Digital Trends - Who said high fidelity was for music and not machine guns? Sennheiser just released several new headsets designed specifically with competitive gamers in mind. The line includes a new flagship headset for professional gamers, Dolby 7.1 surround sound virtualization, and DJ-inspired quality and performance. The company even used tips from professional gamers at mTw to make sure that these new headsets offer the best sound and convenience for pros and amateurs alike.
Touch form factors make sense for music creation on the go: a mobile tablet with finger-based interface seems ideal for performance and travel. In the fast-evolving hardware, though, it’s tough to work out exactly what will be a hit and what will be a flop. Multitouch tablets have splintered in two – consumer-centric, inexpensive tablets like the iPad and Android tablets gravitate at one end, as higher-powered tablets are reserved for the business market. Worse, the entire computing industry is choosing battery life over all other factors, which doesn’t jive well with audio. (Almost everything you do to improve audio performance saps power. Doh.)
But that could leave opportunities for computer makers to cater to musicians. Here’s just one example, and it lies right at the convergence of next-generation, Linux-based operating systems, touch-centric design, and more efficient mobile computing.
Indamixx, who have previously done Linux-based laptops using tablets and netbooks, are now readying a multitouch tablet based around the current-generation, dual-core Intel Atom chipset. The Linux OS means you can run the terrific tracker-for-the-rest-of-us , as well as a variety of free software; that’s Renoise pictured as the Indamixx tablet hangs out by the rooftop pool of LA’s The Standard last weekend, for its public debut. (Indamixx hosted a Renoise-themed blowout party.)
Early specs: single core N450 Atom (prototype only; final model is planned to be dual-core), 2 GB RAM, 3 USB ports, 1 VGA port, 1 Ethernet port, analog audio I/O. That’s much like what you’d find on a netbook, and it’s a far cry from the computing power of a desktop or laptop. But with optimized software, it could be ideal for mobile production and performance. (Even with optimization, tablets, by contrast, can’t compete on computing horsepower – and they’re not really set up for terrific low-latency audio performance, either. Oh, and you get better hardware support from traditional Linux operating systems than things like iOS, Android, and Chrome OS.)
More details came out on the . The other surprise there: while Renoise is largely a QWERTY-centric experience to most of us, Indamixx tells us the touch approach works very well. I’ll believe it when I — uh, touch it — but I’m interested how that works.
The product will launch May 11, 2011, but we should have more info before then, and we’ll visit them at NAMM.
If you’re not in love with the hardware, you’ll be able to use the OS with your own rig, too, if you prefer to build or buy your own system. Dual-booting to Ubuntu will also be an (unsupported) option.
I got some further details on the direction they’re going from the source.
Whereas the Transmission custom distro Indamixx has used in the past was based on Ubuntu and Debian, the new OS is , the distro with powerful backing from Intel and Nokia. It’s still Linux; it even uses RPM as its package manager. But it’s probably the most mobile-centric of the mainstream Linux distros. (By the way, Linux fans, don’t sweat those details too much – the development environment for MeeGo runs on Mac, Windows, and other Linux distros, and software ports pretty easily between them.)
I’m not thrilled about the touch digitizer on the development unit – the serviceable but unspectacular MosArt sensor used on Asus’ T91MT netbook – but it sounds as though that’ll change to something much better before this ships. (It should be just fine for development purposes.)
The choice of MeeGo, though, is certainly interesting. Indamixx lead developer Gabriel Beddingfield and founder Ronald Stewart are raving about how the OS feels and operates, and say they’re getting terrific performance out of the system. I’m eager to try it first-hand. Gabriel has more to say:
CDM: How does this differ from Transmission as we’ve seen it in the past?
Gabriel: It’s effectively a reboot of Transmission. All packages
currently in Transmission will be ported over. The end user-will reinstall this MeeGo-ized Transmission on their device.
Unlike Transmission 4, there will also be a Live CD / Live USB version that you can preview before installing.
Why MeeGo?
Unlike any Linux distro we’ve found so far, MeeGo is from the ground-up about multi-touch, portable devices that compete with iPad and Android. The main “desktop” user experience is sharp, fast, and finger-friendly.
Our departure from MeeGo is in tuning it for audio. Out of the box, Transmission will be more concerned with a high quality, low-latency audio rather than preserving battery life. However, our experience with the Atoms shows that battery life is pretty good, too.
Multi-touch support will come by way of Qt’s Multi-touch framework… which is expected to have a relatively smooth upgrade path to Xorg 1.10 or 1.11 when Xorg officially supports multi-touch (Q1/Q2 2011). [Note that this is a different solution than the one that Ubuntu is providing.]
How will users install their own software?
MeeGo is also working heavily for app-store integration. So, users will be able to install free and commercial apps from Intel, Ovi, or other app stores. MeeGo’s architecture will ensure that the apps will work on this device.
In addition, it’s still Linux… and so users are still able to hot-rod their systems.
What’s the multi-touch digitizer hardware?
Will be capacitive, and will at least be dual-touch.
