One major carrot Microsoft is holding out to convince people to upgrade to Vista some time next year is the broadly-overhauled DirectX 10. I’m skeptical about many of the new features in Vista, but I have to say, DirectX 10 is tempting, at least based on what we know now. Details are somewhat sketchy, but […]

Via Video Thing, it looks like the dreamy Red digital cinema camera is on track to becoming a real piece of gear: Mysterium sensor at dvxuser The Red Digital Camera has caused a lot of fuss; in theory, it certainly sounds great: the creators want to “design and build a high performance digital cine camera […]

To get your weekend started off right, our friend Chris O’Shea of Pixelsumo fame has been rounding up the best YouTube and Google Video gems from his mates. (Chris isn’t a curator for nothing.) Best of all, Mr. T teaches us how to rap: After the jump, breakdancing with Mr. T, and, believe it or […]

Creative Commons advocate and sound designer/musician Marco continues a stream of useful links at his blog Melodiefabriek. The latest: sample libraries composed entirely of Creative Commons-licensed material: ccMixStar Sample packs The Freesound Project, CC-licensed sound via ccMixStar Sample Packs [Melodiefabriek] What’s great here is that the remix site (ccMixster) is teaming up with sample sound […]

The modular sound and multimedia environment Max/MSP has had plenty of “celebrity” users; among the better-known is the duo Autechre. Some of their newer creations have been featured in Sound on Sound, as pictured below. But via the excellent Spanish-language audiovisual blog mediateletipos, I see that a selection of creations have been reverse-engineered by some […]

Max/MSP is a powerful environment for sound synthesis, but while some elements are ready-to-go and let you build sound quickly, there are other common synthesis modules that are missing. Sometimes it’s better to start with some higher-level building blocks and work from there rather than have to build everything from scratch. Enter this fantastic set […]

Max/MSP can compile applications that can run on any computer, whether they have Max or not. Result? You can distribute interactive sound toys anyone can play with. Leafcutter John has supplemented a full album with an interactive sound creation called FORESTER. In demo mode, it remixes sounds from the album; add your own sounds, and […]

“July 2006: This is the year when mLAN FireWire Music Networking breaks loose!” Yamaha proudly proclaims on the mLAN Central website! Woo-hoo! Break it loose! Shake it down! mLAN, baby! Uh, okay, here’s why I’m skeptical about this. mLAN is a perfectly reasonable, FireWire-based technology for interconnecting audio devices, and it does work on a […]

Updated: The XioSynth is, in fact, 8-voice polyphonic, says Rob Jones from Novation’s UK headquarters. Rob explains why we got the message that it was monophonic: “It’s monotimbral (i.e., one program at a time), but each patch has 8-note polyphony.” There you have it. Also, check out comments for plenty of discussion as people ponder […]

Fish-shaped glass armonicas? Electronic snapping instruments? An entire line of nonsensical products that’s fish themed? Via comments on yesterday’s glass armonica piece, bodhi points us to various fish-based “performance-art-manufacturing” creations by the Japanese maywa denki group. Examples: Koi-beat: Manual rhythm-making machine in the shape of a carp. Inputted-rhythm by the switch is output at 100V. […]