Digital turntablism is nothing new. But Ammobox, debuted at the first-ever CDM Futuristic Music Design Challenge, is unique in a number of ways. What creator Nathan Ramella has done differently: 1. He’s demystified digital vinyl timecode. With no previous DSP programming experience, Nathan created his own custom tool for reading vinyl timecode — and explains […]

Here’s a phrase you won’t hear often on, say, Download Squad: "PS The AmigaOS port will be up in a few days." Welcome to the wacky world of trackers, the music production tools time forgot. While the rest of the world frets over the environmental impact of computing and the cost of digital tools, the […]

Project Wonderland, rendered in Java3D, which was just open sourced. Not so awesome-looking, aesthetically. (The point here is more lightweight, online collaboration and utility.) But J3D can be useful, and this announcement is another win for open Java — not to mention, between JOGL and J3D, you can make a 3D project in Java look […]

R.E.M., by Dunechaser. And Lego. There are some serious, high-profile indications that big artists are beginning to embrace alternative licensing for their content, whether it’s pay-what-you-wish distribution, “please remix this for us” marketing campaigns, or genuinely open content. Whether that’s just a brief fad or the sign of things to come, it’s too early to […]

After twenty years or so of music software, you’ll often find that what you need to do is creatively satisfied by what’s available in pre-built tools. But video is often another matter: even if a VJ tool does what you need some of the time, there are times when you need something that doesn’t exist […]

Wormhole2 is a powerful, cross-platform (Windows + Mac) VST plug-in capable of transmitting audio between computers over networks. It allows effects chain routing between networked computers, boasts low-latency performance on LANs, and even works over WiFi or Firewire. But Wormhole2’s niche audience kept it from catching on more widely, and we hadn’t heard much from […]

Function Field Sytem by Voltage Controlled – made with Pure Data/GEM/PDP/PiDiP Open Source software can be hard to approach sometimes, especially DIY programming environments, so there is some good news for those wanting to get started with two leading open source packages for performance. Pure Data – the open source dataflow/patching environment now has a […]

Function Field Sytem by Voltage Controlled – made with Pure Data/GEM/PDP/PiDiP Open Source software can be hard to approach sometimes, especially DIY programming environments, so there is some good news for those wanting to get started with two leading open source packages for performance. Pure Data – the open source dataflow/patching environment now has a […]

Pd as eye candy? Believe it. vade sends this shot of his work with Pd on Leopard. Pd, aka Pure Data, is the free and open-source cousin of Max/MSP/Jitter. It’s powerful — even sometimes having technical advantages over Max — but has suffered from complex installation and dependencies, poor documentation, and an unpolished interface. Enter […]

Critter and Guitari, creators of the aforementioned DIY hardware Critter boards have released their PCB design files. Is it everything you need to make your own Video Critter? I don’t know enough about circuits to be sure, but it’s exciting that the information is now freely available. [via Make]