The Anaheim Convention Center was significantly more crowded than many anticipated this year. While some major players opted for off-site events, the North Hall and Hall A remained the epicenters of music tech brands. From massive additive synthesis engines to the rebranding of a staple DAW, there was plenty to check out between the crowded aisles and demo stations.
Hall A
The ILIO Booth
GeoShred
Some things never change and one of them is Ilio’s presence at NAMM. Among other things they announced a new distribution deal with moForte, home of GeoShred Studio, a desktop version of the Geoshred for iOS, which was made famous through the incredible demo skills of Jordan Rudess.
moForte’s partnership with Ilio is a natural next step for GeoShred Studio. We’ve been advancing physical modeling technology since our research days at Stanford/CCRMA in the mid-1990s, and for over a decade we’ve focused on bringing that work to musicians in a practical, expressive form. Ilio’s reach into key retail channels allows GeoShred Studio—and the expressive performance vision we share with Jordan Rudess—to connect with a much broader community of composers, producers, and sound designers.
moForte co-founder Pat Scandalis
Vienna String Library (VSL) showing two new versions of the Vienna Ensemble cross-platform mixing and plugin hosting application that allows the user to run VST and AU plug-ins on multiple computers via a simple Ethernet cable. No extra audio interfaces or MIDI hardware are required on the slave machines. The new Vienna Ensemble 8V edition takes this concept further by integrating a full-featured video engine. This isn’t just a simple window; it’s a GPU-accelerated system that streams video from remote machines back to your setup with minimal CPU impact.
Spectrasonics was showing the recently released Omnisphere 3, a truly impressive upgrade. You can find more about it in our Omnisphere 3 review.
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beyerdynamic was showing Headphone Lab, a free software plug-in for digital audio workstations that optimizes beyerdynamic’s range of DT studio headphones for mixing and mastering.
The Fender Transition
The Fender Booth
In Hall A there was good news for the many guitar players on KVR, Fender clearly sees the software market as important. Their booth had moved from their past location to be in Hall A.
They were showing guitar products, but the main focus was on the new re-branded version of the Studio One DAW. In a bold branding move, the DAW formerly known as PreSonus Studio One is now Fender Studio Pro. This transition extends to hardware as well, with the interface lines now carrying the names Fender Quantum and Fender AudioBox Go. It is a bold play to integrate the software ecosystem more directly into the Fender lifestyle. Other guitar product oriented manufacturers are likely to follow.
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Inside the Bob Moog Foundation booth was a reconstruction of Keith Emerson’s massive modular from the 1970s. Here’s a great SOS article about how the original came about. One might compare it to a signature (name your favorite shredder) series for guitars, but at $150,000, it is bit more expensive, and only monophonic!
Rachel Flowers
One of the modular performances was by Rachel Flowers. Many in the KVR Community already know about her, but it was a first for us. In this current world of madness Rachel is an incredibly inspirational example of the best of human spirit. Blind since birth she has mastered music, and to the delight of the large crowd that gathered, was playing complex long form music pieces by Mr Emerson. She would have had to learn the pieces totally by ear. Wow! For more about Rachel check this out
Guitar players stomping around
The modern EHX rig…
A bundled software application is becoming a requirement for stomp box manufacturers these days as most guitar players now have home recording systems. This trend has been led by new stomp box manufacturers like Strymon and Source Audio, but it’s being taken to a new level by Electro Harmonix, one of the oldest and most successful pedal manufacturers. Seriously folks, Jimi Hendrix used their Big Muff in 1969, so they have cred. They’re making a strong case for computer users with their Big Muff pi and now their recently announced EHX Effects Interface | Hardware Plugin.
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The Quad Cortex mini
Nearby, Neural DSP was demonstrating the Quad Cortex mini, a stompbox version of the Quad Cortex from 2020. It’s designed to deliver the audio fidelity of their flagship Quad Cortex in a form factor that is over 50% smaller. They are hoping to attract musicians who need a “fly-rig” or just want to add Neural DSP’s amp models to their pedal boards.
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Universal Audio was not at the show. In their former location was the John Lennon bus, which is basically a mobile studio designed for educating the next generation of musicians and recording engineers. It featured a small venue with artists like Ben Harper performing. We would love to know how they got the bus in there, but that’s for another day.
Celemony Tonalics
Over in the quieter Marriott we were pleased to receive a demonstration of Tonalic, Celemony’s new product/subscription service that integrates their Melodyne technology with content from major studio players on several continents. Rather than just providing loops, it acts more like a virtual collaborator. It uses Celemony technology to match tracks and tempos and suggest ideas for song structure based on the comfort zones of the recorded musicians. After all you probably wouldn’t hire Tony Williams to play a rock song, or Lars Ulrich to play a jazz date. There will be lots of news that will follow this announcement.
Roland, Roland, Roland…
Roland CR-78 in action
It’s fun to watch as Roland continues to bring their most popular and in many cases iconic products into software. This year they were showing the new CR-78 drum plugin, which emulates the first drum machine Roland ever made. They were showing the CR-78 layered with the TR-808 using their Galaxias shell. In addition three new pedal emulations, the DM-2, OD-2, DC-2 have been added to the Boss Effects bundle.
Melbourne Roto-Control
Melbourne Instruments was showing the Roto-Control, which now works natively in Logic. Manning the booth was industry veteran Paul Wishart, who is in charge of business development at Melbourne, so they’re in good hands.
And nearby was Bitwig, showing the latest beta of Bitwig Studio, with its new automation features and the Bitwig Connect hardware interface. They also had a Melbourne Roto-Control as part of their demonstration. It’s bright orange buttons blend well in the Bitwig environment.
