NAMM 2025 Snapdragon Booth (with PJ Jacobowitz)

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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.

Make sure to follow Leonard on LinkedIn and hit that 🔔 at the top of his profile for a constant diet of the tech and industry insights that matter.

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Episode Transcript

Leonard Lee (00:00):
Hey everybody, this is Leonard Lee, Executive
Analyst at NextCurve, and I'mhere at NAMM Show 2025.
I was wandering around, and Istumbled upon Snapdragon, and
I'm here with PJ.
What's up, man?
Dude,

PJ Jacobowitz (00:16):
thank you for stumbling in, and dude, he's an
amazing guitar player.
you saw, we got the Snapdragonguitar, we plugged him into a
Fractal, he set up his rig witha Snapdragon laptop, and you are
a shredder.
He is a shredder.
So great job

Leonard Lee (00:31):
dude.
Yeah, no, it's great bumpinginto you.
it's a pleasant surprise.
Yeah, because I wanted to seeyou guys here for the longest
time, whether it was forSnapdragon sound.
And now for the AIPC.
And that's really why you guysare here, right?

PJ Jacobowitz (00:44):
Absolutely.
So this is our first time at theNAMM show.
And we wanted to be here becausewe've now got over 60, Windows
laptops in the market, poweredby Snapdragon.
And they're have amazingpotential for musicians.
You know, musicians want.
Great battery life, recordwherever they want, but they
don't want noise.
These are near silent.
The fan never has to come onbecause they don't get hot.

(01:06):
and the performance on batteryis unparalleled.
You don't have to throttle ourperformance.
So, we have tons of partners whohave now made a lot of their
apps native on Snapdragon.
So we've got, Cubase runningnative on Snapdragon.
We've got Bitwig native onSnapdragon, Reaper.
And we have guys like Fractalwho make, you know.

(01:28):
So an effects unit that likeMetallica uses, John Mayer uses,
all those guys, they wrote adriver so that you can plug in
your snapdragon laptop and doall of your editing of your rigs
from your snapdragon laptop andconnect to an interface.
And so we want to show all this,we have electronic drums
plugging in and everything.
And so you can, access decadesof guitar amplifiers, drum kits,

(01:49):
snares, cymbals, all the jazz.

Leonard Lee (01:51):
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 importantcategory for the AIPC where, I
mean, for the past year, the NPUhas been there.
No one's really figured out whatto do with it other than a low
power, actually quite boringoffload CPU offload.

(02:15):
But you know what?
It's really cool to see you guyspartnering with some of the
folks in the music industry, tomake the FPC.
Matter and this is a big deal.
It's something that I've writtenabout, made a big deal out of,
this is not like new stuff thatI'm stumbling on, but it's
really awesome to see you guysleaning in

PJ Jacobowitz (02:35):
so to, to this, to your point.
Thank you.
Thank you for saying that.
Thank you.
Noticing to your point, we havepartners like Moises Live who
just launched an app that's onlyavailable on Snapdragon laptops
that allows you to do instrumentor STEM separation in real time.
So we're pulling up YouTubevideos.
We just had Jordan Rus, theDream Theater.
He pulled up one of his YouTubevideos and eliminated all the

(02:58):
instruments and he played thekeys and just had the vocals
going.
It was awesome.
Then we also have, DJ Pro, aturntable app, and you can do
the isolation of instruments inreal time.
So we mix the drums from onesong with the vocals from
another and can create somethingcompletely new.
So it's, it's, everyone sees theMQ, it's been a while, and we've

(03:18):
had some super, super secretconversations of a lot of other
music apps that want to getneural networks.
We stop and running to do someinteresting stuff.
Yeah.
And you guys had quite the music

Leonard Lee (03:27):
program going on back here, right?
Yeah, yeah.

PJ Jacobowitz (03:30):
We've had, performances going all day.
So we had, people plugged intothe fractal playing guitar,
people plugged into Cubase,doing keyboard and synth, just
absolutely rocking out.
So check out on, our Snapdragonsocial media channels.
You'll see videos there.

Leonard Lee (03:43):
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
It's it.
No, seriously, it's really greatto see you guys doing this.
I think, this is a great areafor you guys to continue.
to creators.
Yeah.
I mean, these are hardcorecreators.
A hundred

PJ Jacobowitz (03:55):
percent.

Leonard Lee (03:56):
Really cool thing is these

PJ Jacobowitz (03:58):
are the most, this show is filled.
Everyone's talented.
It's a ridiculous.
Every attendee is a talentedperson.

Leonard Lee (04:05):
Yeah.
And this is beyond real time.
This is like quantum timebecause musicians, it's about
feeling.
It's not, it's not about exacttiming.
It's about feel.
It's quantum.
It's live.
And so it's, it, you know,latency.

PJ Jacobowitz (04:20):
To that point.
Out latency.
We're also here, focus, right?
REM all wrote new, osteo driversthat are low latency drivers.
So the moment you touch yourstrings, boom, it's a UPL.
On the instrument we're talkingabout, like down to three
milliseconds.
We're also debuting withMicrosoft, the first osteo
driver for windows included inwindows.

(04:43):
So it's a generic driver thatwas a universal driver that
works with any USB interface.
It'll be in the windows insideof program soon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Off to your point.
Audio is super tricky.
Things that happen with videoneeds to happen maybe in one
sixtieth of a second.
Things that happen with audiohave to happen within one five
hundredth of a second.
So it's like very complex andamazing stuff.

Leonard Lee (05:03):
Yeah.
Remember, creators are not justYouTube and TikTok people doing
silly dances.
Okay.
It's like hardcore.
This is hardcore.
This is the real deal.
Totally.
Great to see, Snapdragon andQualcomm.
Thank you.
Really, uh, you know, it's greatto see you and you're gonna have
to show everybody that youshred.

(05:23):
You're gonna have to upload avideo.
One of these days.
One of these days.
Awesome.
And so, yeah, hey, thankseveryone for, dropping in, and,
we'll see you next time.
Remember to follow NextCurve atwww.
next curve.
com for all the tech andindustry insights that matter
from NAMM Show 2025.

(05:44):
We'll see you next time.