Each year, we offer our "AES Audio Products Guide," where you can find the latest products that will be debuting—or showcased—at the show. The New Products Guide is now live!

Start poking around now!

A Word From the Editors
Saturday night saw two popular events take place: The Mix Foundation's TEC awards, conveniently held for the first time at the Javits and later, API's bash at the Roseland ballroom featuring The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and New Orleans' Sonny Landreth.

Not unusually, Sunday was a sleepy day on the floor giving those who attended more face time with product specialists. Radial Engineering's Peter Janis gave us a closeup tour of their new Workhorse 5000. The combo 500 series rack and summing mixer is packed with I/O and extra features for optimizing signal flow. Radial also showcased a range of very affordable 500 series processors including the super-cool Komit compressor we reviewed in Mix a year ago . Gary Boss at Audio Technica gave us a view of their new AT4080 and AT4081 active ribbon mics and their AT4050ST condenser mic with independent figure 8 and cardioid elements and built-in switchable MS matrix. Wes Dooley at AEA was proudly showing his A840 active ribbon promising a tight pattern, smooth extended top, and less proximity bass boost than the R44 and A440. Tascam announced the US2000 USB audio interface and the HS-P82, a high-end 8-track field recorder for music, television and film production. It features eight preamps, XLR inputs and recording up to 96kHz/24-bit audio with timecode. Soundtoys showed their Decapitator saturation plug-in and the PanMan advanced auto-panner with groove control. If there was a word that described the show, I'd have to say it was optimism.

Cakewalk SONAR 8.5 Producer
The latest upgrade of Cakewalk’s SONAR Producer offers new beat-creation and arrangement tools, a new drum instrument, enhanced audio quantizing and new multi-stage effect plug-ins for vocals and percussion. Other added features include Matrix View for simple and flexible cell-based, nonlinear audio and MIDI arranging; engine optimizations and stability improvements for recording audio while looping; the ability to hot-swap audio and MIDI devices without restarting SONAR; and access of up to 128 GB of RAM. Among its VST plug-in-compatibility improvements is BitBridgeXR, which lets users run 32-bit plugs in 64-bit environments. Price: $499. Find out more information about SONAR 8.5 Producer.
AES Booth: 261

Galaxy Audio Any Spot Wireless Mics
Galaxy Audio introduces the PSE Series, TRC Series and the DHT Series wireless mics. The PSE has 16 selectable UHF channels, whereas the TRC and DHT offer 120 selectable channels. Features include backlit LCD with channel display on transmitters and receivers. All receivers have XLR and ¼-inch outputs and squelch adjustment. Each handheld transmitter features a gain control, and bodypacks have a 0/-10/mic selector switch. Wireless transmitters can be mixed to work with different rackmount receivers. This allows the user to pick the features desired of each component. The HH64 and HH76 both have the option of a changeable microphone element head from cardioid to supercardioid. Find out more information on Any Spot

RealTraps MegaTraps
MegaTraps ($249.99 each) absorb more, and to lower frequencies, than any other bass trap product made at any price. MegaTraps are meant for corner placement only, and boast a front face nearly three feet wide. They're meant to be stacked floor to ceiling, filling the corner completely for maximum absorption. MegaTraps are built similarly to other RealTraps bass traps, using a proprietary limp mass membrane behind the front fabric for maximum absorption at bass frequencies. When placed in a room corner, all you see is the solid color fabric front. Because they don't look like typical acoustic panels, they have very high "spouse" acceptance. They also look terrific in recording studios and control rooms. Find out more information about MegaTraps.
AES Booth: 466

Mackie Onyx-i FireWire Recording Mixers
A look at Mackie's new Onyx-i series of FireWire mixers. Watch the video now!

Rockin’ At the Roseland
API threw quite a 40th anniversary bash last night, locking out the Roseland Ballroom and flying in Sonny Landreth as the house band. Great food, monster playing, and this old hippie got to see Bob Weir join the band for “Maggie’s Farm” and “Little Red Rooster.” Brought back some fond memories of Dead tours. And Sonny can play. Smokin’.
—Tom Kenny

Mixing With Attitude
Once again, the Recording Academy put on a stellar Grammy Soundtable, their 26th in conjunction with AES. This time around, the topic was Mixing With Attitude, and P&E Wing exec director Maureen Droney matched up three very unique personalities, each at the top of their game, then brought in Nile Rodgers to moderate and keep them in line. Chris Lord-Alge started off by describing his setup, which hasn’t changed in years and has been moved to his new facility, Mix L.A. He’s at an SSL 4000 E Series with 48-track Sony digital tape machine. He’ll keep it up, he says, as long as he can find tape. Chuck Ainlay out of Backstage in Nashville sits at an SSL 9000J and uses Nuendo, sometimes working with Mark Knopfler in London on his Neve 88r or API, with an EMI Red 4 tube desk, which he jokingly called the “most ridiculous bass DI ever!” Then Tony Maserati said he has no real console in his setup, though he makes use of numerous summing sources, including a 16-channel Chandler, Dangerous 2-bus and a Neve sidecar.
—Tom Kenny