Over on O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony blog, 3D audio developer Keith Weiner describes what happened when select Second Life players got hold of his positional audio technology: They used it to perform live music for each other. I've been involved in developing this technology for almost 10 years. I know intimately its architecture and components. I worked through the process of...
The description in the press release for this gadget was so bizarre that I immediately requested photos. Can you guess what it is? Hint: The SRS button "creates a wide and full sound stage with deep rich bass and adds a definition control for realistic clarity and significantly enhanced sound quality." Hint 2: Here's another photo, showing accessories:...
Podcasting Hacks author Jack Herrington turned me on to a bunch of excellent interview podcasts that I've been following ever since. One show in particular, Morning Stories, has a lovely informal feel, and part of the secret is the clever recording technique host Tony Kahn uses. Instead of jabbing a giant mic in the interviewee's face or forcing him to...
I play far more music than games, but I always get great musical insights at GDC, the annual Game Developers Conference. I'm particularly intrigued by what game composers call adaptive music, soundtracks that change based on what the player is doing. The Fat Man likens composing this type of music to creating sculpture—your audience will be able to walk around...
Location, location, location: In this brief online video, podcaster David Adam Weiss demonstrates how to improve your voiceovers dramatically just by tweaking your mic position. Weiss makes his point with a $65 Giant Squid mic taped to a ballpoint pen, but says it works equally well with the $15 mic he uses for Boston Behind the Scenes. After watching the...
Recording voiceovers for podcasts can be tricky, because it's so easy to pick up background noise, slapback echo from your desktop, and room reverberation. Here's an ingenious solution hacked up by a professional voiceover artist. Harlan Hogan's voiceover porta-booth uses a collapsable storage crate lined with acoustic foam to isolate the microphone from its surroundings: The porta-booth set up in...
In this week's Digital Media Insider podcast, "Express Yourself," I played a bunch of examples recorded with wind controllers, electronic devices that transform the player's breath into expressive musical gestures. Matt Traum, who contributed the amazing Crumar sawtooth solo, just wrote to remind me about the extensive wind controller FAQ on his site. Matt Traum on the Steiner EVI. As...
This is funny. You see 14 logos that could come from either a studio or a salon. Your mission: Separate the software from the hair care. I got 13 out of 14 on my first try, then dropped to 12 out of 14 while second-guessing one of my answers. How about you? (Thanks to Doug Wyatt.)...
Annoyed by the handling noise my pocket voice recorder picks up, I bought some external mics last fall. Not only did the noise disappear, the recordings also gained much more bass and stereo depth. The mics I got were Sound Professionals SP-TFB-2s, which someone recommended in this field-recording forum. Interestingly, the TFB-2s are designed to fit in your ears, using...
Trade shows can be murder on your ears. Especially music shows like NAMM, where every booth is trying to out-crank the next. This year, I made two discoveries there, one scary and one pleasing. First, the scary one. My first stop, at 9:30 on the day the show opened, was at the House Ear Institute booth, where they were giving...
