Sound One in New York. Looking good, and telling tales of his last two years traveling around the world with his family. Last year he figured he needed to get his kids back in school, so they settled in Shanghai. Turns out he’s networking, staying out of trouble, and taking the lay of the land. Shanghai, it seems, has a commercial business but not much of a film biz. Stories of state-of-the-art technology right next to dirt floors. But there is room there for some business, he says. We’ll see how long he can stay idle…Good to see you jonathan

It is exactly 1,082 steps from my hotel room to the Silicon Graphics booth.

I know this because I have scored the swag of the show-an SGI pedometer. Now when we editors brag about logging miles visiting booth after booth, we have the numbers to prove it. Does schlepping around the convention floor count as a workout?

Maybe if I gave up the high heels…

Well Karl Winkler is here from Lectrosonics to tell us about some new transmitter products…Karl?

It’s been a great show for us so far. Monday was busy from the start. We’re introducing new versions of our SM series - the SMA (super-small, single AA battery), SMDA (dual-AA version for longer battery life) and the SMQA (250mW version). The updates include a variable high-pass filter addressable in the LCD menu, and a GoreTex membrane for pressure equalization in moist environments (lets air in and out but not water). Also new is the UM450 transmitter, a standard size belt pack unit with 250mW RF power, detachable antenna and variable high-pass filter. All these new transmitters are starting to ship in May.

The trick for console makers in this broadcast world is how to get more channels into a smaller footprint and not raise the price. That’s the demand of a 5.1 world, with more audio passed around in larger chunks. Calrec has announced a new mid-level console, Omega, incorporating Bluefin technology, with 160 mono DSP paths (48 stereo plus 64 mono), available in three frame sizes (24, 40, 56). It includes 8 x 5.1 surround groups, 20 aux outs and an additional 48 outs, with two main stereo or 5.1 surround program outputs. This powerful board should find a home in the new generation of mid- to smaller HD trucks that are sure to be coming out in the next few years (think college sports). QVC purchased the first Omega for its new 48-foot truck. The secret, it turns out, is Bluefin’s use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays replacing the traditional SHARC chips, allowing 480 channel processing paths on a single card. Apparently they’ve been incorporating FPGAs for the past three years on the Alpha and Sigma lines to handle mix functions. Lots of power in a small package. That’s what we all need, no?