2025 NAMM Report: Flocking back to Mouse Town

By Chris [KVR] on February 4th, 2025

The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) held their annual Winter Show January 23-26. Although there were fewer booths and smaller booths than past NAMMs, the crowd appeared to be larger. Part of the reason could be that the was three rather than four days this year, but also because the association wants NAMM to be more of an multi-venue consumer event than a traditional trade show. Here are some fun metrics from NAMM.

The 2025 NAMM Show was a powerful week that set the music industry’s narrative for years ahead. With 1,850 exhibitors representing over 4,400 brands and more than 250 educational sessions for NAMM member communities, The NAMM Show highlighted innovative music technologies, product introductions, and impending trends that shape the future of the music industry while creating a five-day long platform for network connections and meetings that are critical for uniting and growing music makers globally.

The 2025 NAMM Show united and energized our NAMM members from the entire ecosystem of the music industry, NAMM is the global stage for our industry to announce groundbreaking products, establish transformative partnerships, and gain valuable education that will lead to a successful year ahead.”

John Mlynczak, NAMM president and CEO

NAMM Show 2025 By The Numbers

• 63,000+ show attendees, including 10,700+ international attendees from 125 countries, regions and territories

• 1,850+ exhibitors representing 4,400+ brands

• Nearly 8,700 artists demonstrating and endorsing products

• 250+ education sessions with 650+ speakers

• 1,600+ media, influencers and content creators reaching over 200 million followers

The North Hall

The North Hall was added a few years ago when NAMM expanded, and is populated primarily with pro audio and tech companies. Finnish developer oeksound was showing the latest iteration of their Bloom adaptive tone shaper. It analyzes the character of a signal and applies corrections to its perceived tonal balance. oeksound and Fourier Audio have also announced that the live-sound plug-in, Soothe Live, previously only available for Avid VENUE S6L consoles, will be available for Fourier Audio's transform engine later this year.

We didn't find a NUGEN booth in the usual spot, but product specialist Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe was doing a number of tutorials over the course of the show, focusing on tips and tricks for loudness control for streaming and music production techniques for Dolby Atmos and immersive audio.

The North Hall is also home for many of Ray Williams' interrelated initiatives. In fact every year their footprint seems to get exponentially larger, which means he must be making a lot of progress towards bringing software back to NAMM. The initiatives include North American distributor Music Marketing, which represents excellent brands like FabFilter, IMSTA, which promotes music creation software and Xchange, which levels the playing field for both software developers and retailers.

One Music Marketing highlight was Celemony's Stefan Lindlahr who was demonstrating the amazing power of Melodyne. More on that soon...

ACE Studio is a new brand. They have developed an AI singing voice generator designed for music producers and creators, enabling the creation of realistic custom vocals using advanced artificial intelligence technology. The samples are royalty free and they're using a subscription model.

SoundToys were offering a sneak peak (to 150,000 NAMM attendees...😵‍💫) of their new Space Blender reverb. It's so new that it doesn't appear on their website yet. They describe it as an "imaginary space machine" and it offers a typically SoundToysian approach to reverb, characterized by a multitude of delays but no feedback loops. This means each sound has a definitive start and end, which they say can create large ambient washes without overwhelming a mix. This was illustrated by the variety of instruments that they were simultaneously running through it, a synth pad matched with a drum a machine and a live cellist. You get the idea... No release date and price TBD.

Solid State Logic (SSL) announced two new audio interfaces, the SSL Alpha 8 and the SSL 18. The Alpha 8 is a desktop interface featuring 8 mic preamps, while the SSL 18 offers 18 inputs and is rack-mountable. Both interfaces aim to bring SSL's console-grade sound to a wider audience. Both will be available from Sweetwater and Thomann.

InMusic - In and out of the box

At the InMusic booth, Roger Linn, the inventor of the Linn Drum and the often copied MPC Workstation was showered with admiration from a grateful panel and an impressive audience of HipHop Producers and DJs. InMusic deserves praise for acquiring and integrating a number of different technologies into a cohesive system of products that work inside and outside of the box. They recently acquired Moog Music and there is clearly new energy around developing new products as well as preserving the legacy of the older ones. Not to belabor it, but you can find more information about Moog and Akai products at Sweetwater and Thomann.

Speaking of Moog, the Bob Moog Foundation held their annual Board of Advisors meeting. Passionate foundation board members like Craig Anderton and Dave Rossum mingled with Moog Music's Erik Norlander, Emagic founder, Gerhard Lengling and several other industry notables. It was moderated by Marcus Ryle and Michelle Moog-Koussa, and a topic of discussion was how to rebuild the Foundation and Moogseum in Asheville, NC after the devastating flood caused by Helene. The message was Become a member today. So please think about it. Not only are there some cool perks, but you get the nice warm and fuzzy feeling of helping a noble cause, the legacy of a great inventor and human being.

Hall E

The Hall E booths tend to be newer brands, Heavy Metal guitar products, and Ukulele makers.

