AES 2011

Telefunken has my number..

The brighter side of transformers!

This past weekend I was able to make it to the 2011 AES convention in NYC. I was able to check out a bunch of new equipment from companies new and old and catch up with some folks I hadn't seen in a long time. Overall, a positive experience and I'll be going again, for sure!

One of my favorite new pieces of gear is Moog's new 500-series contribution, The Ladder. This piece actually surprised the hell out of me! It is way more useful than I would have guessed. It's basically an envelop filter that is dynamically triggered but frequency-adjustable. So for example, if I have a very boomy and "hummy" sounding floor tom track and I don't have time to cut out the extra crud in Pro Tools, I can patch this unit in and get rid of the rumble. Anytime the floor tom is actually being used, the envelope closes and it's back to the regular healthy floor tom. If my bottom snare track is being triggered by the bass drum hits, I can use this to minimize the buzz I'm getting from those bass drum hits and still get healthy fundamentals.

The rep also showed me how it could work on a thin or 'fizzy' distorted guitar track and WOW! I couldn't believe how it thickened that track up without the use of EQ, even.

I spent some quality time with the A-Designs Nail compressor and locked into some really fun sounds. It has a lot of options but my favorite was a pretty straight forward full-band compression. It went from smooth to pumping/breathing fun!

Latch Lake's microphone stands looked quite nice! They had very few moving parts and were very sturdy! I've been eyeing Atlas stands lately but these seem very trustworthy and the price is right!

Lindell is a company I'd heard of but didn't know much about. I noticed them because I wanted to check out some of the Golden Age Audio products. Let's just say that Lindell won! It's a totally different type of product. More high-end. A higher quality build. The 17x compressor just sounded awesome. It almost reminded me of an 1176 at it's nastiest with the attack/release quickness of a Compex. Lot's fun.

There were lots of pieces I wanted to check out but didn't have the time due to big crowds and long lines.. but my guess is that I didn't miss much.