The Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim, California, is always a great place to get your mits on the latest studio gear from pretty much every major manufacturer under the sun — but for the SOS team this year, it also provided the perfect opportunity to present the winners of our 2010 awards with their trophies. Needless to say, the awardees were all delighted to have won — all the more so because with the exception of the Editor’s Choice award, all the winners were chosen by you, our readers, and so reflect the opinions of the many people who use their tools every day.
Access Music (www.access-music.de) were overjoyed to win the Best Keyboard/Synthesizer award with their Virus TI, which pioneered the concept of hardware/plug‑in integration way back in 2005. Adam Audio (www.adam-audio.com) co‑founder Klaus Heinz, meanwhile, was delighted to pick up the Best Studio Monitors award for the Adam A7Xs, which have proven popular for their smooth‑sounding ribbon tweeter and extended low‑frequency response.
Avid (www.avid.com) were on hand to receive the award for Best Hardware Controller, which went to the Artist Series control surfaces, while AKG (www.akg.com) picked up not one, but two awards: Best Microphone and Best Studio Headphones, for the C414 XLS and K240s, respectively.
Apple’s (www.apple.com) Logic Pro won Best DAW Software, while Celemony’s (www.celemony.com) Melodyne Editor — with its groundbreaking Dynamic Note Access algorithm — picked up the award for Best Software Plug‑in Processor. Best Sound Library went to EastWest’s (www.soundsonline.com) Hollywood‑style orchestral collection, Symphonic Orchestra, while Focusrite (www.focusrite.com), with their unique dynamically convolving channel strip, the Liquid Channel, were delighted to receive the award for Best Microphone Preamp.
With its intuitive UI and advanced scripting features, it came as no surprise that Native Instruments’ Kontakt (www.native-instruments.com) won the award for Best Software Instrument, while RME (www.rme-audio.de) scooped the award for Best Interface, with their venerable Firewire rack, the Fireface 800.
SSL’s Matrix (www.solid-state-logic.com) which took the large‑format analogue mixer concept and brought it bang up‑to‑date with DAW control and integration features, won the award for Best Audio Mixer. Zoom (www.zoom.co.jp), meanwhile, were thrilled to be presented with the award for Best Hardware Audio Recorder, with their hugely popular H4N.
The last award‑winner was chosen by the SOS editorial team, as a way for us to recognise one outstanding and innovative product released in the last 12 months. This year, the Sound On Sound Editor’s Choice award went to Slate Digital (www.slatedigital.com) for their FG‑X Virtual Mastering Processor, with its remarkable ability to drastically increase the loudness of finished mixes, but without destroying transient detail.
We at SOS would like to congratulate everyone who won an award this year — not to mention thank them for making our lives in the studio easier and more enjoyable! And, of course, we want to thank you, our readers, for making your voices heard by voting. As a special incentive to get as many of you to vote as possible, we teamed up with SE Electronics (www.seelectronics.com) to offer the massive prize of £18,000 worth of SE microphones! We’ll be announcing who the lucky recipient of that behemoth mic collection is as soon as the winner is chosen — so keep an eye on the SOS web site to see if it’s you!
