It's been a packed day on the floor of the NAMM show here in Anaheim. As I'm resting up before the evening's entertainment, here's a quick run down of what grabbed me.

Firstly, things generally seem more subdued than in previous years. There seem to be fewer people (the weekend is always busier, but I'm always here on day one and it's usually busier than this). Also noticeable was that less money had been spent on booths across the board; I was immediately struck by the size of the Waves booth, which in previous years has been huge and dominant near the entrance, and this year is very small and tucked between others.

Another obvious trend is that software is winning. iPads were in full force today; nearly everyone had some kind of application or interface or other tenous link to the iPad. Spectrasonics have made an iPad remote for Omnisphere (and are to be credited for not calling it iOmnisphere - it's Omni TR). There were a whole host of new and fairly pedestrain looking products called iSomething from most vendors. Full marks for effort however go to IK Multimedia, who have made the iKlip to clip your iPad to a mic stand, and Amplitube and iRig Mic for the iPad for your guitarist and vocalist repectively.

Whilst the technology here is certainly amazing, I have to admit it makes me quite sad to imagine future bands lining up on stage with nothing more than iPads.

Korg's new Kronos workstation is very impressive. It really is a beast of a keyboard and not only sounds incredible, but has more features than one person could probably explore in a single lifetime.

I had a nice chat with the guys at Soundtoys and saw the new Juice plugin - still not shipping, but seems like we're close. I'm a big fan of their Decapitator saturation plugin so looking forward to this one.

Most impressive demo today though was from Kemper Amps, a spin-off from Access Music, creators of the wonderful Virus range of keyboards. The Kemper Profiling Amp is truly remarkable. In looks, it's exactly like Access Music made a guitar head. What it actually does is profile the sound of an existing guitar amp setup, in a process that takes about 40 seconds and simply involves creating a loop between the Kemper and the mic'ed up cabinet. It's akin to creating an Impulse Repsonse, but goes way beyond, making a playable copy of the amp setup in every detail. The result was practically indistinguishable in sound and response from the orginal. It's shipping in a few months and is definitely one to watch out for.

Tonight I'm going to a release party for iZotope's new Stutter Edit audio slicer, presented by BT and Richard Devine. Looks interesting, and it's about time I headed out now.