Hi Steve, I was there on Saturday only. I spent the morning at 1340 Mission ( Metric Halo was doing demos there that were fantastic, more like a workshop actually) and then spent the rest of the day window shopping the exhibit floor (I only had an exhibit pass too). Mike Spitz from ATR Services/Magnetics was there and may have been one of the busiest guys on the floor. He had a beautiful 102 on display but the four times I went by his booth, he was talking to, what seemed like, paying customers. There never seems to be a shortage of attractive ladies to steer you from this booth to that. I have to confess to listening to a couple of sales pitches for gear that I have absolutely no use for.
I spent the majority of time checking out recording gear (small digital field recorders which I'm in the market for and microphones which I just want all of) . Sound Devices had their 8 channel field recorder and Korg had their studio 1 bit (SACD) rack system which can be sync'ed with as many pairs of channels as you can stand. I drooled all over the Mojave and Micro Gefell microphone displays and was hoping that DPA would have a demo of a microphone that I'm actually interesting in buying but I guess it's not released yet.
There was that black semi truck trailer with Studer in big white letters across it but it was a demo of their automated consoles which were extremely cool to look at but I'm sure they must be insanely expensive. After looking at those, I wondered if the Metropolitan Opera is getting one of those (they were selling their old console a few months back).
When I went back to the studio, I had a great talk with Paul about the music industry in general. He has his lathe set up and running and is back to cutting records. I was really happy to hear that.
I had a hell of a good time and if it weren't for football and domestic chores, I would've driven back up on Sunday too.
