NAMM 2024 felt like a NAMM Show again! Anaheim in January. Crowded aisles, halls filled to the walls with exhibitors, and lots of music and noise. After a couple of Covid-affected years, with dates moved to June, then April, everything felt like it was back in place.
The numbers are back on the rise, with a reported 62,000-plus attendees and more than 1,600 exhibitors (3,500-plus brands) over the course of four days. The energy and enthusiasm were evident, too. I can’t be completely sure, but I think this was my 28th NAMM. It was a damn good show.
There were a ton of new product introductions, naturally, and more excellent public presentations and panel sessions featuring A-list producers/engineers than ever before.
That’s too much good stuff for any one editor, so I was fortunate to be joined by my co-editor, Clive Young, who has an uncanny nose for news, 30 years of expertise in covering live sound and recording, and handles all things digital here at Mix
Clive detailed his own show hits in this week’s online series, Seen on the Scene: NAMM 2024, complete with photographs from the show floor. Here, I present a diary of my own travels through the Pro Audio North Hall.
But as any NAMM veteran knows, some of the best stuff can happen offsite, whether P.A. demos out by Angels Stadium or a small dinner in Old Orange. My own NAMM Show started on Wednesday in Santa Monica.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Mix senior writer Steve Harvey and I met up with Paula Salvatore at 2115 Colorado Avenue, home of Universal Music Group’s main studio facilities in Los Angeles. I was there for a final walk-through of the site in advance of our all-day Mix LA: Immersive Music Production event on March 2. 21fifteen Studios/UMG is our Host Partner. Steve was there to start working on next month’s cover story.
It just so happened that Audiomovers was in Studio 4 that day, too, showing Omnibus 3.0 to select Los Angeles guests the day before its official NAMM release (well, NAMM debut; it will be available Q2). It’s a big update, with AVB and NDI networking support added, new multi-studio workflow options and improved UI, among other updates. In just a few short years, ListenTo has almost become a generic term for secure, quality distribution of hi-res Atmos tracks. We met with company co-founder Igor Maxymenko. This company, part of the Abbey Road Studios family, has some buzz about it right now. Big buzz.
At 6:00, Paula and I headed a half-mile down Colorado Ave., took a right on Berkeley Street, and were dropped at Apogee for the company’s annual pre-show party. As Rose Mann once told me, “Nobody throws a party like Betty Bennett.” Betty is the co-founder/CEO, and at company HQ, they have a performance stage, with an Atmos control room and Bob Clearmountain’s wonderful 80 Series Neve. During the eating/drinking part of the evening, the control room was packed as Bob played back some recent Atmos mixes, including a few from Bob Marley, Roxy Music and The Band. Later, he would spend two concentrated hours recording and mixing the Cory Henry band live in a funk- and gospel-filled performance. It was amazing to watch.
Meanwhile, through the food and beverages and tables, across the back alley in a building owned by Apogee, composer Stephen Barton and scoring mixer Alan Meyerson were playing back Atmos mixes of the duo’s work on the recent Jedi videogame series. A Genelec monitor system, chairs and couches, no console—it sounded excellent.
In another part of the house, Rob Clark from Sonos was bringing back engineers to listen to consumer- and home-based monitor systems, along with updated pro models. Great sound. Awesome gathering.
Apogee will be Mix’s Host Partner for the After Party on March 2, following the day-long immersive music event down the street at 21fifteen Studios. A big shoutout to Betty, Marlene and the whole tech team on Berkeley Street. They make these kinds of nights comfortable, interesting and fun.
NAMM hadn’t even started, and already I’d run into Ceri Thomas from Apple—more specifically Apple Spatial—twice. I met engineer ROC for the first time, after hearing about him for months, and he agreed to be a panelist at the upcoming immersive music event. Same with engineer Dave Way, who was on the cover of Mix in August 2021 in his new Atmos mix studio. Jimmy Douglass, the Senator, told me to make sure I listened to Bob’s Atmos mix of “The Weight.” Stunningly good.
Around 11 p.m., accompanied by Bay Area friends Michael Romanowski and Matt Boudreau, I got on a private bus for the ride to Anaheim, then checked into Hotel Lulu on South Harbor Boulevard and fell asleep to the sound of drums and chants from the hotel worker’s protest across the street.
