If you’ve been looking to get into circuit bending your own musical instruments and need that extra push to make the jump, MAKE Magazine has posted both a PDF and video podcast with a basic how-to. I got to play with the resulting instrument Bre built, and it’s great fun; the Speak & Spell is […]

On our sister site for musicians, we’ve got lots of goodies this week for DIYers. Arduino fans, don’t miss a new resource site with DMX, Bluetooth, and Ethernet Arduinos. Arduinos controlling DMX lighting? Now that could make a hot visualist set (albeit with inflated setup time). On YouTube, a controllers made from pennies and popsicle […]

If you’re planning to build a creative new instrument or interface for music, and you don’t already have the open source Arduino project on your watch list, you should put it there. Chris O’Shea at Pixelsumo brings some great new goodies for Arduino lovers via the Italian project site / tutorial site / shop Tinker.it:

At the risk of stating the obvious: now is not yet a good time to upgrade to Vista. That much is generally expected with a new operating system. What’s unexpected is that it’s some of the biggest partners who aren’t ready. Microsoft’s own developer tools for Vista are still in beta. Basic hardware drivers are […]

Last summer, we first saw word of a high-end, Linux-powered portable recording device called the Trinity. In case you wondered if that hardware was vaporware, Trinity Audio Devices’ Ronald Stewart writes to assure it’s not. Trinity has also given CDM an exclusive image of the updated production PCB, shown below. The specs have gotten some […]

Dave Smith Instruments originally planned only to tease their upcoming drum machine exclusively in a banner at the NAMM show: no word outside the insider trade show. Not in the Internet age: word of a new product from synth legend Dave Smith and drum machine/MPC legend quickly had blogs and forums abuzz. Dave Smith himself […]

HD4Indies’ Mike points out the Canon HV20 “Compact HDV Camcorder”. It’s has an HD (1920x1080p) CMOS sensor, records HDV to DV tapes, and sports an HDMI out for uncompressed capture. Mike likes the look of it for a “learner camera”, to me this looks like an ideal unit for tethered shooting of visuals, studio shoots […]

We’ve been watching Zoom’s upcoming, unannounced $199 H2 recorder, seen at NAMM. The H2 has the advantage of price and flexible mic patterns for its built-in mic. But its shipping, larger sibling, the $299 H4, may be a better choice, depending on your needs. The H4 has basic 4-track operation, built-in effects, X/Y-pattern mics, and […]

Gadget sites usually stay away from pro audio, but a no-compromise, three-display, $11,000+ Core 2 Extreme BTO PC from Altium can apparently get even Engadget’s blood pumping. Maybe they need a bigger machine to edit podcasts? Since we prefer cheap thrills here, look instead to Dan Nigrin’s just-released Major Malfunction plug-in for Ableton Live. (Mac/Universal, […]