It’s already near-impossible to find a new computer that doesn’t have Vista already installed on it. As I’ve noted here, hardware driver compatibility can be a bumpy road. That’s the bad news. The good news is, application compatibility for Windows Vista is often not as big an issue. Music notation software, for instance, largely works, […]

The First Synth to… In case you missed it, Sonic State is running a video series on The Top 20 Greatest Synths of all time. About once a month they put up a video featuring three synths from the countdown. As you can imagine a few controversial pieces came up including the E-Mu Proteus, and […]

Is the UI in Vista taking far too big a toll on your system? For now, under some circumstances, that seems to be the case. Here’s what I’ve seen, plus how to turn ths crud off. (It’s unscientific, so take it with a grain of salt, but this CPU graph actually did this just moving […]

Ableton has an interesting teaser up on its website today: A new strategic partnership between Ableton and Cycling ’74 promises exciting developments on the horizon for digital media creators, producers, and performers. Ableton CEO and cofounder Gerhard Behles and Cycling ’74 CEO David Zicarelli are pleased to announce this unique alliance between the two dynamic […]

Amon Tobin has launched a new website, full of floating sea creatures and a Star Trek:TNG-style Flash interface. (Via friend-of-Create Digital Motion Eternal Gaze.) The good news here is, if you dig in the Media section, you’ll hear some gorgeous new clips from his new album Foley Room, due out March 6. It seems Amon […]

Soldering is strangely addictive, like knitting for tech geeks. Maybe it’s the solder fumes, but I find myself oddly relaxed. The other big surprise is that it’s really far easier than beginners think. (Read: I’m a klutz. If I can do it, so can you.) And there are plenty of good visualist hacker projects to […]

At the very least, it looks like Apple is working on significant new music software features, as you might expect. But depending on how you read their patents, new music hardware — even touchscreen hardware — could be in store. Apple is a big company with a lot of intellectual property, so teasing out patents […]