Music Thing: AES Preview special
Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:
If you're in the vicinity of the Javits Center in New York this weekend, you may notice an unusual number of unkempt, irritable-looking men wearing laminates. Don't be concerned. It's the AES (Audio Engineering Society) Convention, paradise for studio geeks.
This is where you come to find really high end studio gear. Sure, companies like M-Audio are releasing new kit for home studios, but AES is all about boutique companies and voodoo. Studio people don't have any time for audiophiles who spend $600 on a mains cable. Instead, this is what they'll be drooling over this weekend:
: It's the best looking, most coloured-light covered volume control you'll ever own, and it's $1,299 for stereo ($1,899 for 5.1). It's a loudspeaker switcher and a headphone amp, but most of all, it's what you use to turn the big speakers up to eleven.
: When you?re using a digital recording system with a big control surface, you still need some way to process the analog signals going into the d/a converters. So there?s a growing interest in small but great-sounding recording consoles. This Wunder Audio console has a leather wrist-rest, exotic wood end panels, and just ten channels. At $24,000, it?s considered something of a bargain in engineering circles.
Microtech-Gefell M950 Microphone
: While relatively inexpensive at $1,250, this microphone is packing some serious pseudoscience: ?Using an optical bridge, the DC input is then converted to light and back to DC to both eliminate noise and hash from the supply?, and ?The capsule is mounted on a triangulated pedestal to reduce body refractions which of course cause comb filtering.? Come back, mono-directional speaker leads, all is forgiven.
There?s more coverage all this weekend on Music Thing and other fine music-gear websites.
