First, I (among many others) expect SSL to announce a PCIe version of Duende. Personally I think this is awesome. The hardware manufacturers out there really need to stop making everything USB and firewire. As I mentioned in yesterdays post, there’s also rumors about a new cheaper-than-usual-SSL analog desk. I have no idea what budget we’re talking here, it could be anything from Toft to way too expensive… And it can be nothing more than just a rumor as well.

Fellow Scandinavians Vintage Design will show the new ProPack which I think looks absolutely awesome (top picture). If you’re not familiar with Vintage Design, they make Neve-styled gear.

The MIDI controller people will talk about will probably be NUMA from Studiologic. It looks nice (and expensive).

Sonic Core will be showing their latest SCOPE DSP hardware. I’m not sure what platforms they support, and I don’t get much wiser out of reading on their website. Anyway, at that price point and as a Pro Tools user, it will probably be more tempting to get another process card for your HD system. For others, however, it might look good.

I also read on Future Music that Celemony is planning something big. The question is “who cares?” when Digidesign is working on elastic pitch?

Digidesign then? I don’t expect much from them. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Digidesign has a history of revealing much new at Messe. I think the purchase of M-Audio was announced there, but other than that I can’t really think of anything big. I could of course be wrong.

I have of course heard of a lot more things that will be shown - guitars and microphones are as usual raining down upon us - but keeping with the style of the blog I’ve left these things out for now. Still, doesn’t this seem a bit “light” for a major trade fair? I most certainly think so.