Things have been so busy here at XTA towers since Frankfurt, I didn’t even get a chance to do some debriefing about the show, and this has got to be a good thing, hasn’t it?
I had loads of cool pictures of crazy gear and interesting kit, plus the obligatory pre-during but no post stand shots (got a better one than that!), so here’s a quick round-up…
Things always look bad that this stage…
…and then it all comes together beautifully. Our Windows 8 inspired displays looked very fetching!
And the biggest amplifier (physically at least) goes to this monster, as seen in the new “International Procurement” hall 9.1 – so for that read “Chinese and Asian manufacturers” – a little unfair to dump them all in here and, judging by the feedback, I don’t think it will happen this way again. Anyway – that amp:
An “interesting” 1.5U chassis, which also happens to be about the same depth as an average double bed. Lovely build quality though..
Going a little more “off-piste” as far as pro-audio goes, I did also investigate the synth museum in hall 5, which housed mint examples of nearly every keyboard I could remember, and several oddities that I couldn’t. This shot shows an odd little device, which looks like a kid’s first computer from the Speak & Spell era, and unfortunately my phone’s camera didn’t get the best shot of it…if anyone knows what it is and its relevance in a synth museum, please let me know.
I don’t think the mini-traffic cone is relevant but, set against the black background, it almost looks like it’s CGI!
It was good to catch up with some old friends at the show, and it wasn’t long before Bill (Woods) was over to see us and fill us in on how things were going at Funktion One – we had a demo of the new DJ monitors which I did think were the best thing I had heard in a long time. Don’t know if there are plans to make them a production speaker, but they were certainly attracting attention and made their presence felt both sonically and visually!
They were only upstaged by this photo of Bill doing some real work on the Funktion One stand:
You missed a bit. Bill mops all the speakers away.
And finally, in a short but enduring series, this year’s favourite non-native English speaking typo, courtesy of, well, that would be telling (and possibly liabilous!) – see if you can spot it:
Say what you see: here’s a clue – it’s in the main banner. I do hope someone told them. You can click on the pic to examine it in more detail.
We had a great show and now it’s only a few days until the next big ones – InfoComm in Orlando, where you can catch up with Richard Fleming and John Austin in attendance with our US distributor Group One, and at the Palm Expo in Beijing with Thim and friends at ST-Audio.
So back to the main thrust of this post – the DS8000D – D for DIGITAL!
We debuted the AES version of the DS8000 in Frankfurt, connected up to a example application system that had two units synced together via their wordclock I/O and converted to a MADI stream to give 16 track recording to a laptop, as well as another set of transformer isolated AES outputs to feed other hardware. And all of this is on top of the standard 32 analogue outputs on the unit!
There are previous posts that go into this in more detail and there’s a datasheet if you want the whole story. A few things are worth mentioning here. We are stocking two versions of the unit, as opposed to offer the AES connectivity as an option. This just makes it less confusing for everyone! So there is the DS8000 and the DS8000D.
We have received some requests from distributors for D-sub breakout cables to support the DS8000D,
and we can source these if required:
1.5m length DB25 to 8 Neutrik XLRs
1.5m length DB25 to 4 Neutrik XLRs
1.5m length DB25 to DB25 (4 outs only wired – so one full set of outputs)
The best news of all is that both versions are shipping now!
We perfect your sound and our “erath”
That’s the one Martin! Brillinat (sic) isn’t it?
😉