Though not a newer brand, Strymon likes the lesser ambient noise and focus from passersby of Hall E. They were showing their the newest iteration of the unique and powerful BigSky reverb. Among many other improvements the BigSky MX features many new algorithms, the ability to use 2 reverbs at once, and a easy to read OLED screen. All in the same form factor as the original BlueSky we have come to know and love.

French company Kernom has a new line of stomp boxes. The most interesting to us was the Elipse modulation pedal, which allows the user to morph between presets.

Electro-Harmonix was promoting their POG3 octave pedal. It's certainly the most powerful in its category with the ability to layer up to five octaves.

One not so new brand, but NAMM booth first-timer was Wholegrain. Duane Wise was showing Wholegrain's lineup of Dynamic EQs. Trio DynPEQ is essentially 3 Dynamic Parametric EQs, which are used to isolate various frequency ranges to boost or cut them. The products, which are available in either Native or AAX DSP have caught on with film mixers like Eva Reistad, who need to wrestle with so many frequencies in their complex mixes. Duane does a series of seminars, so if you are curious you can find a schedule here.

Upstairs in Hall A Roland was showing a number of new products. Oldtimers may be particularly excited with the JC-120 plugin. The Roland Jazz Chorus solid-state amplifier was an innovation when it appeared in 1975 with its built in Chorus. It was hugely popular with people wanting a big, very clean sound. Nobody misses its weight of course, so now there is the JC-120 amp model plugin, which weighs nothing. At the moment it's only available with a Roland Cloud Subscription, but only Roland knows what the future may hold.

Korg made number of announcements including the anticipated multi/poly rack and software version of their latest virtual analogue synthesizer. On the audio interface front, Korg unveiled prototypes for a new line designed to cater to a variety of needs. Check dealers like Thomann and Sweetwater in February, which is the expected release time.

Hall A

Ilio represents some of the best brands in the US. Booth highlights included Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL), who were demonstrating their new Studio FX Piano and Audio Modeling who were fiddling around with their SWAM Violin physical model. Next up in the NextMIDI station Divisimate 2 was being demonstrated. At its most simplistic it's a very powerful MIDI router. At $249 it's not an inexpensive product, but for film orchestrators, it's priceless. For example, the user can split up chords into musical voices and spread them across their instruments to create playable orchestrations.

Applied Acoustics was demonstrating Multiphonics CV-3, which will be available during Q1 2025. Until its release, all purchases of Multiphonics CV-2 include a free upgrade to Multiphonics CV-3 and are available with a 33% discount.

Another cool Ilio-distributed product being demoed was the Susex foot controller from Black BT. It battery powered and uses Bluetooth to communicate and allows the user to send two different MIDI controller streams (e.g Sustain and Expression) to a Bluetooth enabled device. 

From strings to speakers

IK Multimedia was showing their expanding line of speakers, and TONEX pedals. From their beginnings as an amp modeling plugin they have grown with products for every device on a guitarist's signal path. Their TONEX line of pedals now includes signatures like the new Joe Satriani model that allows the use of presets from the Joe Satriani Amp Vault, which covers over 35 years of Joe's personal amp collection. And, if you already own Amplitube Joe Satriani you can get a discount on the preorder.

TAQS.IM was showcasing the latest update of their SOLO World Synthesizer and demonstrating their Latin and Indian Sample Pack releases to enthusiastic audiences. The SOLO is a hybrid synthesizer draws inspiration from diverse global sounds tying together its presets, with drag and drop MIDI phrases reflecting specific cultural styles, alongside the ability to incorporate microtonal scales.

Nektar was showing their new Impact LXP+ MK3 series. Building on the success of its predecessor, the LXP+ MK3 has expanded their Cubase integration while retaining all its original DAW capabilities. One of the standout additions is the scale and chord feature, allowing for more dynamic musical exploration. The MK3 now features rotary encoders with high resolution, replacing the older pots for smoother controls. The MK3's NKS compatibility through a partnership with Native Instruments allows for better integration with their complete control system. The series is available in several key sizes, including a 25-key version.

Strangest product of the show award goes to the Demon Box from Eternal Research. It uses a unique proprietary system to turn electromagnetic fields (EMF) into sound. From cell phones to tuning forks, hairdryers to drills, they believe the Demon Box can make music from anything with an EMF frequency. They had an assortment of triggering devices in the booth from shakers to a power drill.

Sie sind Berliner!

No show report would be complete without checking on the Berliners, u-he and Bitwig, who were sharing a booth. Both had news to share. Bitwig has entered the hardware market with their just announced Bitwig Connect 4/12 table top I/O box. Among other features they have cleverly placed a series of 1/8" jacks on the Connect's surface that can be used for either audio input or as Gate/CV in keeping with Bitwig's innovative integration of modular synthesis in their DAW. There's a special Bitwig mode that allows the user to instantly control most parameters in the Bitwig software.

u-he was showing their powerful and extremely popular Zebra 3 synth with its drawable oscillators. If you want to get an idea of that check out their free Zebralette. Urs Heckman believes that shipment will be in Q2, but as anyone will tell you, software is very hard to predict. You can get more details directly from Urs in the u-he forum.

Random Stevie Wonder sighting

 

On to Nashville in July. Bring your fans and ice chests...