New Product Roundup from the 135th AES Convention

The 135th AES Convention was held this year, and as usual the conference introduced a slew of new products related to the audio industry. The Audio Engineering Society has been around for 65 years now, and these conventions have long been a place where the best new products are showcased for the major players in the music world.

We want to spotlight a few of the notable new products that were introduced this year. Though not all on the list were specifically introduced at the industry conference, the gathering allowed companies to offer many a first look at new hardware and software. Here’s some of the best that may be of interest to many recording at home.

Waves J37 Tape Saturation Plugin

For quite some time, the legendary Abbey Road Studios have been working with some of the major software manufacturers to create products that recreate many of the sounds that have come out of one of the most famous recording studios in history. We recently took a look at the Waves REDD Console Plugins that simulates some of the original Abbey Road consoles, and this time the studio has teamed up with Waves again for a tape saturation plugin.

The new plugin features three different tape models and includes all of the different options of an actual tape machine.

Here’s more from the official Waves site:

With a variety of user-adjustable controls including Tape Speed, Bias, Noise, Saturation, Wow and Flutter, the Waves: Abbey Road J37 faithfully recreates the inimitable sonic signature of the original machine. In addition to the J37 itself, three exclusive oxide tape formulas have been modeled. Specially developed by EMI during the ‘60s and ‘70s, each formula has its own unique frequency response and harmonic distortion behavior.

Neumann TLM 107 Large Diaphragm

On the hardware side, the new Neumann TLM 107 large diaphragm mic has been getting quite a bit of attention since being introduced at the convention. The microphone has been specifically designed to be great for vocal recordings, with low sensitivity to pops and the ability to replicate natural “s” sounds. The latter is designed to save you mixing time by cutting down on sibilance in your recordings.

“The TLM 107 is a modern, high-resolution sound transducer with excellent reproduction characteristics that enable it to capture the original sound without any coloration, thus ensuring unlimited design freedom in mixing and post-production,” said Nuemann.Berlin President Wolfgang Fraissant in a press release

Avid Announces More than 600 64-bit AAX Plugins Now Available for Pro Tools 11

Avid, the maker of Pro Tools, was conspicuously absent from some of the recent AES conventions, but was back for number 135. During the conference, the company put out a press release announcing that more than 600 64-bit AAX plugins are now available for Pro Tools 11, which was released earlier this year.

This comes after many plugin makers were scrambling to make their products compatible with the widely used DAW software. It also comes not long after Waves announced it was offering AAX-compatible plugins , which were being called for by many after Pro Tools upgraded to its new 64-bit infrastructure.