Here’s an overview and demo of the new iPB-10 Programmable Pedalboard – the first iPad pedal board.

Features:

• Users can drag and drop up to 10 different pedals, in any order, to each pedalboard, and can add an amp and cabinet to complete each setup.
• It offers 87 different pedals, 54 amps, and 26 cabinets to choose from.
• The iPB-10 uses multiple Audio DNA2 processors to provide no-latency signal processing with 24-bit A/D/A converters.
• The iPB-10 will work without an iPad plugged in to it. The 2 digit LED display on the unit that indicates the current preset bank, though there is also a master volume knob on the back panel of the unit. (At this time users will not be able to edit, adjust, or save presets without an iPad.)
• For those worrying about your iPad being damaged on the floor – You can connect the iPad to the DigiTech iPB-10 via an extension cable and mount the iPad on a mic stand.

The DigiTech iPB-10 is compatible with all models of iPad 2 & iPad. It’s available now for about $500.

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.)

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.)

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.

(Via Software Video Tutorials – macProVideo.com.)

Gianni Luminati does a rendition of “Love The Way You Lie” with loop pedals, a kids xylophone, a drum set, and a ukulele.

Even if you’re sick of this song you should really watch this

Adobe has announced that the public beta of Adobe Audition, its professional audio editing suite, is now available for Mac OS X. Adobe Audition has been available for Windows since 2003 (when Adobe acquired the Windows program, Cool Edit Pro) but this beta marks its first appearance on the Mac.

Audition is a digital audio workstation, similar to Pro Tools or Logic Pro. Adobe Audition for Mac boasts a fast new audio playback engine, native multi-channel support for 5.1 surround sound, noise reduction capabilities and audio effects like de-hummers and volume leveling.

In a company announcement, Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager for Dynamic Media at Adobe, said Audition for Mac is part of an ongoing mission to provide ‘industry leading, cross-platform content creation tools for creative professionals.’

Mac users can download the beta version of Adobe Audition at labs.adobe.com/technologies/audition. The program requires an Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.5.7 or Mac OS X 10.6. There is no serial number or activation for this download, but it will expire when the beta period ends.

Adobe also offers Adobe Soundbooth, its audio package for users that are not audio professionals. In other words, it’s more of a consumer-grade tool. On its FAQ page, Adobe says that one priority of bringing Audition to the Mac is to improve workflows by providing solid integration with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Adobe has put a lot of work into making Premiere Pro more competitive with Apple’s Final Cut Studio — especially in CS5. In my own experience (which isn’t in a professional capacity, but does include multi-track, multi-source editing), I’ve found Premiere Pro CS5 for Mac to be better and more efficient than Final Cut Studio in many arenas. However, while Final Cut Studio can easily integrate with Logic Pro and Avid’s Media Composer can integrate with Pro Tools, Premiere Pro for Mac lacks its own professional audio component. With Audition for Mac, that gap is now filled.

It’s exciting to see Adobe bring its professional audio toolset to Mac OS X. We look forward to bugging our audio professional friends to see how it stacks up against the competition, especially in Adobe-laden workflows.

(Via Mashable!.)

The new GarageBand features are impressive. You can fix your guitarist’s inability to keep a beat. You can extend that final note of your song. You can even keep track of your progress as you learn the guitar or keyboards.

But before you get the guitar, keyboards or mics out, it’s actually helpful if you know how to use some of the big ticket items without fumbling around for hours. We even highlighted a few little known features to help round out your GarageBand knowledge.

Set up Your Info

By default, GarageBand uses your account information on your Mac as your artist name. Before you start working on your tunes, it’s probably a good idea to change this information.

GarageBand>Preferences under the My Info tab. Change it or youll end up like me with a lame Artist name.

Turn off your Screensaver

It seems like a no brainer, but when you have your guitar all hooked up and ready to rock, the last thing you need is your Hello Kitty screen saver popping up right before you strum that first note.

Head to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver and turn it off.

Record with Multiple Devices

Apple tells you that you can now record multiple tracks at once. You plug your guitars in and nothing happens. Here’s what you need to do to get the band back together.

You’re going to create an Aggregate Device. This will alow you to have multiple devices plugged in to your Mac and have GarageBand recognize them individually instead of just one input.

Head on over to Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup. Navigate to the Menu Bar Window>Audio Devices.

Plug in all your fancy musical instruments.

Click on the + symbol in the Audio Devices window. Clcik on Aggregate Devices on your new item and give a name. We chose Geetars for our bass and electric guitars.

Your instruments and how they are connected to your Mac should show up on the right hand side of the Audio Devices window. Check the Use box next to the connections of your instruments. We utilized the Built-in Input for the guitar and an XLR to USB converter called the CEntrance MicPort Pro for our bass.

Launch GarageBand and head on over to GarageBand>Preferences. Click on the Audio/MIDI tab and select your new Audio Input device.

Head up to the Menu Bar and select Track > Enable Multitrack Recording.

In your project, create Real Instrument tracks for your instruments. Don’t bother with Electric Guitar track, it won’t work.

Select each track and click on the i in the lower right hand corner. From there you can select the Input Source for each track.

