NAB: Fun With Audio

A few months ago, Avid made big news by pulling out of NAB. Well, apparently that decision didn't sit well with Digidesign, the pro audio division of Avid, which normally exhibits in the Avid booth. I discovered a Digidesign booth in the North Hall, much smaller than even Digidesign's normal display space within Avid's previous NAB booths, but a 20' x 20' booth nonetheless. There was a full-blown Icon console on one side, and a new C24 console and some other equipment on the other.

I also stopped by Euphonix's booth. The company, which specializes in very large, very expensive audio consoles, recently announced the MC Control and MC Mix, a pair of low-cost control surfaces for software such as Apple's Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio. There were two MC setups in the booth, and I had a number of questions and would have liked a demonstration. However, even though there were no other customers and a half-dozen Euphonix staffers in the booth, I was totally ignored.

Now, I'm not entirely chopped liver; I'm an Audio Engineering Society member, and I could have had an intelligent conversation, but I never got the chance. I suspect that Euphonix's salespeople were far more interested in selling their big, expensive "pro studios" products, but if that was the case, why did they even bother bringing the MC control surfaces to NAB? Note to exhibitors: Don't waste the space in your booths displaying products that you don't want to sell. And if you do want to sell them, don't ignore your customers. There are way too many competitors in the low-cost control surface market for Euphonix to take it for granted.