Loops OK, so, my relationship with loops is, uh, complex ... on the one hand, they've saved my professional ass on many occasions, enabling the delivery of lots of music and sound effects in a minimum amount of space. they have also been crucial to many interactive audio projects i've worked on. i love loops so much, my new audio...

I've been playing with the Cepstral speech synthesizer, which offers a unique twist: You can buy individual voices at bargain rates. The standard voices cost just $29.99, and the special-effect ones, which I find have more creative potential, are just $6.99. The synth runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, and even Solaris, and sounds at least as good as the...

Paul McCartney turns 65 tomorrow (June 18th), and his creative output and youthful enthusiasm doesn't seem to have been dimmed by age. His new CD "Memory Almost Full", marks his 21st solo delivery in a 37-year solo career. In a partnership with Starbucks' new label, the CD (which has been out nearly two weeks now) is pushing sales of nearly...

Hello, viewers! I've been sharing audio online for years, but just discovered an amusing way to generate a talking-head video. At Gizmoz.com, you upload a photo and record a sound bite, and the service converts them into an animated 3D face: I used my basic USB headset mic to record the audio above. First I had to right-click the screen...

There are several big Reunion tours taking place this Summer (including The Police, Genesis, and the Smashing Pumpkins); these are bands who have sold many millions of albums each, and who have a cadre of hungry fans around the world eager to experience the magic once again. I'm one of them. I don't know about you, but when I go...

A translator sent me a sound file today, wondering how I would transliterate it to English. The sound is for an upcoming Japanese toy you jab with a tiny sword. Like a pistol in Russian roulette, the toy eventually explodes; this sound is what you hear each time you plunge in the blade: Sword Jab Sound (28KB WAV) In Japanese,...

Recent postings in a sound design group point out examples of great sound design in television commercials. Here are some of my favorites:...

Here's the wackiest warning sticker I've ever seen on a musical instrument. What's stranger is it was from a keyboard designed for little kids! The image below is a scan of the sticker laid on top of a photo from the company's website. Insert your punchline here.......

I saw a bunch of wacky MIDI controllers at the recent Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) festival, but none as creepily expressive as the Sonic Banana: According to the inventor's site, The Sonic Banana consists of four bend sensors in a row, running the length of a rubber tube, with a pushbutton switch at the end. Software in...

If you're a frequent user of the free Pandora music service, as I am, you've noticed their powerful web interface has been updated. Along with the update are two new announcements providing users access to Pandora's large music database, and your musical preferences, on the road and in the home....