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January 31, 2005
tonecrafter universal DIY stompie
Musicthing covered a rather cool thing - a universal stompbox which allows you to customize your stompbox to your very own exacting standards. I think that this is rather cool, and I would love a chance to find out a little more about this. The tonecrafter website is currently kaput at the moment, as they've used up their daily bandwidth (this is the second day i've tried to access their site).
Still interesting and I will keep an eye out to see when the site is up, to see if I can find out some more about this. Anything that encourages kids to play with soldering irons is a-okay by me!
Musicthing article and Killertone.com (Currently down)
Posted by funnelbc at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2005
gibson releases digital guitars...
Now it depends what you think of Roland's GR-33 & 20 Guitar synths. If you've had a chance to fiddle with it you'll know that you end up not playing it like a guitar for most of the very interesting sounds. You'll also know that latency is a big issue with it and makes it very disconcerting to play. They've improved that issue with each new version but it still aint fixed by a long shot. Mac Central brings us news of the new Gibson digital guitars. They feature digital hex pickups in the standard Les Paul body shape. They have 2 outputs, one regular 3/4" jack and the digital output. I had a bit of a listen to the testimonials on the Gibson Digital site and it sounds like it actually ofers quite a bit tonally above and beyond just digital recording options.
What I'd like to see is a cheap digital guitar that can help people learn the guitar. With sofware that coaches you based on the mistakes you make. It obvioulsly couldn't correct your fingering position issues but could maybe detect common mistakes based on the fret buzz and the like. I'm sure that there' massive potential for Gibson to really do something special here - they could use a cut down version of this learning version digital guitar and sell it under the Epiphone name to boot. I want a cut if this actually happens!
Posted by funnelbc at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
m-audio black box
Another guitar effects box. Yay! Cause we desperately need one of those! Well, m-audio make some okay gear, but are not really known for their guitar accessories so much as their hightech bits and pieces. Regardless this features a cut down version of the very famous and very shiny Roger Linn "Adrenalinn" guitar pedal so it might just be rather good.
See what harmony central think about it. Via the awesome and incredibly low in sugar Music Thing
Posted by funnelbc at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
kubrick ipod mini bear
God I love this kind of stuff. Totally useless - but very cool. It's a little holder thingmajig for an ipod mini. It comes in the same colours as the ipod mini and is quite cool. I wanted so very badly the full sized ipod version from last year but couldn't find it for sale anywhere. I've betrayed my undeniable stupid gear fetish, enuff said I think.
Go check it out at Giz modo
Posted by funnelbc at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
creative ships zen micro in australia
Creative will be shipping the zen micro in Australia from the first of february. It comes in 10 colours and sports a removable battery, and has 12 hours of playback from the one battery. Oh and a FM radio. For comparisons sake, an extra $29 AUD you get an extra gig of storage, FM tuner and longer battery life over the ipod mini. Nice.
Posted by funnelbc at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2005
new ipod, new small form factor mac
I think this is really important news - so we've got 2 apple gear posts in as many days. Sorry kids. It's very early days yet, with no-one getting their hands on these to test them, but I think this will be the future for Apple to really get into the desktop market in a big way. But for us audio lovin folks - I think these will be viable little audio boxes, cheap and easy to expand. Can't wait to find out more about these. They'll be shipping in the states by January 20th apparently (!) and hopefully not long before we see them here. Apple Mac mini Update: Apple.com.au listing starting price as $799 & $949 for the 80gb here in Aus
And as if that wasn't enough Gizmodo has a stack of pictures of the Mac Mini here
This my friends is the ipod shuffle. Its a teeny tiny flash based mp3 player that will come out in 512mb & 1gb configuration. Really simple design, and has no screen. (!) Be interesting to see how the ipod branding pushes this little unit along in sales. The player has a standard USB plug on the end allowing really easy access to upload stuff onto it - but it does come with a cap for the end. I suspect Apple will do a roaring trade in replacement caps for these! There will be plenty of people buying these as a second audio player. And plenty of hapless shoppers buying them instead of normal ipods, and casually saying - yeah I've got an ipod... SHAM! Heh. It also can automagically fill itself from the itunes library with a random selection of music - quite a nice feature and really simple idea too... Ipod Shuffle
So it looks like some very nice stuff is on the way from Apple and being a long time mac user (for work etc), but highly disparaging of the outrageous price for their hardware I can certainly see a change in the wind for me.
"Inside its petite 2-inch tall, 6.5-inch square anodized aluminum enclosure, Mac mini houses a 1.25 or 1.42GHz G4 processor, 40 or 80GB hard drive, a slot-loading CD-R/DVD-ROM optical drive, 256MB DDR SDRAM and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics chip with 32MB dedicated DDR SDRAM — all whisper-quiet."