Right now we’re developing on an eGalax dual-touch that appears to have some pressure-sensitive features (can differentiate between a mouse-over and a click), and we’re also using a Cando dual-touch that is a little more primitive.
Stay tuned for more — consider this a teaser for now. I’ll also have a look at a number of hardware options that take another approach to touch and performance, offering flashy multi-touch tables that make you look sexy onstage. Stay tuned here.
Digital Trends - Michael Jackson’s Thriller made history as one of the most cinematic music videos of all time. Now it may make history as the only music video to inspire a big-budget, feature-length film. Deadline reports that a number of studios are bidding on the rights to make a Thriller movie. Kenny Ortega (High School Musical) is currently hooked to direct while Jeremy Garelick (The Hangover) is set to write the screenplay. The film will have a budget under $50 million.
Appolicious - In today's Fresh Android Apps, learn how you can sync and play your computer's music library onto your phone, grocery shop with confidence, trick your friends and avoid getting inked with a potentially embarrassing tattoo.
AFP - Digital media sharing star Dazzboard on Thursday began letting Facebook users show their tastes in music, complete with samples and an easy way to buy tunes at the social networking service.
It must be that time of year again. MySpace — now “Myspace” — is making headlines by talking about how it is reinventing itself in order to compete better with Facebook. We’ve heard this one before.
Last time, Myspace planned to make its most potentially influential users into star curators of sorts, in the hope that people would visit their tastemaking friends’ pages to discover music and other media. This time it plans to do the same, as is being , in a global rollout that will continue into November.
The only real difference is that this time around, they say they’re doing it to target “Generation Y,” which is hardly a stunning strategy. What social media site wouldn’t want those users?
Myspace CEO Mike Jones nonetheless claimed in a that this represents a new direction for the beleaguered social network, a division of News Corp. that recently boasted about “below $100 million per year,” and whose traffic continues to decline as Facebook’s increases:
“We know you’re all about entertainment,” wrote the exec. “Not only do you love discovering new bands, watching exclusive movie trailers and clips, keeping up with your favorite celebrities, and playing games, but you like to share these experiences with your friends and likeminded people. Of course, you want to be able to do all this online, on your phone, and at events like Secret Shows. We call this social entertainment. Everything about the new Myspace – from the layout and design, to the color scheme, and even our logo — has been remade to deliver the best social entertainment experiences.”
There you have it: This is a cosmetic redesign masquerading as a cosmic “change in direction” — and worse still, it’s a change in direction we’ve seen “MySpace” claim to make in the past with negligible effect on its declining fortunes. The slight tweak of putting your friends activities in a prominent news stream and a new logo hardly represent a stroke of genius in this socially networked day and age.
Myspace keeps wanting to be Facebook. It should double down on being MySpace instead.
It must be that time of year again. MySpace — now “Myspace” — is making headlines by talking about how it is reinventing itself in order to compete better with Facebook. We’ve heard this one before.
Last time, Myspace planned to make its most potentially influential users into star curators of sorts, in the hope that people would visit their tastemaking friends’ pages to discover music and other media. This time it plans to do the same, as is being , in a global rollout that will continue into November.
The only real difference is that this time around, they say they’re doing it to target “Generation Y,” which is hardly a stunning strategy. What social media site wouldn’t want those users?
Myspace CEO Mike Jones nonetheless claimed in a that this represents a new direction for the beleaguered social network, a division of News Corp. that recently boasted about “below $100 million per year,” and whose traffic continues to decline as Facebook’s increases:
“We know you’re all about entertainment,” wrote the exec. “Not only do you love discovering new bands, watching exclusive movie trailers and clips, keeping up with your favorite celebrities, and playing games, but you like to share these experiences with your friends and likeminded people. Of course, you want to be able to do all this online, on your phone, and at events like Secret Shows. We call this social entertainment. Everything about the new Myspace – from the layout and design, to the color scheme, and even our logo — has been remade to deliver the best social entertainment experiences.”
There you have it: This is a cosmetic redesign masquerading as a cosmic “change in direction” — and worse still, it’s a change in direction we’ve seen “MySpace” claim to make in the past with negligible effect on its declining fortunes. The slight tweak of putting your friends activities in a prominent news stream and a new logo hardly represent a stroke of genius in this socially networked day and age.
Myspace keeps wanting to be Facebook. It should double down on being MySpace instead.
AmpliTube 2 arrives today with new effects, recording, bounce to audio, export/import, practice tools, and in-app purchase of extra stomp modules. I’ve been playing with a pre-release version for the last few days. Combined with an audio interface like IK Multimedia’s own iRig, AmpliTube 2 turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a handheld, pocket-able workstation.
But let’s step back for a moment and consider what that means. What would you want a device to do for your music if that device fit in the palm of your hand?
Last week, I , inspired by a great quote by Sasha Frere-Jones – there regarding listening, not creation, but just as apt. The message was, in short, size matters. An iPhone is not an amp. But an amp – a big box designed for the purpose of making lots of sound – is not an ideal practice tool. So, one of the clear advantages of something like AmpliTube is the ability to plug in a personal listening device and just practice, complete with effects and amp sounds, without disturbing others. AmpliTube 2 accordingly adds news practice tools, by importing sounds and allowing you to adjust speed of playback, ideal for learning tracks.
