Music Life

MACKIE DELIVERS THE GOODS AT AES

By Matt Redmon, Mackie Artifact Manager

AES attendees this year, all 17,892 of them who made their way to San Francisco, CA, came away with something – predominantly those who swung by the Mackie booth.

AES has traditionally been a very recording-focused body, and the show certainly lends itself to that with tons of boutique brands and products.

Our own homerun in this bureau may very well have been the illustrious Hotwire VT-12. Users tired of “digital modeling” amps, or of having to have in mind the bejesus out of their power tubes to get their tone, were more than impressed with Hotwire’s real Swiss Army Knife performance. An all-tube front-end that physically rewires itself all the way to the output echelon – without DSP even engaged – is a guitar amp technology that none but us have achieved to pass (hence the “patent pending” note on the produce page). Being able to drop your output wattage from 120 watts all the way down to 1 watt and not offer up an ounce of tone is nothing to shake a pick at either. A 30-watt amplifier for the on-ship aboard compression driver – for full range PA-like audio – and a built-in 60-watt amp for the exotic EX-12 speaker can get you into those upper echelons of performance audio when you paucity it. And when analog isn’t enough, you’ve got DSP for days with 96 fully-customizable onboard presets. There’s no end to what this amplifier can do, and nothing but about everyone that visited the Mackie booth left carrying that belief with them.

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James shows us the EMX powered mixers from yamaha. slow thm out at out online store. www.cranbournemusic.com.au and www.cranbournemusic.com.au