M-Audio has released the MidAir USB MIDI controller which is basically a wireless version of Oxygen 8. It is great that more things are going wireless, but in case of this MIDI controller I don’t think it helps much that you can drop the USB cable when you instead have to use an external power supply…
Apple has recently filed an interesting US Patent Application:* * The invention generally pertains to a hand-held computing device. More particularly, the invention pertains to a computing device that is capable of controlling the speed of the music so as to affect the mood and behavior of the user during an activity such as exercise. By way of example, the speed of the music can be controlled to match the pace of the activity (synching the speed of the music to the activity of the user) or alternatively it can be controlled to drive the pace of the activity (increasing or decreasing the speed of the music to encourage a greater or lower pace)....
Apple and Nike has teamed up and released the Nike+iPod package, which allows for using an iPod Nano as a pedometer and share the training information online. It is based on a wireless accelerometer (1.37 x 0.95 x 0.30 inches, 0.23 ounce, using a proprietary protocol at 2.4GHz) and a receiver that connects to the iPod (Size: 1.03 x 0.62 x 0.22 inches, 0.12 ounce). Suggested price is US$29, which is very cheap thinking about the included accelerometer....
Native instruments states that KORE should be the new universal sound platform solving “all problems” in large music software setups. Basically, it works as a generic host for plugins (VST and AU) that can be used in sequencers, and it comes with a hardware controller to facilitate the control. The argumentation is convincing and the pictures nice, but it seems like this “new” product only scratches on the surface of the real problem....
Seems like everything is getting USB-connectivity these days. The Samson condenser microphone has been out for a while, and not Behringer is releasing a . iAXE393 USB-guitar, the Ultimate Electric Guitar with Built-In USB Port to Connect Straight to Your Computer. Jam and Record with Killer Modeling Amps and Stomp Boxes. Seems like it only outputs digital audio, though. Would have been interesting if it had had a built-in audio-to-MIDI (or even better to OSC) converter....
{.imagelink}Sonic Visualiser from Queen Mary’s is yet another software tool for visualizing audio content. However, there are some features that stand out: Cross-platform: available for OS X, Linux, Windows GPL’ed Native support for aiff, wav, mp3 and ogg (but what about AAC?) Annotations: Support for adding labelled time points and defining segments, point values and curves. The annotations can be overlayed on top of waveforms and spectrograms Time-stretch Vamp Plugins is at the core of the Sonic Visualiser, and it seems like they want this to become a standard for non-realtime audio plugins....
{.imagelink}int.lib is a set of abstractions/javascripts for Cycling 74’s Max MSP software that facilitates the control of multiple parameters by navigating a two dimensional visual environment. It implements a gravitational system, allowing the user to represent presets with variable sized balls. As the user moves around the space, the size of the balls and their proximity to the mouse cursor affects the weight of each preset in the interpolated output....
Nintendo Wii features a wireless controller, with rumbling, sound and some kind of motion sensing (probably a 3D accelerometer?). It is good to see that such things are finally making their way into commercial products, and it will be interesting to see if we can use this for music making as well. {#image188 width=“500”}
Katherine Wilson writes about how she underestimated blogging when she got started: At the start I underestimated what it could be used for. It’s a database, a diary, a place to jot down notes that don’t fit anywhere else, a place to stake out your research territory, a self-promotion tool, an information bank, an ideas exchange, a support community, a progress-log, a device for self-discipline, confidence-tracker, a complaints department, a file storage system....
Orbicule has some interesting computer theft software for Apple computers. If stolen the Undercover software will take pictures at regular intervals with the built in i-Sight and send to the user together with information about the network location of the computer. It can also cause a hardware “failure” so that the computer will have to be sent for repair where the theft will be noticed.