VJing with flickr? Clubbing with Yahoo Maps? Flash/Flex and Apollo-based apps present some interesting new ideas. We’ve been tracking the excellent Flash 9-based Onyx VJ tool, among others, and it’s nice to see the “open source Adobe-based VJ app” category growing. Mute is very early in development, perhaps not as far along as Onyx, but […]

This afternoon, I’m off to Microsoft’s Vista launch shindig. I’m hoping there will be clowns and ponies. After all, Microsoft can afford a party. As for the OS itself, I can’t resist relevant quotes from Star Trek III: Uhura: Would you look at that! Kirk: My friends, the great experiment: The Excelsior. Ready for trial […]

While on the subject of Gallo Speakers, here’s about as far as you can get from the baby-sized A’Diva satellites: speakers that tower 78″ tall, pack some 12 4″ aluminum woofers each, and deliver nearly omni-directional sound. Micro speakers (5″ each), yes, but in a slender but tall enclosure. The Reference 5LS speakers, due third […]

Well, clearly, these two pieces of gear are entirely different. I’m sure Behringer didn’t rip off the Roland. They’ve got two expression pedals. Totally different. Brad Sucks, the one-man band known for Internet stardom and Brad’s brilliant title “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing”, is taking on laptop performance. First job: find a way to […]

We’ve been waiting for a sub$200 field recorder. CDM’s Josh Jancourtz found this one at NAMM: no availability, no PR, but some interesting details. Here’s a serious play for budget mobile recording from Zoom: a US$199 recorder with an integrated mic and some unusual flexibility thanks to 3 integrated capsules. Translation: point this at whatever […]

No press release, no specs, but our own Josh at least got some “spy pics.” At Sony’s NAMM booth I came across this nameless prototype mic pre that matches their popular PCM-D1 flash memory field recorder. No release date, price, or even a name. (If you don’t feel like waiting you might look at the […]

Photos: Josh Jancourtz for CDM Have you ever plugged your headphones into your microphone? Well now you can! Besides winning a nomination for longest alphanumeric name, the USB2200A microphone from sE Electronics features a 1/8” headphone output and volume control on its body. This allows zero latency monitoring from the Class A 1” cardioid condenser […]

Move over, Adobe — Ubuntu Studio, due in April, promises to put a full, completely open-source graphics package together for Linux. The OS and apps will all be bundled together for easy installation. We recently covered pure:dyne, a high-performance visual OS. Ubuntu Studio looks a little friendlier and broader for newcomers; it’ll be interesting if […]

It takes a dedicated turntablist to use a deck as a melodic instrument. It makes Theremins, violins, and bassoons easy to play. Kypski shares the Beatles’ Michelle in scratch form: Yep, I’m sticking to keyboards and Theremins. This does make me wonder, though, about fun ways of playing things involving giant mechanical wheels, though, which […]