I miss the days when we were this excited about synthesizers: Via the awesomely-named Brotherhood of the Octopus.

Metasonix continues to build one-of-a-kind effects with raunchy, make-your-parents-blush names. No nonsense about tubes providing warm, wonderful sounds. Take the first tube, a vintage model from devices like military radios: “We use it as a preamp—a BAD preamp. The SCROTUM knob controls input volume badly. No, you can’t turn it fully down. This is intentional […]

The gradual rise of computer DJing raises questions about just what gear a DJ would want. Mixers were, after all, designed for working with a couple of decks, not a computer that itself can mix. Allen & Heath’s solution has been to cross-breed its popular DJ mixers with MIDI control and computer audio interface functions. […]

I’m sure that most people reading this site will be familiar with The Electro Funk Daddy Superstar Break, but in case you’ve missed it: via DaveSegue. Edit: Who makes embed videos auto play? That’s just obnoxious. Changed to Youtube [tags]videos, beatboxing, oddities, beats[/tags]

PhilipBloom.net has an extensive shootout between “three of the most popular ‘affordable’ 35mm Depth of Field adaptors”. What I wanted to do with this shootout is give people information that I was not able to get when I wanted to buy an adaptor. There are many people with these adaptors, but very few people have […]

Jonas of General Specialist seems to have been on a little holiday, but he’s back with two rapid-fire tips for those mixing “real” 3D into their After Effects: MAX2AE Despite its name, the new version 2.0 of MAX2AE actually goes both ways, letting you start your designs in After Effects and at a later stage […]

In November, Bill Van Loo showed off his custom-painted Apple QWERTY keyboard for controlling Ableton Live. He’s been painting again, and has now completed his live Live rig with a beautifully-painted Peavy MIDI fader unit. Peavey PC1600x MIDI controller re-paint [Flickr set] Detailed, step-by-step instructions and an explanation of how this all fits into a […]

`Em are ducks! Surprise! The one application with which I’ve had the most success on my Vista turns out to be Max/MSP/Jitter, the niche, Mac-first multimedia application built by a small handful of developers. Without so much as a single update, Jitter is running perfectly on Vista, running on an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 card […]

Manufacturers have attempted to make USB connections for audio and MIDI more transparent before. We’ve seen mics with USB cords instead of XLR, and USB cables with little humps in the middle with built-in circuitry for MIDI connections. But new cables announced this week by Chinese manufacturer CME go further: a USB/MIDI cable that’s as […]

Most musicians will be waiting some time before running Vista, so if you can’t upgrade to a new OS, upgrade the OS you’ve got. Our friend Brad, aka Internet indie singer-songwriter star Brad Sucks, is getting into laptop performance and wants some tips for tuning Windows XP. He writes: I’d be interested in asking your […]