Bitwig was showing off its soon to come major update Bitwig Studio version 6 and demoing Bitwig Connect – the new Bitwig interface just released half a year ago.
Mea Lindl
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North Hall
The Xchange and Music Marketing wall
The North Hall was very active throughout the show and most of our time was spent there.
Sound Radix has built a reputation on precision tools like Auto-Align, but its latest project moves firmly into the creative synthesis realm. It has announced Radical1, a new synthesizer featuring an additive engine capable of generating tens of thousands of oscillators in real-time. And, despite what one might think, they say it is not CPU intensive.
Zebra 3
3 Zebra
A few booths away, the crowd at the u-he booth confirmed that the anticipation for Zebra 3 has not cooled. Seeing the progress on this flagship synth remains a highlight. It’s now in public beta for those that like to live on the edge.
Nearby, NUGEN Audio was demonstrating Mastercheck 2, focusing on modern loudness standards and added Surround support.
Floris and Frederik
At one point FabFilter founders Floris Klinkert and Frederik Slijkerman were being interviewed on the show floor. They were showing their recently released Pro-C3 and accepting congratulations for their much deserved TEC Award for their extremely popular Pro-Q 4.
A special mention should go to Presonus/Fender and Celemony for their original vision for the ARA (Audio Random Access) extension back in 2011. Image-Line pretty much completes the DAW support picture with their addition of ARA2 support in FL Studio.
Great show for Image-Line, with real momentum, fast moving changes across the industry, and a lot of concrete follow ups. We are excited about what is next.
Ramon Pankert – Image-Line
Déjà vu
SoundToys was showing SpaceBlender 2. Among other things, it employs some interesting uses of time-based harmonics.
Eeek!
Music Mouse then…
In the Eventide booth, we were amazed to see Laurie Spiegel’s Music Mouse displayed running on a Mac SE. We’re talking 1988 folks. They have promised to revive the application that was distributed by Opcode Systems for many years. While the core logic remains faithful to the 1980s original, Music Mouse now includes several modern refinements. The interface is now resizable and offers high-definition visual feedback, including an optional visual separator around the cursor and a “hint bar” to help users navigate the various keyboard shortcuts.
One notable addition is the inclusion of over 30 synth presets derived from Laurie Spiegel’s original Yamaha DX7 and TX7 patches. For those looking to move beyond the internal sounds, the software features MIDI Out and MIDI Clock Sync, allowing it to drive external hardware or DAW-hosted plugins. This makes it an unconventional MIDI controller for creating melodies and textures that might be difficult to play on a standard keyboard.
SSL autoEQ
Upstairs in the North Hall Solid State Logic was showcasing autoEQ, the first result of its collaboration with the recently acquired sonible’s machine learning algorithms. This highlights an interesting shift in SSL’s software strategy, blending its classic analog heritage with automated, intelligent processing.
Avid was in their booth showing an alpha version of Pro Tools with MPE compatibility. No release date for the MPE version, but the next release should include updated MIDI region support to make it easier to navigate.
Learning from the past – MIDI Association presents Lifetime Achievement Awards to pioneer software developers
Pioneers of MIDI software
On Saturday the MIDI Association honored pioneers whose work helped define MIDI, computer music, and modern music production. MIDI began its life as a protocol to connect electronic keyboards to each other, and the efforts of these engineers added the power to personal computing to benefit every kind of instrumentalist producers, recording engineers, and even created new genres of music. We’re pretty sure that none of them started their projects thinking that they would transform the music making process to what it is today. They were simply excited about the brand new MIDI 1.0 standard, advances in computer technologies, and of course, music. As their companies grew they must have thought: “Wow. I could make a living do this.”
The recipients were, in no particular order:
- Dave Oppenheim — Co-founder of Opcode Systems and pioneer of MIDI sequencing and DAW workflows.
- Chris Adam and Gerhard Lengeling — Co-founders of C-Lab and Emagic.
- Greg Hendershott — Founder of Cakewalk, who democratized MIDI sequencing on personal computers.
- David Kusek — Founder of Passport Designs and pioneer of computer music and MIDI education.
- Charlie Steinberg — Founder of Steinberg, visionary behind modern MIDI sequencing and virtual studios.
- Emile “Dr. T” Tobenfeld — Algorithmic music innovator who expanded MIDI’s creative boundaries.
Now we will see what these guys and so many others will do with MIDI 2.0…
Implications for the future
There was no shortage of corporate announcements. Comings and goings, etc, but three of them really stood out.
Right before the show Landr announced their acquisition of Reason Studios, adding a DAW to their subscription based creation system. If you’re interested in learning more about this check out KVR Create.
Native Instruments insolvent… Whaaaaat?
Shortly after the NAMM show ended there was a surprising announcement that has shocked people in the KVR community, the filing of insolvency of Native Instruments. Our point of view is that owners of NI, iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx software products should be wary, but not overly concerned. The software assets of these brands are too valuable not to be supported. You can find a statement by NI CEO Nick Williams here. Ironically, former NI CEO Daniel Haver, was on the NAMM show floor. He is planning to write a book about his experiences. That could be a very interesting read.
Dirk Ulrich takes over Apogee
Good news is that Dirk Ulrich, the founder of Brainworx and Plugin Alliance, has become the new owner of Apogee. If he is as clever with Apogee’s strategies as he was with his former companies this will be a good thing for all involved.
We hope no guitars were seriously injured in the making of this promotion
Check out all the KVR Audio NAMM news at: kvraudio.com/namm
The NAMM Show will return January 26-30, 2027: namm.org
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