Over at the Roland/Boss area (it‘s much too large to be called a booth), musicians were demonstrating some new toys and others not so new. I was most excited by the Boss RE-20, a digital stompbox version of the tape-based ‘70s-era Space Echo. Also on hand were the ME-20 and the ME-20B, two stompboxes for guitar and bass that essentially pack an entire Boss pedalboard into a compact form factor. Roland‘s new SonicCell is a black box with a USB connection that puts an SRX-expandable synth on your desktop. The SP-555 is a compact sampling workstation offering 16 pads, live looping, lots of COSM effects, and plenty of interactive features. Roland‘s Cube series of amps continues to expand with the Cube Street, their largest battery-powered guitar amp yet. And for drummers and wannabes, there‘s the HD-1, a more compact, entry-level variation on the V-Drums.



When I wandered by Belkin‘s booth (Belkin at NAMM? That‘s news!), I discovered that the TuneStudio is almost ready to ship. Just in case you didn‘t notice all the publicity it got when it was announced, the TuneStudio is an iPod-based recording studio that goes a bit beyond any other iPod-recording device, and it looks pretty neat, too.



Sony had an accessory that will definitely interest owners of the PCM-D1 digital field recorder. The XLR-1 is an adapter that provides a pair of XLR inputs for balanced mics and houses AA batteries that supply phantom power.

Saturday I expect to check out new gear from Akai, Alesis, Audio-Technica, Behringer, Digitech, and others. I‘ll get back to you and let you know if I see anything exciting.