Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/681510
8 S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y NAB b y G . J o h n G a r r e t t C A S Review 2016 T he traffic was up at this year's NAB, with more than 103,000 attendees from 187 countries. Vendors seemed happy about the crowd this year; maybe production is expanding too. I walked the show floor for two days and this is what struck me. There was continuing heavy interest in drones, VR, and several products expanding the appli- cation of the GoPro for horizontal and spherical VR, etc. Also, there were plenty of people with small camera stabilizers, rails, shoes, plates, grips, etc. Freefly even had a head-mounted VR pan/tilt head. There was one non-sound-related product I had read about and wanted to see: Lytro Cinema. The Lytro still camera is the first "light field" camera that collects image data in a whole new way so you can refocus or change the exposure after the fact. Making images at cinema rates involves a huge 755MP sensor and a 400Gb/s pipeline to the cloud. There is no DIT copying data drives in the field, and all the image manipu- lation can be done on a thin client like your phone, on a Wi-Fi connection. This could eliminate the green screen altogether, but the prototype is massive. REMOTE AUDIO had some inter- esting new stuff, including a pair of 20AH lithium batteries with dis- plays, a bell and light system with recessed switching and confidence tallies, and an audio breakout for the ALEXA Mini. SOUND DEVICES keeps bringing great tools to the market. The 688 now talks to the SL-6 slot receiver package with RF scan and receiver overview pages. Also, now with Dan Dugan automixing capability. MOZEGEAR had their compact tools including the PIP Phantom power supply, Mini Papi Mic preamp with phantom and the 2XG 2ch pre- amp with up to 28dB of gain, with phantom or T power. K-TEK had their usual complement of fishpoles, including a chroma key green model, their Stingray bags and harness, and nice rubber cases for Zaxcom ERX receivers, and they're reintroducing counterweights for their poles. AZDEN $200 Wi-Fi-based digital wireless mic, the Pro XD. Designed for 30-40 feet of range, I can see video bloggers, YouTube, and even local news producers spending money on wireless. SENNHEISER has a new slot receiver, the 6042 will receive any two Sennheiser transmitters ever made, doing analog/digital simultaneously, and Lectro transmitters in Sennheiser compatability mode. Wideband too, from 470 MHz-654 MHz. FOR US SOUNDIES … GoPro madness