You may not be familiar with the company Tronical but you will know their work because they are responsible for Gibson’s Robot Guitar tuning systems. Well judging by this video it appears that Tronical are about to launch some standalone systems that can be retrofit to pretty much any guitar be it a Les Paul [...]
Category: Audio
Voice Search Being Tested on Google
Google has begun testing an integration of voice search with the Google.com search engine.
Helpful tipster Matt Schlicht first spotted the feature earlier Monday afternoon. Voice search detects your computer’s microphone settings and can open up a ‘Speak now’ widget to detect your words and transcribe them into a search query.
Android phone owners should be familiar with Google Voice Search; it’s available in the Google Search widget. Google Voice Search on Android even translates voice commands into actions. For example, ‘Directions to Empire State Building New York’ will get you instant driving directions to Manhattan’s famous landmark.
Google has been working hard on improving the accuracy of its voice search product. It now recognizes Chinese and learns from your speech patterns. Perhaps now Google believes it’s accurate enough to begin testing with the general populace.
Right now, voice search seems to be in a limited testing period. We’ve reached out to Google for comment.
While searching by voice may be easier than typing in some cases, we don’t think you’re suddenly going to see an uptick in people shouting out their search queries. As our tipster pointed out on Twitter today, Google Voice Search ‘works surprisingly well but is very awkward to use in the office.’
What do you think of Google Voice Search? Should Google roll it out on its homepage?
Update: Google’s experiment is confirmed. ‘Google is constantly experimenting with new features,’ was the only thing a Google spokesperson would tell us officially, though.
The Google Voice Search Icon
Google.com users with access to the experiment might see this page the next time they visit Google.com
Google Voice Search Widget
Talking into the mic activates the Google Voice Search widget.
Google Voice Search Results
(Via Mashable!.)
Stream Music In Your Browser For Free
There’s a growing number of websites and apps that allow you to conveniently stream music for free, whilst still staying on the right side of the law. Grooveshark, Spotify and Mougg are just three such examples. More often than not however, you’ve got to put up with interruptive audio and banner adverts for products or releases you have little interest in.
Enter mflow, the music streaming service that puts the music before the marketing. At the moment it’s still in beta and sometimes acts accordingly. Still, that’s never put us off before!
Your one-stop website for downloading individual mp3s
I’ve had mp3skull bookmarked forever now, but more and more lately I find myself using it to find download links for singles (rather than full albums). Full albums just aren’t worth it anymore especially when I only seem to like one or two songs off of a 15-track disc.
So that’s where mp3skull comes in. Use it to enlarge your DJ tracklist, or just use it to skirt paying $1.99 for higher bitrate mp3s. It’s just a nice site I’d like to share and add to my collection here on the site.
(Via Doobybrain.com.)
How To Stream Video from Your Mac to Apple TV with AirFlick
Enterprising developer Erica Sadun of TUAW fame has been reverse engineering Apple’s Airplay technology lately, and now she’s following up her successful Airplayer software for the Mac with AirFlick, a simple piece of Mac OS X software that streams any video or audio file to your second-generation Apple TV — no iTunes required.
If you have been disappointed by how Apple has limited Airplay to their own iOS apps, you’re not alone. That’s why we’ve got to give mad props to Erica Sadun, a TUAW blogger and app developer who has been locked away tinkering with Airplay lately and found a way to extend some of its limited capability.
Sadun’s first effort was Airplayer, which allowed compatible iOS apps (including Videos on the iPad and the iPod app on iPhone/iPod touch, or YouTube on all three) to stream video to the Mac, thanks to a small OS X application she created.
Now Sadun is back with AirFlick, which streams most any video or audio file from your Mac to the second-generation Apple TV, no jailbreaking required. It also doesn’t require iTunes — drag and drop a media file onto the AirFlick application and away you go. Here’s how it works.
1. First you’ll need to download AirFlick, a modest ad-supported 1MB alpha application that Sadun is offering free on her website for the rest of us to play with. The current version is 0.04 as of this writing.
2. Unzip the archive and drag the AirFlick program to your system’s Applications folder.
3. Double-click AirFlick to launch it. The app will immediately start seeking out any compatible devices to stream to, which includes other Macs running Airplayer as well as the second-generation black Apple TV. When it’s ready, you’ll see ‘Searching’ change to the name of the first device found.
