AES 2015: Top Picks & Pics from the Showroom Floor

November 2nd, 2015 by SonicScoop

This was a memorable weekend to be in New York City. The Mets were embroiled in the World Series, the NYC Marathon powered through all five boroughs, and Halloween fell on a Saturday night, capped by the famed traffic-snarling West Village parade. And, oh yes, there was AES.

Though the 139^th International AES Convention may not have figured into the breathless local news coverage of this Halloween weekend, for thousands of audio enthusiasts, it dwarfed everything else. And below, you’ll find a photo log of some of our favorite gear highlights from the show floor.

This year, thanks to the new Hudson Yards stop on the 7 train, getting to the Javits Center was more joy than journey, which helped attendees to stay sharp for the show floor and technical program. Once inside the convention center, there was plenty to buzz about. According to the AES, pre-registration for the NYC show stood at 17,081—higher than the total registration for 2014’s Los Angeles convention.

These initial stats aside, the proof was in the experience: Traffic through the exhibit hall was energetic and steady, and plenty of panels and workshops played to packed audiences. We’ve seen AES when it felt like an out-of-touch ghost town – 2015 was anything but.

Talk to the oldest AES Convention veterans, and you’re bound to hear comparisons to past shows when the exhibits easily engulfed the Javits’ flagship halls, as they lament wistfully that the audio show isn’t as big as it used to be. But guess what? Neither is audio gear. It takes a lot less space to demo a monitoring system or a compressor plugin than a 72-channel console. If it took you less than a day to take it all in, you were either missing something or already know everything.

For the newbies who are fresh to the fight, the phase is totally flipped: Several of the emerging engineers at their first-ever AES told us they were totally overwhelmed by the scope of the show. If they became over-saturated by the gear, fortunately, they had something strong to fall back on: the unique social fabric that pervades audio. Everywhere you turned, you could see attendees reinforcing old friendships and forging new ones. No wonder we make such beautiful music together.

Microphones