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
iRig aims at guitar players with an iDevice in tow

If you’re already have a strong interest in playing the guitar and happen to own an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone (or all three), then the iRig might make for a prudent investment. What, another purchase in these economically trying times? Well, the iRig guitar accessory from IK Multimedia alongside the accompanying AmpliTube iPad and iPhone software will help you make music in a new way. You will have to hook the iRig adapter up to an iDevice and guitar, where the output of the iRig will be connected to a pair of headphones or an amp, where you can then launch the AmpliTube software to play around with a range of effects, amps, mics, pedals, and cabinets right from the comfort of your fingertips. Layer effects and amplifier change can be done with but a touch. Meant to work with an electric guitar, it will also play nice with just about any 6-string with a decent pickup. If you’re interested in expanding your musical repertoire, the iRig can be yours for $39.99 a pop. We don’t think a professionally cut album will feature this anytime soon though, but that’s a nice thought if it happens.
(Via Ubergizmo.)
3 Audacity Tips To Enhance Any Recordings
As a blogger and a researcher, I have to conduct a lot of interviews. Some months I’ve conducted two or three interviews a week, and many of those are recorded interviews, because many people don’t have time to answer questions via email. One of the nice things about recorded interviews is that they work well as an audio podcast either available for download from your own blog, or distributed as a podcast at any podcast directory.
Regardless what you intend to do with the interview, one thing that’s for certain is that you want to develop a reputation as a professional interviewer that produces high-quality, interesting conversations with fascinating people.
Only part of the recipe for this is developing interesting and thoughtful questions for your interviewee to answer, but the other significant part of the equation is how well you’ve edited the audio interview into a high-quality, professional show. Many avid audio enthusiasts may find some of the edits below somewhat simple, but for the blogger or podcaster with little audio editing experience, these tips are critical to know.
3 Tips To Enhance Your Interview Audio With Audacity
I use the Audacity audio recording software to record and edit all of my interviews. My recording setup is about as simple as it gets – an Olympic earpiece that doubles as both a microphone and an earphone, so that I can hear the person on the phone while the microphone feeds the conversation into the laptop and Audacity. This works well, and produces high quality conversations, but like anything, there are flaws in the setup that produce less than optimum conditions.
The beauty of Audacity is that you have the capability to ‘fix’ those flaws. The three most common problems that I’m going to touch on in this post are removing background noise, amplifying voices, and integrating quality introduction with music.

Before we start doctoring the audio file with the Audacity audio recording software, let me first introduce the patient. Above is a snippet of an hour-long audio interview that I conducted last month. The two most common flaws are background noise, shown in the center of this clip, and low voice volume (my voice) as shown on the right. You can see that the amplitude when I was talking is about half of that of the voice on the phone – which is to be expected when recording with such an earpiece.
How To Fix Quiet Voices
The first tweak for the common interview issue of quiet voices is also the easiest. The volume of the voice is equivalent to ‘amplitude,’ so all you have to do is use Audacity’s Amplify tool to increase the quiet voice just a little bit.
To perform this task, just highlight the section of audio track with the quiet voice, and then select ‘Amplify’ from the Effect menu option.

In the amplify tool, you’ll need to select an amplification that is just enough to increase the voice volume to a level that’s equivalent to the other person speaking. It may take some trial and error the first time, so just undo the change and try a new value until you get it right.

In my case, I found that an increase of 5 dB did the trick. Once you know the right value, the only tedious part of this fix is that you’ll need to find every place in the track where the quiet voice shows up, and do the highlight/amplify routine to fix it.
How To Remove Background Noise With Audacity
The second most common flaw in an interview audio file is background noise. Maybe you left a fan on in the other room, or there are cars going by just outside the open window, and you realize once you listen to the audio that the sound is terribly annoying and distracting.
The first step in this technique is to identify an area in your file that features nothing but the background noise alone. When you find such an area, highlight that section of the audio track, and then go into the ‘Noise Removal’ tool in the Effects menu option.