4. Select the device you want to receive your media from the choices listed; if you have only one, it will select it by default and you should see the name pop up like in the screenshot above.
5. Drag a video or audio file from anywhere (or type in a file path) and click the large Play button in the bottom right corner. Your media should start streaming to your selected device, although as you can see from Sadun’s how-to video, sometimes it doesn’t work on the first try. However, clicking the Menu button on your ATV remote and giving it another go will usually get things working as they should.
6. At this point, you can sit back and enjoy or click the Stop button if you’re finished.
AirFlick isn’t limited to just Apple TV-compatible files, either — if you have a newer version of the free, open-source VLC installed, AirFlick will use it to transcode your video into something that the ATV can play. The only caveat is there will be a 30-second delay before the video starts to play, during which Sadun slyly notes is a good time to ‘Get a cup of coffee.’
Keep in mind that this is early alpha software and bugs can be expected — we experienced one for ourselves while testing for this article after opening Airplayer on a secondary Mac and trying to refresh the available sources. Quitting the app and launching it again cleared things right up, and the problem didn’t occur a second time.
AirFlick and Airplayer show that there’s still a lot of untapped promise in Apple’s wireless Airplay technology, and thanks to developers like Erica Sadun, the best is likely yet to come.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
(Via Mac|Life all.)
Portastudio on iPad, with Faux Cassette, and Everything Old is New Again
If it’s an iconic piece of hardware or software, there’s at least a decent chance you could be seeing it in virtual iPad form soon.
Tascam’s Portastudio, released today, is a particularly striking example. The famed, budget cassette multitrack recorder, the box on which countless demos and quick songwriter creations was forged, appears on Apple’s tablet. There’s even a fake cassette tape, which I have to say is a little bit unnerving.
This is all nostalgia, right? Well, no, actually: those big, simplified plastic controls and memorable layout work because they’re so easy to use. The problem with a lot of software design of the past couple of decades is that it’s somewhat inhumane. Given endless space and often-increasing, ever-cheaper system resources, music software has been, charitably, less-than-friendly. Resembling a 70s jumbo jet cockpit, UI controls multiply and shrink to the point that they challenge all but an 18-year-old pair of eyes. Add in clunky default OS widgets, collapsible tabs and dockable windows that add still more complexity, and you wind up with a trainwreck. What these hardware emulations prove is that you could learn something from hardware – even when the need for blank space, big knobs and faders and buttons, limited controls, and standard hardware inputs and readouts is gone.
So, back to the original product, what does $10 get your iPad? If you know how a Portastudio works, you probably already know most of the answer, but here’s a quick rundown:
- Cassette tape-style transport. (Linear transport, I might add. Seriously. You have to rewind and fast forward to get around.)
- Routing to four inputs.
- Mixdown to stereo (via a dialog box, so that’s the point where you break the illusion).
- Simple EQ.
- File sharing, via iTunes or Soundcloud. (This last item is what makes this a useful tool and not just a novelty.)
- Support for ‘a few’ class-compliant audio interfaces, though your mileage may vary.
The development work was done by a well-loved developer, Chris Randall / Audio Damage. (Chris I think does learn hardware’s design lessons in his UIs.) See his blog post:
Hey, Look What I Made…
The bad news: no bounce, which seems a major oversight. Ironically, Tascam also has to admit that they don’t have any class-compliant audio interfaces. (Doh!) In case you’re wondering, they also say flat out in the FAQ, don’t expect versions for other operating systems soon — too bad, as this would seem fairly ideal in a reduced form on iPhone and iPod touch.
But the radical simplicity of this app could be its appeal. I may actually fire this up to use as a recording sketchpad, especially with hardware synths, Game Boys, and so on.
http://tascam.com/product/portastudio/
And forget the app itself: this ought to be a perfect time to look back and remember what made the original PortaStudio great – and wonder why so often those same design principles are lost.
One of the famed Tascam models, the sort that may well bring up fond memories of mobile recording. (Not quite the right model, but you get the idea.) Photo (CC-BY-SA) Lucius Kwok (the developer), via Wikimedia Commons
(Via Create Digital Music.)