I'll be buying a mac mini to use as a test box for my design work, and as a really simple audio system as well I think. Processor power is there for synth work, and hdd storage is there for well.. storage. And firewire for external devices. I hope these sell like hotcakes for Apple, I think they've got everything right with these. Good on em!
Posted by funnelbc at 07:12 AM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2005
apple audio rumours, flash ipod, cheap imac, firewire i/o
Goddamn, I think Phil Tripp is a busy man. Every other Australian music industry article he's quoted as a talking head. According to The Age, Apple is tipped to be announcing an Australian version of the iTunes music store. Be very interesting to see how that fares.
Also i'm keeping my eyeballs peeled for first sightings of a possible new apple audio player - speculation is rife about whether Apple are going to announce a new flash based ipod. At the very same show there's a rumour that they will be releasing a budget iMac style computer sans monitor, for the budget concious folk who want to try out apple computers. Cheap second machine for audio anyone? *puts hand up*
Oh and did I mention the apple firewire breakout box a little while ago? Why Yes I believe I did. Lots of interesting stuff on the horizon if any or all of this comes to fruition.
Posted by funnelbc at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2005
digital market helps boost industry *surprise*
According to this Financial Times article the music industry in the UK at least is hailing a turnaround with album sales reaching a record high last year. The article goes on to mention u2's vertigo single as the top selling single download outstripping the hard copy - hardly surprising due to Apple's push of the album and single with iTunes. Eventually I'm certain that digital sales will outsell traditional methods and its only when the record companies are certain that they're making as much as possible that they will start to sing the praises of digital delivery. It was an interview with Bill Gates on gizmodo where Gates talks about the amount of voice that an individual on the internet has is the same as anyone else that has really got me thinking. It's true, anyone can setup a little self publishing operation like this one and really get some alternative views out there. I think that power of equal voice and also the ease of illicit digital distribution will always scare the record industry and all the other digital rights restricting bodies will always be at odds with their consumers. Just a thought.
Posted by funnelbc at 06:52 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2005
australian music download stores failed miserably
According to this zdnet.com.au article music stores here in australian have failed miserably. Which comes courtesy of themusic.com.au oh but hangon, doesn't the article in turn link an opinion piece from the loose cannon column from the very same website? Buggered if I know how that works, But that's okay.
There is some interesting points raised, not the least of which is where exactly is the marketing for the online music stores? The only marketing i've seen for purchasing music online here is the bundle that Telstra was doing over christmas period where they were bundling broadband with some "free" (in the very loosest sense of the word) music downloads. If the music industry wants people to cough up and purchase their badly hampered and cross platform incompatible tunes - and don't we all - then you might actually want to let the public know about your service. Its all very good and well to say that you're loosing eleventy bajillion dollars to piracy annually but if you just setup shop and expect the cash to start rolling in for essentially doing sod all - I think the industry as a whole is going to get a rude shock. A pirated album doesnt mean a lost sale - it means a pirated album - the two don't always equate. And it's economically stupid for several different vendors to setup sites that don't give the end user as much freedom or flexibility or even a vague approximation of that and expect them to pay for the privelage.
And as if you didnt need any more proof the recording industry here and in the yewnited states is a pack of bastards. Comes that little tidbid. The secret is out. Record companies just hate us, they loathe anything that means they're not making plenty of lucre. Even if it's a trust fund for a charity..
Posted by funnelbc at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
carillon free synth
What better than a free VST synth to start the day? Well probably a bowl of weeties and some fresh strawberries, but failing that i'm going to go with this - its called Carillon and it's a VST synth that models bells and chimes. Sounds like fun to me. Tweakbench do some other free VST instruments and are well worth checking out.
Thanks to the good folks of tweakbench for this one. Via Createdigitalmusic. Infact you should visit createdigitalmusic now so an angel can get his wings.
Posted by funnelbc at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)
January 04, 2005
what's that in your pocket?
Why it's a pocket dock! Here's a rather fancy pants little addon for your ipod should you posess one - it's a little adapter that goes in the dock connector that gives you not only standard firewire connectivity - but in this new and improved version of the Pocketdock - also high quality line out. Very cool jerome. Looks like a decent buy if you do a bit of live sound type stuff and want to put the right line signal down the line.
Sendstation's website - Tiny, Light Indespensible - Guffaw Thanks Mikinoz
In other ipod related news, the rather geek chic infested Phil Torrone of engdadget.com fame has documented a hack for the ipod that allows you to bump up the recording quality from 8khz to the mighty 96khz mark. Requires you to install a free version of Linux on your ipod, which doesn't look too scary and will also means you have instant sucess with the laydees!
Hack-a-day ipod article Via half the internet.
Posted by funnelbc at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)