Once you’re there, click on ‘Get Noise Profile‘. Doing this captures a snapshot of the background noise itself. The software uses this to ‘erase’ that sound profile from a section (or all) of the audio file. The next step is just to highlight the area where you want to remove the noise (most of the time you’ll just select the entire track), and then go back into this window and select ‘Remove Noise‘.

As you can see, Audacity does an amazing job at cleaning up the noise. There is one caveat, and it is this – carefully gauge the amount of noise that you want to remove. Removing too little won’t do much good, and removing too much will make the audio sound over-digitized or artificially quiet. One thing I noticed is that the middle to lower middle setting is usually ideal.
Integrating A Musical Or Voice Introduction
Have you ever heard those cool podcasts with a great musical introduction? Well, believe it or not, you can do the same exact thing in Audacity in just a few simple steps. The first step, obviously, is importing the music file that you would like to use (make sure you don’t infringe on any licensing issues).

The next step is just highlight the block of music you’d like to use as your introduction (select the correct number of seconds) and then do a simple Copy. Then place the cursor at the start of your audio file, and select Paste. The copied music clip will get inserted into your track, pushing the entire interview to the right.
While this is cool, it’ll sound weird because at the end of the clip, your music will just end abruptly. Instead, you want to taper off the music as you enter into the interview itself. You can do this by highlighting the very last part of your music clip and selecting Effect -> Fade Out from the Menu.

You’ll see the amplitude of the music clip taper off as it approaches the end of the clip, and in effect producing a very nice fade into the interview itself.
By using these three simple tips, you’ve just equalized voice volume, removed background noise, and embedded a professional music introduction into your audio interview. With just these few simple changes, you’ll transform amateur sounding interviews into well produced, professional sounding conversations.
(Via MakeUseOf.com.)
Set Google Voice as Your Skype Caller ID

A Google Voice number, one that rings all your phones, makes good sense as the caller ID number for outgoing Skype calls. Google Voice blocked the verification SMS that Skype needed until recently, but Google’s flipped the switch and made it convenient.
John, a Lifehacker reader and fan of Google Voice and Skype, tipped us off to a tweet from a Google Voice team member that indicated the Google Voice/Caller ID setup now works. You’ll have to respond to the SMS sent to your Google Voice number, but once you do, people you call with Skype’s “Skype Out” service won’t see a random string of digits, but a number they can actually call you back on. More »
(Via Lifehacker.)
The Sweet Sound of Particleboard

Looking for a fun, functional, low-cost project to knock out during the holidays? Check out this clever repurposing piece from the pages of MAKE Volume 10, offered up by David Battino with help from George ‘the Fat Man’ Sanger.
iTunesLP.net Teaches You to Create, Lets You Download Free iTunes LPs
Web site iTunesLP.net details how to create albums in Apple’s new iTunes LP format. The site also offers free downloads of iTunes LP albums that aren’t already available in iTunes.
When they released iTunes 9, Apple introduced a new music format called iTunes LP aimed at bringing the album experience to your desktop. The catch: They’re expensive to buy (around $14+), especially if you already own the album.
That’s where iTunesLP.net comes in. Its tutorials step through creating your own custom iTunes LP (they’re mostly made up of HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript—the stuff that makes web sites go-round). Its probably not for complete novices, but the instructions will teach you to roll your own iTunes LP if you’ve got the patience and some background in web design.
If you don’t, your still not entirely out of luck: iTunesLP.net also hosts free DIY iTunes LP files for download—provided you’ve already got the music on hand. Currently their list of iTunes LP downloads is limited to Walt Disney’s Fantasia, but it contains ‘a faithful reproduction of the original 1957 3-disc LP and its 24 page full color program. This LP was the first release of the soundtrack of the 1939 Fantasia with specially commisioned artwork inspired by the motion picture.’ Not bad, but like I said, if you want to use it in iTunes you’ll need to already have the music for that album; you’ll also need to make sure that the album name is an exact match in your metadata.
The site’s still young, but we’re excited to keep an eye on it and see what kind of user-created iTunes LPs can enrich our iTunes library without breaking the bank.
(Via Lifehacker.)











Recent Comments