MESSE: Midiman - Many More Marvelous Morsels

US Fastest-growing audio company expands a bit more 19/03/02

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Apparently it's official - according to Music Trades, Midiman/M-Audio ranked the fastest-growing music industry company in 2000 - well, I never.

I guess they're aiming for this year too, with another crop of goodies on show in Frankfurt. The pictures I took were, frankly - terrible, so there are some official ones:-

First up is the USB Audio Duo which as it's name suggests, gives you two mic/line inputs using Midiman's well-known mic pre's. Stereo signals route to bal/unbal TRS jacks with +4/-10 switchable line levels; S/PDIF on coax, and tweakable level headphone outs. It can also be switched to a 'standalone' mode where it's a mic pre and A/D converter independent of a computer.

On the theme of mic pre's, there was a funky-looking box lurking at the bottom of a display cabinet called 'Tampa':

The broken glass wasn't me trying to get a better shot - it's 'display art'. Apparently. Still, Tampa itself looked great, and I am assured it's an "uncompromising single-channel microphone/instrument pre-amp complete with a dual servo-optical compressor." Phew! Not only that, but "the audio path is all harmonic phase-shift corrected, solid state, discrete, Class-A circuitry."
I think what they're trying to say here is that it's the proverbial mutt's cohones.

Looking a bit like a single proverbial..ahem... was the USB MIDIsport Uno:-

It's not a mouse, it's "a 1x1 MIDI interface that is totally portable, hot-swappable, and powered completely by USB. Drivers support all Windows operating systems 98SE and higher, as well as Macintosh OS 9 and Mac OS X. The MIDISport Uno represents square one in a line that scales to accommodate the needs of different gear setups, including the MIDISport 2x2, MIDISport 4x4, and MIDISport 8x8/s with SMPTE."

Got that? So it's not roundish, it's square (one).

And finally, woofers of another type (definitely square) - the cute SP-5B active monitors have now got a bigger brother (or is that sister?) with the introduction of the SP-8B and it's matching subwoofer, the SP-8S.

Here's the gen:-
"The SP-8B offers 100 watts of bi-amped near-field technology. It features an 8-inch woofer with a magnetically shielded, mineral-filled polypropylene cone with high temperature voice coil and damped rubber surround. The high-frequency driver utilizes a 1-inch magnetically-shield natural silk dome. A Sub-Frequency Port puts out frequencies that are uncharacteristically low for this size monitor, yielding frequency response specs of 33Hz-22kHz. The SP-8S subwoofer is designed to add extremely low bass frequencies to the Studiophile SP-8B and SP-5B reference monitors, as well as most other brands of speakers. It is the first subwoofer on the market to include a Stereo Bass Management System to discretely route frequencies to the appropriate components for optimal audio fidelity. Powered with an integral 100-watt amp, the SP-8S employs an 8-inch mineral-filled polypropylene cone in a custom MDF enclosure. Inputs are balanced XLR and balanced/unbalanced TRS, and outputs are balanced XLR. A variable low-pass filter is provided, as well as a variable high-pass filter with bypass switch for bass management. Both ship as of Music Messe."

More info:

United States: Contact Midiman, Inc. 45 E. Saint Joseph St., Arcadia, CA, 91006; Tel: 626-445-2842; Fax: 626-445-7564.

International: Contact Mike Partridge at Midiman UK, Unit 5, Saracens Industrial Estate, Mark Rd, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 7BT, England, Tel: 0871 717 7100, Fax: 0871 717 7101, Email: mike@midiman.co.uk

www.midiman.com

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