NAMM 2014: Blackstar ID Core Stereo Amplifier Video Demo - Some Serious DSP Witchcraft

A big wide stereo field in a tiny combo - black magic is at work, folks   24-Jan-14

You might forgive us from time to time for seeing a practice amp at a trade show such as NAMM and thinking - "Oh here's ANOTHER new practice amp".

The Blackstar ID Core series now comes in stereo - and if you like pumping delay and reverb stereo fields wider than the chest measurement on Arnold Schwarzenegger's dinner jacket, you might want to check out these amps.

J Hayes - product guru at Blackstar - gave us a demonstration of the ID Core Stereo series, and also alluded to some DSP black magic behind the surpisingly wide stereo field produced by a small combo amplifier.

We'd guess the DSP black magic involves splitting the two signals to either speaker cone o the ID Core amp and then sequentially pulling them out of phase.

It's probably difficult to appreciate just how wide the stereo field sounded during this demonstration when you're listening on YouTube, but we did take a stereo recording on a Zoom H4N, so we'll be posting that audio after the show.

Hear the new ID Core stereo series in action in the video above.

Is there anything you'd like us to check out at this year's NAMM show? Let us know on Twitter - @SonicAmped.

Written by Richard Beech - @RichTheJourno.
Filmed by Andy McCreeth, presented by Richard Beech.
Product demonstration by J Hayes of Blackstar.