Zoom-in Online

With all of the glitz and glam served up by the major players at this fall's AES Convention, it was easy to miss some of the smaller, not so touted items. Here are my five favorite items that may or may not have been lost to the fray.

The Blue Snowflake

Blue Microphones has always been the fantastic place where brilliant microphone technology meets brilliant design. Sleek offerings like the Dragonfly and Woodpecker will easily pull your gaze, but unless you were looking for it, you probably missed the forth coming Snowflake.

The Snowflake is being called, “…the first professional quality, portable USB microphone,” and certainly looks as cool as it sounds. Building on the easy usage of the USB Snowball and packaging it with a more compact and sleek design, the Snowflake will be on every podcaster-with-a-laptop’s Christmas wish list. And with a $79 price tag and a Nov. 1st release date, that wish sounds more and more like an easy reality.

The CEntrance MicPort Pro and AxePort Pro

Now you can quickly record anything, anywhere. Simply pop in a MicPort or AxePort into your microphone or 1/4" instrument jack, plug in the USB cable and go. These little handheld devices serve up 24-bit/96k A to D conversion all in a bus-powered unit that fits in the palm of your hand. The built-in universal drivers makes sure that no matter what you plug it into, Mac or Windows, you are immediately ready to start tracking.

The MicPort Pro has a low noise, Class A preamp for all sorts of micing uses be it vocal tracking, overdubs, or instrument micing, and offers up a built in headphone jack for zero latency monitoring. The Axeport offers the same feature, but with an Hi-Z, 1/4" input. The AxePort also comes bundled with amp modeling software and REAPER recording software.

The MicPort is shipping now, and the Axeport is coming out soon, look for both by Christmas at a price tag around $120 to $150 dollars.

The Korg MR-1 and MR-1000

These sleek little units were actually pretty prominent at the Korg booth, but they were so cool I had to put them on my list. As someone who does a lot of recording in the field, when something comes along that could make that easier or better, I’m for it.

Both the MR-1 and MR-1000 function with 1-bit recording technology and ridiculous sample rates of 2.8Mhz and 5.6Mhs respectively (that’s MEGAHURTZ in case you were reading to fast.) This allows these portable wonders to literally ‘draw’ the audio wave form as you record giving you amazing quality without huge file sizes. Even if you switch over to standard PCM recording with resolutions up to 24-bit/192kHz, the built-in 20gb hard drive will have you running out of battery life before running out of recording time.

Both units come bundled with Korg’s Audiogate software for easy transfer of files and transcoding into whatever format you need for editing. There are also a wide variety of available accessories so you can build the portable recording solution to fit any of your needs all at a price point that puts either of these units easily in reach.

The Holophone H4 SuperMini

With almost all the new DAWs and NLEs on the market right now supporting 5.1 audio mixing, it is obvious that surround sound is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. However, for DIYers and small production houses, the thought of field recording with six microphones in a proper surround set up is probably terrifying. That is why for the smaller crews, the Holophone solution could be the answer to your prayers.

The H4 SuperMini is a camera mountable, 5.1 surround sound recording microphone that dumps 6 microphone element sources into a Dolby Pro Logic II encoder to deliver LT (left-together) and RT (right-together) output to your recorder or camera. Or if you have a multitrack field recorder you can easily dump each discrete channel from the unit to be mixed later. The unit also has virtual surround monitoring thru headphones, and an additional micpre for a dedicated center channel microphone. So, for the price of hiring an audio engineer for a week, any videographer can be recording 5.1 audio straight to the camera.

The Resolution Project DVDA disk

We all know that the music industry is shaking in its boots when it comes to the future of music delivery. With the rise, an now dominance, of the Apple iPod and the host of digital music formats and players, many have already forecast the death of the CD. I have always argued however that music delivery will never fully be replaced by the mp3 based on the simple fact that when if comes down to it…they just don’t sound that good.

To illustrate this point, several companies got together to provide the music audience with an education in the form of The Resolution Project. This DVDA features 12 tracks, but only two songs. They are both recorded and mixed live, so after capture, there was no additional sweetening to any of the tracks. Each track climbs a step in resolution and format, so that for the first time ever the listener can hear the qualitative difference between MP3, WMA, AAC, 16-bit/44.1kHZ, 24-bit/96kHz, and 24-bit/192kHz audio resolutions. I have to say that the tracks speak for themselves, but don’t take my word for it, get your hands on one of these disks and hear it for your self. Afterward I think you will agree that while lower quality audio is nice for portability, it will never be able to overtake truer delivery formats.

This disk is only available for free and only thru one of the disks creators, Minnetonka Audio Software, Dolby Laboratories, Steinberg, Genex Audio, Great River Electronics, Monster Cable, and DPA Microphones.

Zoom-In Online has a lot more coverage of the AES convention coming your way, so be sure to check out the Technology Today podcasts from the showroom floor with a lot of great names in the audio industry including Apple Pro Audio, Apogee, Digidesign, Minnetonka Audio, Mark of the Unicorn and many more. Also, be sure to check in with our friends over at Create Digital Music for additional coverage. And as always, if you saw something I missed, please, email me and let me know what you thought of the 123rd AES Convention.