Sharper Counsel LLC

NAMM 2012 was held in Anaheim, California from Jan 18 through Jan 22 at the Anaheim Convention Center across from Disneyland.  This annual venture is presented by the National Association of Music Merchants and brings musicians, music equipment companies, dealers, distributors, trade, press and family and friends together for a few days of business and show-and-tell and comraderie and fellowship.  Performances are held daily on several stages around the event and in the local hotels.  The years new products are released and bragged upon, deals made to build better business, and a great time is had by all.  Here are a few pics of the event in case you didn’t get to go.

CES 2012 was an awsome show of more than 3100 companies exhibiting from around the world occupying over 1.8 million square feet of convention space.  153,000 attendees with 34,000 coming from international locations and around 20,000 new products announced at the show…wow!  It’s always a thrill to see so many exciting and innovative new product offerings and this year was no different.

Some of the trends at this year’s event — 3D television has become almost commonplace and new in this area were TVs that require no glasses to see 3D.  The 3D effect is not quite as clean on these units, but still very acceptable and certain to improve over time.  There were also 3D consumer camcorders (not new…) complemented with new 3D digital SLR still cameras as well as small form factor 3D still cameras.  3D is here to stay we think.

Another interesting theme was integration of technology and sports/games.  Liquid Image was displaying scuba and ski masks with integrated HD video and still cameras and clamp on cameras for action sports were in multiple booths.  A few years ago someone demonstrated a tread mill integrated into a video gaming system and in order to move in the game you had to walk/run on the treadmill.  This year there were at least two way more advanced systems with well developed gaming seats for hardcore gamers.

And as always, the ongoing fascination with big heavy things that drive fast and play really loud music!