Thursday, January 25, 2024
After a long walk one way to pick up my badge, then a long walk back through trombones, drums, saxophones and lots of guitars, I entered the North Hall and immediately ran into ROC at the bottom of the escalator! Twice in 12 hours! I like this guy. He has good energy.
Just inside the door, I spotted Barney Jameson, a big, happy Brit and a longtime journalist/promoter with a genuine enthusiasm for all things audio. We caught up, and he asked if I could take a few minutes to say hello to a new client of his. I typically start each show with a wandering walk to get myself oriented, so I said, “Are they at the booth now?”
My first stop, then, was Chord Electronics to talk with Tom Vaughan about the debut of Alto, a high-end, near-field monitor/headphone amplifier, with FPGA-based ADC. Chord is well-known in the hi-fi world, and last year, Alto marked its entry into pro audio. The company’s reputation is all about precision and quality, as might be expected from hi-fi immigrants. Alto Pro is not low-cost…but it is definitely worth a listen.
From there, I wandered over a couple aisles and stopped in to catch up with the Grace Brothers of Grace Design, Michael and Eben, a couple of great guys who make great products in beautiful Lyons, Colo. They were showing the super-cool (and minty-green) Rex and Roxi, mama and baby versions of the company’s classic preamps built into a rugged pedal chassis. Roxi is like a full channel-strip-FX pedal for your foot, studio or stage. Such a great tone-shaping mashup. I don’t know if they’re the first to do it, but it’s a great combo.
One aisle over, I stopped by IsoAcoustics to visit with founder Dave Morrison. He’s built such a cool little company over the years, all around speaker isolation and minimizing vibration/transmission in the studio. Lately, he’s been making brackets with integrated isolators for wall and ceiling mounting, fulfilling a big need in immersive music studios. The problem is, every speaker is different, and when you get down to the critical tolerances in isolation, every bracket must be unique to a particular speaker model. Right now, he said, there is no universal, adjustable X-bracket for critical applications, but he’s working on it. In Anaheim, he was showing the new bracket for mounting Focal’s Trio6 and another for the ATC 25.
I then took a diagonal stroll to stop by oeksound for a look at Bloom, an “adaptive tone shaper” plug-in and the Helsinki, Finland, company’s first introduction since Soothe 2 in 2020. In simple terms, Bloom analyzes a signal and applies corrections to the perceived tonal balance to make it more even. Then the user adjusts the tone, processed in a dynamic and contextually-aware manner. It’s a complex and unique piece of software sporting an extremely simple and intuitive UI. And it sounds like it will be fun to play with! We’ll be sending one to Rich Tozzoli for review. Stay tuned.
I next visited Sound Devices to see the new Astral Wireless Guitar System, which you can read about here. But this company, now part of Audiotonix, has been making big moves lately. Last year it was Nexus Wireless, now it’s Super Nexus, and it’s a safe bet that there’s more coming. It’s fun to watch as these companies in the Audiotonix group begin to cross-pollinate and feed technologies to each other.
A few more booth visits followed. I stopped for a few minutes to listen to Ronald Prent speak at the Sony booth, and I stopped a couple of times at Mix With the Masters. They really do put on a great show, with every hour at NAMM featuring A-list talent. And a hearty congratulations to MWTM co-founders Maxime Le Guil and Victor Lévy-Lasne. Their new Rue Boyer Studio in Paris, designed by the Walters-Storyk Design Group, picked up a NAMM TEC Award for Studio Design two nights later.
It was soon 5 o’clock and time to head to PMC for Happy Hour, but that’s a much bigger story, going back to the 2019 NAMM Show, when PMC played a huge role in kick-starting the immersive music movement. That story will be told next time in Part Two…
In the meantime, the show closed at 6, so I walked back to Hotel Lulu to freshen up and check my email. Then I walked the two blocks down Katella to Roy’s for what turned out to be a most wonderful dinner in the Orchid Room with Dave Malekpour and his team from Pro Audio Design. About halfway through the dinner, here comes ROC! That’s now three times in 24 hours! Unreal! But then that kind of stuff always happens at NAMM…