The TactaPad is just a concept model, not in production, and I’m not even sure the movies are real, but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless. (Thanks to Chris O’Shea for the tip!) The idea is, you touch a tactile surface with your hands, and a camera maps an image of your hands onto the screen […]

Here at CDM headquarters in sweltering NYC, I’m pretty excited about future Intel Macs, and in the meantime I’m happy with Apple’s current lineup for music. But music apps and plug-ins that don’t get ported to Intel-compatible form probably won’t run at all. You may havce heard that your existing apps will run on Apple’s […]

Spencer Kiser, another whiz kid from NYU’s ITP program, gives CDM our first look at his SpinCycle. It’s a new take on the turntable: instead of tracking grooves on a disc, the device reads colors and produces sounds (and hypnotic colors). Check out Spencer’s flickr gallery for pics for now, but he promises more documentation […]

Long-awaited drivers for M-Audio’s FireWire audio hardware are now available with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger compatibility. The drivers available for download are: FireWire 410 FireWire Audiophile FireWire 1814 FireWire Solo Ozonic (keyboard/audio interface) M-Audio lists compatibility with “10.4.1.” Interestingly, there’s nothing in the version history that suggests what was changed for Tiger support; many […]

Apple’s announcement about Intel has left a lot of confusion and misinformation in its wake, and unfortunately, I’m not a developer. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d like to clarify several points, based on reader feedback: XCode versus other tools isn’t the major issue: (For non-developer readers, […]

Gleetchlab is a new freeware sound design tooklit, which the creators say will let you “create and manipulate drones, glitches and amazing digital noises with few mouse clicks.” Okay, disclaimer: CDM does not endorse making bad glitch music. The tools do look like fun, though (faders are a dead giveaway that this is a Max/MSP […]

CDM reader Tim in New Zealand gets our dream 5.1 surround studio prize: 250-input Euphonix desk? Check. Actual movie theater for production? Check. Ultra-sexy mood lighting and furniture? But of course. How do you get to work in a post production studio that looks like it could double as someone’s evil headquarters in a Bond […]

One major music developer is thrilled about Apple’s move to Intel: Ableton, developer of the wildly-popular Live software. Robert Henke, Ableton’s software “conceptualist,” long-time Max/MSP developer, and electronic musician (member of Monolake) had this to say on Ableton’s forum: “Hmm, Apple is going to use intel chips in the future. Good bye Altivec. You should […]

By the end of the day today, we’re either going to have Intel-powered Macs or the paper of record is going to come off looking like an aimless rumor site. The New York Times technology headline yesterday was Apple Plans to Switch From I.B.M. to Intel for Chips. Not Apple might switch or is rumored […]

While Apple goes Intel, let’s return to that machine with PowerPC guts — the Xbox 360. Microsoft’s new console has a controversial feature that requires developers to let users replace the game soundtrack with their own custom playlists. Some of you readers say that’s bad for game music, while others are looking forward to turning […]