If you don't mind and in consideration of other SSD members, please place any information you wish to impart to us regarding NAB 2011 in this thread.
Thank you very much.
The only two things that have interested me so far are
the Sound Devices PIX http://www.sounddevices.com/products/pix.htm
Sennheiser MKH8060 and MKH8070 microphones
NAB was amazing! Got to meet in person many of the peeps I only know online. What a treat.
What cool things have I found?
MixPre D. Was keen to buy it right there and then, but it's not available for the next few weeks :-( Whats great about it compared to the old one? Mainly, the monitoring LEDs are so much better, and obviously the digital ability.
Sony MDR 7520 headphones. These sound incredible! These headphones do not seem to color the sound at all! These sounded really really awesome! And again, I couldn't buy them cause they aren't officially out yet :-(
As Tim says, I listened to the Sennheiser MKH8060 and MKH8070 mics, and they sounded amazing!
Spoke to the Sennheiser engineer about how noisy the side capsules are on my MKH 418s, and they gave me the reason as to why! Turns out that when they designed the mic, it wasn't created to be decoded in the middle but much more towards the mid. This is why when you decode balanced in the center, the sides end up being so much louder and thus more noiser.
Happiness. Yes, I found happiness there.
I couldn't spend too long at NAB, sadly, but I did swing by for a morning and whipped through the exhibitors to get a few first impressions.
The Sound Devices PIX series are pretty bomber, as one would expect, and perfectly leverages what they've been good at in the past: Bulletproof media capture on solid state devices. I love the modular drive sleds into which you pop an SSD of your choice, as well as an onboard CF slot for immediate backup. Acts as a pass-through and a video scaler, depending on which model you get, and the screen is not unlike that of an iPhone 4. Perhaps not of total interest for most here, but for those of us (like myself and @tim), it represents a great new entry into that market that's priced competitively for how solidly the device is built. And maybe a glimpse into the strategic, industrial-design, and UI-design future for their audio devices..?
The Zaxcom Nomad looks great, too! It's clearly aimed at production mixers working out of a bag, though - they're not supporting anything more than 96khz. But with a somewhat modular design, it's a slick unit. If you need higher sample rates primarily for multi-channel effects recording, methinks the 788 is still the bee's knees.
The new MKH8000 series, of course, are supremely interesting. I demoed them just a tad, but didn't try the all-digital ones. On the show floor, there's no way I could really consider them critically. But they're as you'd expect: No surprises. But, that means that they're solid, lightweight, and sound amazing. ;-)
I chatted about digital microphones with Sanken and DPA representatives; Sanken was noncommittal, but DPA made a resounding statement that they don't think digital mics are in their foreseeable future. I'm certainly not arguing that digital mics are the future, far from it, but with some players moving that way, I thought it'd be interesting to hear what others are planning in terms of their future product lines.
Possibly the most overlooked on-location production development was a tiny new company in Pasedena, CA called inovativ (spelled correctly, believe it or not). They make AV field carts. But the cool thing is that they're collapsable, shippable, and the designers are all ex- or current mountain bike designers. Their high-end carts have a rear-suspension mountain bike shock on each wheel. Insane. Still, great design and the lower-end units would be very mobile for those of us who sometime need field carts but lack the vans or support trucks to carry them into the field.
I got some drool on the Deca bags shown in Petrol's booth, too. And talk about DSLR support and stabilization rigs, oh, man...the floodgates have opened...