Darwin Chamber, whose "3D" soundscapes I recommended last year (see interview), is back with a new Halloween underscore. I just received his new album 3D Halloween Sound FX (Collectors' Edition) via iTunes gift certificate, which is a cool way to do promotion. (Now if only the e-mail were accompanied by the sound of the mail cart that used to set...
Wearable electronics continue to astound. First we had the graphic EQ T-shirt: Now there's the Wi-Fi finder T: With flat-panel displays getting thinner and more power-efficient, I bet we'll be able to walk around with rotating photo galleries on our chests soon. What will you wear on yours?...
Here's the best argument I've seen for (and against) legalizing digital mashups. YouTube contributor StSanders took concert video clips of guitar heroes like Clapton, Santana, and Van Halen and replaced the guitar solos with hilariously bad plunking. (Plus other noises, as you can hear here): The sync is amazing. But what's especially funny is that StSanders's soundtrack manipulation is so...
I just got a call from a blind man who liked the sound of my podcast. He asked how he could get started podcasting. Would it require expensive equipment? I told him that all I used was a USB mic and some software. (In my case, Ableton Live, BIAS Peak, and Izotope Ozone, but there are plenty of free options...
Just in time for annual Talk Like a Pirate Day, I got this disturbing note from someone who read my "How to Stop Music Piracy" blog: I recently found an area manager of a store selling illegally produced CDs, mostly dance club mixes by Hex Hector and people like that. He offered ten songs per CD. He makes a...
A mysterious email arrived the other night. It said, "Please find enclosed two pictures of Midi Controllers. Do you know the make and model of this two units?" The top one looks like a commercial product; the bottom one looks more homemade, but I could be wrong. Any guesses? Please leave a link. I'm off to browse Analogue Haven....
Fourteen minutes into last week's Digital Media Insider podcast, "Secrets of the Demo Gods," I asked longtime reviewer Mark Nelson if any recent music-making gear had surprised him. Mark started praising the M-Audio Black Box, a digital guitar effect co-designed by Roger Linn, the drum-machine pioneer (and a fine guitarist himself). "It was just...inspiring. Amazing stuff would happen," Mark enthused....
Seasoned recording engineers often audition their mixes in mono to check for phasing problems that might occur on the mono speakers in TVs and PA systems. Collapsing a stereo signal to mono also gives you another perspective on how well sounds are blending. But because I run audio straight out of my computer into powered speakers or headphones, I've never...
If you've been following Brad Fuller's blogs on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement, you're probably as intrigued as I am by the creative potential of these tools. Today, though, I received a press release touting a more sinister use of laptops. The Spy Laptop, from an Indian company called SpyInvent, is built around a remote-controlled pinhole camera that...
O'Reilly's Linux Dev Center just published a fairly technical discussion of how the various Linux audio subsystems work. For those who just want to boot up and play, we've run several Linux audio articles, including: Resurrect Your Old PC for Music—with Linux Review: Fervent Software Studio-to-Go Inside a Luxury Synth: Creating the Linux-Powered Korg OASYS Inside Pandora: Web Radio That...
