NAMM 2025 Snapdragon Booth (with PJ Jacobowitz)

One of the pleasant surprises of NAMM Show 2025 was bumping into Qualcomm. We don’t see too many chip companies making a presence, but given that the AI PC is here as is Snapdragon X Series of mobile processors, it makes sense for Qualcomm to show up to make its presence known to creators and the music industry at large.

We had a chance to chat with PJ Jacobowitz of Qualcomm who was the mastermind of this Snapdragon’s introduction to NAMM Show. We talk about some of the collaborations that the company is doing to make the NPU matter in a substantial way that has eluded the AI PC since its inception.

Check out neXt Curve research and our takes from NAMM Show 2025. There is a lot that we picked up on in our short time at the conference. We’ve been coming here since the 80s and neXt Curve has covered it as an important part of our research since neXt Curve's beginning.

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Transcript

Leonard Lee: 0:00

Hey everybody, this is Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst at NextCurve, and I'm here at NAMM Show 2025. I was wandering around, and I stumbled upon Snapdragon, and I'm here with PJ. What's up, man? Dude,

PJ Jacobowitz: 0:16

thank you for stumbling in, and dude, he's an amazing guitar player. you saw, we got the Snapdragon guitar, we plugged him into a Fractal, he set up his rig with a Snapdragon laptop, and you are a shredder. He is a shredder. So great job

Leonard Lee: 0:31

dude. Yeah, no, it's great bumping into you. it's a pleasant surprise. Yeah, because I wanted to see you guys here for the longest time, whether it was for Snapdragon sound. And now for the AIPC. And that's really why you guys are here, right?

PJ Jacobowitz: 0:44

Absolutely. So this is our first time at the NAMM show. And we wanted to be here because we've now got over 60, Windows laptops in the market, powered by Snapdragon. And they're have amazing potential for musicians. You know, musicians want. Great battery life, record wherever they want, but they don't want noise. These are near silent. The fan never has to come on because they don't get hot. and the performance on battery is unparalleled. You don't have to throttle our performance. So, we have tons of partners who have now made a lot of their apps native on Snapdragon. So we've got, Cubase running native on Snapdragon. We've got Bitwig native on Snapdragon, Reaper. And we have guys like Fractal who make, you know. So an effects unit that like Metallica uses, John Mayer uses, all those guys, they wrote a driver so that you can plug in your snapdragon laptop and do all of your editing of your rigs from your snapdragon laptop and connect to an interface. And so we want to show all this, we have electronic drums plugging in and everything. And so you can, access decades of guitar amplifiers, drum kits, snares, cymbals, all the jazz.

Leonard Lee: 1:51

great. You know, and I'm a musician, I'm a creator. I classify myself as a creator. I actually do it. And this is like a category. I think it's such an important category for the AIPC where, I mean, for the past year, the NPU has been there. No one's really figured out what to do with it other than a low power, actually quite boring offload CPU offload. But you know what? It's really cool to see you guys partnering with some of the folks in the music industry, to make the FPC. Matter and this is a big deal. It's something that I've written about, made a big deal out of, this is not like new stuff that I'm stumbling on, but it's really awesome to see you guys leaning in

PJ Jacobowitz: 2:35

so to, to this, to your point. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Thank you. Noticing to your point, we have partners like Moises Live who just launched an app that's only available on Snapdragon laptops that allows you to do instrument or STEM separation in real time. So we're pulling up YouTube videos. We just had Jordan Rus, the Dream Theater. He pulled up one of his YouTube videos and eliminated all the instruments and he played the keys and just had the vocals going. It was awesome. Then we also have, DJ Pro, a turntable app, and you can do the isolation of instruments in real time. So we mix the drums from one song with the vocals from another and can create something completely new. So it's, it's, everyone sees the MQ, it's been a while, and we've had some super, super secret conversations of a lot of other music apps that want to get neural networks. We stop and running to do some interesting stuff. Yeah. And you guys had quite the music

Leonard Lee: 3:27

program going on back here, right? Yeah, yeah.

PJ Jacobowitz: 3:30

We've had, performances going all day. So we had, people plugged into the fractal playing guitar, people plugged into Cubase, doing keyboard and synth, just absolutely rocking out. So check out on, our Snapdragon social media channels. You'll see videos there.

Leonard Lee: 3:43

Yeah. Well, you know what? It's it. No, seriously, it's really great to see you guys doing this. I think, this is a great area for you guys to continue. to creators. Yeah. I mean, these are hardcore creators. A hundred

PJ Jacobowitz: 3:55

percent.

Leonard Lee: 3:56

Really cool thing is these

PJ Jacobowitz: 3:58

are the most, this show is filled. Everyone's talented. It's a ridiculous. Every attendee is a talented person.

Leonard Lee: 4:05

Yeah. And this is beyond real time. This is like quantum time because musicians, it's about feeling. It's not, it's not about exact timing. It's about feel. It's quantum. It's live. And so it's, it, you know, latency.

PJ Jacobowitz: 4:20

To that point. Out latency. We're also here, focus, right? REM all wrote new, osteo drivers that are low latency drivers. So the moment you touch your strings, boom, it's a UPL. On the instrument we're talking about, like down to three milliseconds. We're also debuting with Microsoft, the first osteo driver for windows included in windows. So it's a generic driver that was a universal driver that works with any USB interface. It'll be in the windows inside of program soon. Yeah. Yeah. Off to your point. Audio is super tricky. Things that happen with video needs to happen maybe in one sixtieth of a second. Things that happen with audio have to happen within one five hundredth of a second. So it's like very complex and amazing stuff.

Leonard Lee: 5:03

Yeah. Remember, creators are not just YouTube and TikTok people doing silly dances. Okay. It's like hardcore. This is hardcore. This is the real deal. Totally. Great to see, Snapdragon and Qualcomm. Thank you. Really, uh, you know, it's great to see you and you're gonna have to show everybody that you shred. You're gonna have to upload a video. One of these days. One of these days. Awesome. And so, yeah, hey, thanks everyone for, dropping in, and, we'll see you next time. Remember to follow NextCurve at www. next curve. com for all the tech and industry insights that matter from NAMM Show 2025. We'll see you next time.