Well the 131st AES convention held at Javits in NYC is history.
It never fails to amaze me how energized that I get after an AES show. Must be something about spending three days in a simmering pot with a bunch of other people who are just as geeked about audio as I am!
This is version 1 of my entry as things have been nuts since AES was over, and I'd rather get some of it out and add on as I remember things instead of trying to write everything then post it, as that would make it take even longer to post!
My journey started on Friday the 21st. I was using the AES 2011 forum on Gearslutz as a guide to what I was going to check out first. I became a correspondent of sorts taking photos of some of the gear mentioned in the threads(gotta do my part!).
It was quite disorienting when I first got to Javits because the show was not being held in the usual area, it was on the right side of the center while the demo rooms were all the way on the other side. A lot of other attendees looked similarly confused at first. But once the badge was secured, off I went into audio wonderland!
First booth I went to was Zen Pro Audio. Warren Dent explained the Clip-A-Lator website and the approach used to capture the audio for the equipment demos. Quite educational, I could see it being used in audio education to hear the differences between gear used on particular sound sources. In the same booth was GIK Acoustics. Glenn Kuras and Warren obviously know each other quite well from their banter, if they decide to stop doing pro audio they could probably become a comedy duo. Around the same time I met Joe Turse of Square State Solid State. His company builds the model one b which is a single channel, three band equalizer housed in a 1 RU chassis. The equalizer stages feature inductor-capacitor filters, components commonly found in classic EQs. Zen Pro is the dealer for these units.
Next up was the Kush Audio booth which was part of "Wave Distribution Row". One very anticipated item was the new UBK-1 plugin. At the 127th AES I was blown away by the UBK Fatso and Clariphonic Parallel Equalizer, which were on display along with the Main Gain monitor controller and Function Junction expansion unit. I brought a number of people to check these items out, just to see their expressions change when they heard what the gear was doing. There was one cool moment when Greg was asked about how the Clariphonic worked and it turned into an impromptu electronic theory/filter design class. The Clariphonic will probably be my next hardware purchase.
After this point the order of where I went gets fuzzy, so I'm just going to write about what I saw as it comes back to me.
So let's continue.
I was anxious to hear the Lindell Audio 17X comp/limiter and 18X mic pre/EQ, and Tobias Lindell(a mod on Gearslutz in addition to being a engineer and producer at Bohus Sound Studios in Sweden) was backed up with many interested parties when I got to the Alto Music booth. But while I waited I tweaked around with and was treated to a chat with the designer of the Golden Age Project range of mic pre/EQ units. Lotta bang for the buck.
I then had a chance to chat with Tobias about the 17X and 18X. The 17X is an 1176-styled compressor/limiter with some interesting twists. The 18X is a tube-based mic pre/EQ