You can connect up to eight instruments like this. That’s half of the Arcade Fire connected to one Mac.

Write Your Lyrics in GarageBand with Notes

While youre recording your awesome new single, you can finally have your lyrics right in front of you on the screen instead of scribbled on that Taco Bell napkin or in another application that stops you from interfacing with GarageBand. Just head on over to the Menu Bar and select Window>Notepad.

Smaller GarageBand Project Files

If you’re sharing your project files with band mates over the Internet, sending the larger files can be a huge pain. Thankfully Apple has used some magical Pixies’ dust and made those files smaller.

New artist lessons include Tom Sayer by Rush and Soul Meets Body by Death Cab for Cutie

Whether you’re into Prog rock or Indie, you should be happy with the new lessons available in GarageBand. Apple says we can expect more. Hopefully they’re right, and hopefully one of them is Prince. Seriously, how rad would it be to have Prince teach you Purple Rain?

Pretty darn rad.

Magic GarageBand Got Easier

Magic GarageBand was a pain to use before. You’d click on an instrument and maybe a few minutes later, it would switch over. Now the instruments switch over at the beginning of the next measure. It just seems more

iPad and iPhone as MIDI Controllers

Using Wi-Fi you can setup your iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone as a MIDI device if you have an app installed that utilizes OSC.

This is especially helpful if you want to play the piano but hate the keyboard version in GarageBand and you don’t have the money to go out and buy a MIDI keyboard for a few projects.

The apps will need an OSC server on your Mac. Some apps work with Pure Data, while others work best with OSCulator. Either way, you’ll be controlling GarageBand with your iPad or iPhone from across the room.

Awesome!

If you’re feeling like Wi-Fi just won’t cut it, Line 6 has the MIDI Mobilizer dock accessory.

Scoring

Feeling a little Mozart?

Add a Software Instrument. Play your song then click on the Scissors/edit button in the lower left hand corner. Then click on the score button. Now you can adjust the score of your masterpiece.

Select and drag your notes or Command+click to add new notes.

Adjust Audio in your Videos

Flex Time isn’t just for music.

In the Menu Bar go to Track > Show Movie Track

Open the Media Browser and click on the Movies tab. Grab one of your videos and drop it into the movie track.

Click on the edit Scissors at the bottom left of the GarageBand window and now you can stretch out the audio of your movie with Flex Time.

Just like your music, you can extend the length of your movie’s audio, including your dialogue. Yeah, it’s fun to make your words last 20 seconds. Especially if it’s a voice over. Besides the fun factor, this can be helpful for ADR that’s already tied to a video you have.

Oh, and you can score your video here too.

Got an awesome tip we missed? Drop it in the comments.

Follow this article’s author, Roberto Baldwin, on Twitter.

(Via Mac|Life all.)

Over the weekend, Google announced a new feature for Google Voice: The ability to receive notifications of missed calls in e-mail form. It’s a welcome feature, but as is often the case with new Google application additions, it’s hidden away in the settings menu, and the blog post about it didn’t clearly explain exactly how it works.

It’s easy to turn on the notifications for calls going to your Google Voice number, but it’s a little more complicated to get the feature working with your ‘real’ mobile number. Here we’ll explain how to set up both.

Enabling Missed Call E-mails

To enable the missed call e-mails for your Google Voice number, log in to Google Voice and locate the ‘Settings’ link in the top right corner of the screen, immediately to the right of your e-mail address and phone number.

Click there and two options will pop up: ‘Voice settings’ and ‘Google Account settings.’ Click on ‘Voice settings’ to proceed.

Once you’re on the Settings page, click on the ‘Calls’ tab. You’ll see the ‘Missed Calls’ section at the very bottom with two options. You can check ‘Place missed calls in the inbox’ to get notifications at the Voice application website only or check ‘Send missed calls to my e-mail’ to have the notifications e-mailed to your attached Google account e-mail address instead. You can also check both boxes if you want to get notifications in both places.

Check the options you want, then click the ‘Save changes’ button at the bottom. Now whenever you miss a call to your Google Voice phone number, you’ll receive a notification that simply says: ‘Missed call from: (xxx) xxx-xxxx at 1:50 p.m.’

Getting Notifications for Missed Calls to Your Real Number

To receive notifications of calls placed to your real number, not just your Google Voice number, you’ll have to enable Google voicemail for your phone. To do this, navigate to the ‘Phones’ tab in Settings and find the link to ‘Activate Google voicemail on this phone.’

A little window will pop up that includes an activation code. Verify that your carrier has been accurately identified at the top, then pick up your phone to dial the activation code exactly as it appears in the window. Hit ‘Call’ or Send’ as Google suggests.

On many smartphones, you’ll receive immediate confirmation that multiple forwarding features have been enabled. If you didn’t receive a confirmation, you might want to have someone dial your real number to test it.

If it worked, the rules you set for e-mail or inbox notifications of missed calls will apply to your actual number, not just your Google Voice number. To disable this link, just repeat the process by clicking on the new option that says ‘Deactivate Google voicemail on this phone.’

(Via Mashable.)

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.)

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.)