AES in Nashville, the verdict: busy aisles, new gear, and 2027 dates already set

The AES Show Nashville 2026 closed its doors on Sunday, November 1. We said we would come back to it if there was anything to report: there is, though not quite what we were waiting for. As of today the AES has published no official wrap-up — no attendance figure, no awards list, no closing statement. The only reports filed on site come from Mix, which ran two photo features by Clive Young on November 2 and 3. That is a single source, and it should be read as such.

The Halloween gamble paid off

The first takeaway is simple: the new format held. Remember that the exhibition floor proper opened on the Saturday — October 31, Halloween. Enough to worry part of the industry, and Mix reports that the concern evaporated quickly, with a steady stream of visitors from the moment the stands opened. The feature describes high attendance for a mid-sized show, then “thousands of visitors” across the weekend, and calls the edition a roaring success.

No precise number, then. For a first outing in a city that had never hosted the fall convention — held until now only in New York and California — that is already telling. One detail says a lot about the venue: a caption notes that stepping out of the convention into the Gaylord Opryland is considerably nicer than stepping out onto 11th Avenue in New York.

What landed on the stands

This is where the weekend was dense. The list is not exhaustive — a photo feature cannot cover an entire show — but here is what is on the record:

• Solid State Logic had one of the largest booths at the show, with its new flagship Odyssey console, shown by Phil Scholes, VP Technical Operations.
• Harrison Audio showed the Flex-10, a 10-in/12-out USB/ADAT interface at 32-bit/192 kHz with two preamps featuring H-Drive transformer saturation — the stated goal, from president Gary Thielman, being to bring back the sound of 1970s Harrison consoles.
• Neumann pushed its KH 310 II and KH 350 monitors, released in September, along with a modern reissue of the M 50 V microphone.
• Sony demoed its new ECM-AX10 USB-C condenser mic in spatial audio by placing it inside a set of wind chimes.
• Waves showed the LV1 Classic console and its newly released Waves Tracks software, with the Waves Measure feature.
• Nugen Audio launched VisLM 3, its new generation of broadcast loudness metering, unveiled the week before the show.
• Klang introduced its KOS 6.1 OS and app — an update that adds reverb to every mix, since confirmed by the trade press.
• Fourier Audio announced its Hyperport protocol is now shipping, and Violet Audio its V2 firmware for the dMix 128, out just before the show.
• Teegarden Audio had its new BAX-style Magic Tone EQ on hand, and CQ Audio its Inherit range of preamps, compressors and EQs, all hot-swappable in its Inherit Bank frame.

On the console side, Yamaha had a notable presence, with six hands-on workshops focused largely on the DM5 and a Rivage PM3 on the floor. Allen & Heath lined up its Avantis along with the CQ-18T and CQ-20B, API its The Box console and 500 Series modules, DiGiCo its Quantum desks. Smaller but worth noting: Sweden's AfterSound, where brothers Wille and Wiktor Andersson showed their Reverbophone room microphone, Australia's Beez Neez and its range of mics, and Immersive Design Labs, whose founder Adrian Weidmann demoed his placement system for immersive capture. Sweetwater, finally, gave tours of the Dolby Atmos mixing studio it built into an Airstream trailer.

So what about our brands?

Let us be honest: the haul is thin. Of the five brands from our catalogue exhibiting in the aisles — Audeze, Dangerous Music, Ex Machina Soundworks, PSI Audio and Rupert Neve Designs — only one appears in the coverage, and without detail. Rupert Neve Designs had, according to Mix, plenty of recording equipment to keep a visitor busy on its stand — but no model is named. The only documented product announcement from those five brands for this show remains the Portico II Master Buss Processor plug-in, which we have already covered.

For Audeze, Dangerous Music, Ex Machina Soundworks and PSI Audio, nothing new has emerged from the show at this stage. That does not mean there was nothing — simply that nobody reported it. Post-show press releases often land a few days late, and the AES press index held none at the time of writing.

See you on October 28, 2027

The real news in this round-up may be right here: the AES is coming back to the Gaylord Opryland. Mix gives the dates as October 28-30, 2027, and the AES is indeed already selling booths and partnerships for the 2027 edition, at a discounted rate for 2026 exhibitors and partners. In other words, Nashville was not a trial run: it is now the home of the fall convention, and the society made the call before publishing a single figure.

What we still do not know

Plenty, and it is worth saying so. No official attendance figure. No awards reported. No closing statement from Graham Kirk, convention chair, or from Brecht De Man, AES president. And no wrap-up release in the AES press index to date. All of that may land in the coming days: if the official wrap-up brings anything worth the detour — particularly on the brands we distribute — we will come back to it a third time.