By now, those of you who regularly read my blog have come to know that a big part of my work (and life) involves frequent interactions with established rock artists -- one way or another. I confess I run the risk of getting jaded about these encounters. I attended the Foreigner concert in Saratoga a couple of nights ago (comps...

I recently set up a ProTools studio. The Digidesign documentation is very clear that ProTools sessions should not be saved to the same disk that hosts the ProTools application. So I used this opportunity to go out and buy some new external Firewire 800/400 hard disk drives. I tested the One Touch Maxtor One Touch III Turbo Edition 1TB drives, the standard LaCie Big Disk Extreme 500 GB drives and the G-Technology 250 GB G-Drive.

Izotope has released a new version of its Vinyl plug-in, bringing crackly phonographic ambience to otherwise boring audio files near you. The new version features support for Intel-based Macs, 64-bit Windows apps, and Pro Tools 7. And it's free. So if you've ever wanted to "automate wear, dust, scratches, warp, mechanical noise, electrical noise, and the year of [your] record...

In the late 60s, bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin & The Who set the stage for massive live performances in stadiums and arenas around the globe. In the 70s, we saw artists like Boston, Styx, Foreigner, Journey, Queen, Peter Frampton & Genesis emerge -- who really defined the moniker "Arena Rock". These bands would sell-out the...

Intrigued by Scott Bourne's review of Synk Audio Musicbed DV, I watched the screencast on the developer's site...and got even more interested. Musicbed DV is a Mac program that generates soundtracks, but what struck me was the controls it offers: They're labeled with musician terms, not engineering ones. Instead of knobs and envelopes for quantitative aspects like level, panning, and...

If you've been having trouble with an audio interface that you plugged into your new Mac Intel laptop, switch USB ports. That may solve your problem.

They say that there are ten reasons to buy a new piece of recording gear and the first nine are lust. Once in a while a piece of gear comes along that proves that point. I am talking about a piece of gear that will turn your head until it's nearly clean off your neck - "Exorcist" style. The Sony PCM-D1 is that piece of gear. In just one week, I've grown to realize that if any piece of remote recording equipment is worth $1900, this is it.

I got a call today from a producer with a bunch of audio files that wouldn't open. Because he'd made the files in Mac OS 9, I suspected they didn't have filename extensions. So I sent him this little drag-and-drop application I'd made with AppleScript when I ran into a similar situation. Simply copy and paste the code below...

Overall, I found Musicbed DV to be a great tool for building podcast music. It could be used for any type of media production. And if you want to stand out in a crowded field of podcasters, this is probably a pretty good way to do it. On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate Musicbed DV a solid eight. Once the UB version ships and new music becomes available, I'll up that to a nine out of ten.

A while back, I wrote about some slick tempo-detection software. A week later, Erica Sadun reported on a utility she was using, and complained about how long it took to analyze songs. The developer of that program just wrote to explain that compressed music files like MP3s must be expanded before they can be analyzed, and that takes time. Curious,...