Episode 173: NAMM 2019 (Recap for DJs)

The Passionate DJ Podcast

My first trip to The NAMM Show was, in a word, overwhelming! There was a lot to see and, I don’t think I could’ve visited every booth I wanted to if my life depended on it.

Still, it was a very exciting time for me to witness the hustle and bustle of this iconic show. NAMM is an annual event, described as “The World’s largest trade-only event for the music products, pro audio, and event tech industry.”

⚠️ Order (or pre-order) the stuff you hear in today's podcast: https://passionatedj.com/hookup/namm

NAMM stands for the “National Association of Music Merchants”, and was founded in 1901.

It’s a business show which caters to dealers and distributors, with the main draw being product exhibits where manufacturers show off their latest in music products and technology.

Of course, only a very small percentage of the NAMM displays are DJ-related, but it was still pretty difficult to cover all the bases. Ultimately, I decided to focus on a few key items that I thought would be most important to our Passionate DJ audience, and cover those well (going deep rather than wide).

So, I got on a plane from Ohio, where there was snow and ice on the ground, flew across the entire country… over the snow-covered plains and beautiful Rocky Mountains, and many hours later I was enjoying the sunny low-70s weather of the west coast... in January. And it was glorious.

Anaheim was beautiful and the convention center is located almost on top of Disney Land. The walk to-and-from the show was a sea of convention badges and mouse ears.

Inside the convention center, I barely knew what to do. You can go in any direction, up any escalator, and there will be another part of NAMM there just waiting to be explored.

Here's what we will mostly focus on today:

• Denon Prime 4
• Akai Force
• Rane Twelve & Seventy-Two
• Reloop Elite
• Technics SL-1200mk7 vs. RP8000mk2
• Phase DVS
• Traktor DJ 2

Gemini also showed off their all-in-one unit called the SDJ-4000. It seemed to have decent build quality, uses Gemini’s own software, and is essentially a cheaper alternative to the Prime 4 or the Pioneer XDJ-RR.

Speaking of Pioneer, while their entire DJ lineup was well represented at the show… they didn’t really have anything new on display.

Besides all the new Traktor news, Native Instruments also released a new three-octave keyboard called the M32, which is compatible with their Komplete Kontrol plugin and contains transport controls, touchstrips, and so on to control your studio software. NI also released the Audio 1 and Audio 2 sound cards, for very basic connections for those needing inputs on stage.

⚠️ Order (or pre-order) the stuff you hear in today's podcast: https://passionatedj.com/hookup/namm