3 ways to improve your guitar sounds in Logic’s Amp Designer
There are a lot of guitar simulation plug-ins available for digital musicians these days. Included with Logic 9 is Amp Designer and Pedal Board – a welcome departure from the older Guitar Amp Pro plug-in. They stack up very well against the competition and are versatile in tone, emulation and layout. In my opinion, the clean amps achieve impressive results when compared to their hardware cousins.
Beyond the presets, there’s a lot more you can do with Amp Designer that is apparent. Toby Pitman goes much deeper in his excellent tutorial, ‘Logic 402 – Logic’s Guitar Recording Toolbox’. Packed with tips and tricks and practical step-by-step approaches to using both Amp Designer and Pedal Board.
In this Quick Tip I’m going to highlight 3 useful tips for guitar tone sculpting glory built-in to Amp Designer.
01 – Move the Mic
When recording a traditional guitar amp there are a two important considerations: what type of mic to use and where to position the mic. The resulting tone can be vastly different if the mic is placed dead-center or to the side of the speaker cone.
In Amp Designer you can choose between using a Condenser, Ribbon or Dynamic microphone emulation from the Mic pop-up menu.
Hover your mouse over the cabinet on the right of the interface (above the Mic pop-up menu) and the Speaker Adjustment graphic is displayed. Drag the white dot to adjust the placement of the mic. Generally, for Rock and brighter guitar tones place it to the side as shown below.
02 – More Equalizers
There are plenty of Amp types and presets. If you still can’t create quite the guitar sound you’re looking for you can mix and match the Model, Amp and Cabinet to build your own custom amp! This incredible… but one lesser known tip is you can choose different EQ types per amp.
Mouse over the word ‘EQ’ and click to display the EQ pop-up menu. From here you can choose between Bright British, Vintage, U.S. Classic, Modern and Boutique.
I find myself tending towards the Vintage and U.S. Classic more often than not.
03 – More Reverb
Rather than insert an instance of Space Designer (or other reverb plug-in) on your guitar channel strip to add space to your sound, you can set the reverb levels directly on the Amp Designer interface. Like the EQ, Amp Designer comes with more than one Reverb type.
Click on the Reverb label (top, middle of the amp) to display this Reverb type pop-up menu.
You can choose between Vintage Spring, Simple Spring, Mellow Spring, Bright Spring, Dark Spring, Resonant Spring, Boutique Spring, Sweet Reverb, Rich Reverb and Warm Reverb.
It’s well worth checking these types out on your guitar sounds. The change to your sound can be dramatic and save you from using a separate reverb plug-in!
Check out Toby Pitman’s Logic 402 – Logic’s Guitar Recording Toolbox to learn much, much more about how to get the best out of Amp Designer, Pedal Board and Logic’s other built-in tools for guitarists.
Cry Baby – The Pedal That Rocked The World
Check this out, Dunlop have made a 25 minute documentary about one of the most greatest effect pedals ever invented the Cry Baby Wah!
Cry Baby: The Pedal That Rocks The World tells the story of the wah wah effect pedal, from its invention in 1966 to the present day. Musicians, engineers, and historians discuss the impact of the pedal on popular music and demonstrate the various ways it has been used, as well as how its evolution has improved the ability of artists to express themselves musically. The film features interviews with Brad Plunkett, the inventor of the pedal, plus many other musical luminaries such as Ben Fong-Torres, Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Buddy Guy, Art Thompson, Eddie Kramer, Kirk Hammett, Dweezil Zappa, and Jim Dunlop. These professionals explain how a musical novelty transcended convention and has become timelessly woven into the fabric of modern pop-culture.
For more info keep an eye on www.crybabydoc.com
14 Great Tips and Tricks for Utilizing Google Voice
Back when it was nothing but a small, tiny speck of the internet, Google launched its over-the-air voice calling service called Grand Central. The service was supposed to provide tools and features that you might otherwise have to pay for, like unlimited voicemail, unlimited nationwide calling, unlimited texting and voicemail transcription, but for absolutely free. The service took off, and now Google’s VoIP service is a hit. Everyone and their grandmother has the feature enabled on their mobile phones because of its easy set up, whether they’re using a Smartphone or dumb phone, iPhone or Android phone.
But what if there was more from Google Voice than its advertised features? We’ve got 14 awesome tips and tricks to get Google Voice working like a boss, and more than just another free phone-over-the-internet service. Read on for tips on how to do things like send free text messages, block calls, and set up different voice messages for different people.
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