AmpliTube, coupled with a US$40 (street) iRig, lets you record and monitor simultaneously via a single 1/4″ jack input. Other accessories work, as well. Stick this next to your other gear, and you can always record and add effects to sounds as you create them.
But AmpliTube isn’t just for guitarists wanting a pocket-sized practice amp. With AmpliTube’s beefed-up recording capabilities and effects, it becomes a handheld recording sketchpad, not only for guitarists but anyone wanting to record, well, anything. That has two advantages. It’s mobile, so you can record in a practice studio without opening up a whole laptop. But more subtly, it can be a tool better-suited to sketching ideas and building the raw materials of a track than a full-blown DAW is.
Think of it this way: you’re fiddling with a synth, or playing a quick guitar line, or making sounds with a toy you got off of eBay. Sure, you could immediately open your DAW, but then you’re in the mindset of a tool designed to build finished tracks. For play and exploration, staying away from the computer, and using something scaled to your hand that you can carry anywhere, can be a big boon to performance. As we saw with earlier this month, having a tool that not only records audio but adds some creative effects enroute can be a whole lot of fun. Now, you can add AmpliTube to the same category.
Producers long ago discovered the advantage of the bounce: it commits you to making a sound that you can’t touch. With all that audio apps can do, that can be critical.
Many readers have complained that iPhone apps and the like win big on novelty, but don’t fit into their workflow. That means subtle additions – easy bouncing of tracks, easy syncing of files to and from a computer – are absolutely essential.
I also think feel like MusicRadar is asking the wrong questions:
[MusicRadar]
My answer, personally: who cares? If we constantly compare iOS apps to their desktop counterparts, we can easily miss the point of both. To me, it’s more fair to ask, how is recording a song on an iPhone different than doing it on a computer? I hope to have some quick videos of AmpliTube and Filtatron in the next couple of weeks, but I find them terrific tools for capturing ingredients for later productions, and as companions to other mobile devices. Kudos to the blog . Before the iPhone was even announced, that author appreciated the advantage of making things smaller, for creativity and practicality, appreciated that they’re not a different animal, not simply a replacement for existing tools.
AmpliTube is just one of many tools competing in this space, but with some of the potential of handhelds in mind, here’s a tour of what’s new in AmpliTube 2.
Record: A free, included one-track recorder tracks input, with or without effects, to audio. You can also add effects afterward. A paid-add-on (US$9.99/EUR7.99) will boost the recorder to multi-track functionality, as pictured here, and adds a master effects section with reverb, EQ, and compression. But there’s something nice about the simplicity of the one-track version, too.
“Re-amping” also means you could bring some raw field recordings or audio snippets and experiment with adding effects while on the go. (Better get some closed earphones if you’re doing this on your morning commute, huh?)
Bounce audio: Export recordings and mixes as WAV files or (for emailing) MP3s. That should resolve complaints about the fidelity of the output on Apple’s mobiles.
File sharing, import/export: You can import songs directly from your iTunes library, or use file sharing or wifi, making it easy to grab a song for practice later – or, for producers, perhaps as a way to sketch new ideas atop existing tracks.
…and practice features: Once you’ve imported, as you can see in the controls behind the dialog above, you can practice with the track. “SpeedTrainer” slows or speeds playback without impacting pitch.
New effects, stomps: Compressor, Reverb, Parametric EQ, Graphic EQ and Limiter are all available as in-app purchases. With all the versions, including the free ones, IK say they’ve improved the sound quality of the gear and ported DSP code from their Mac and Windows software, AmpliTube 3 and T-RackS 3. You certainly get top-grade effects, I’ll say that.
Presets/snapshots: You can now name presets. That means calling up favorite combinations is easy, particularly with AmpliTube’s grid-style preset layout, pictured here.
In-app add-ons, purchases: Taking advantage of a feature afforded them by Apple, IK now sell additional add-ons. Before that turns you off, the stock versions do include plenty of effects. What’s nice here is, you can pick out what you need. We could be looking at the future of audio software in general, though this does illustrate an ongoing complaint I hear from some users about iOS: they want to be able to mix and match effects from different vendors, just as they can on PCs with technologies like VST and ReWire. So far, that isn’t possible on iOS, though developers are investigating the issue. I have to wonder, at the same time, though, whether some of those restrictions aren’t creatively useful.
And the rest… This version also features 50 song slots for import and a setup panel with input and output controls. That adds to the existing features of AmpliTube for iOS:
Tuner, metronome.
3 simultaneous stomp slots, plus an amp with effects, cabinet, and mic settings.
Low-latency playback.
There are three versions; even the free version is fairly capable. (The free version also includes add-on support, so if you just want the four-track recorder, you can even add it to the free release.)
Die wirklich Facebook-Süchtigen kennen es wohl: Plötzlich hört man das wohlbekannte Ploppen, das eine neue Nachricht signalisiert, schon in der U-Bahn.
In Zukunft soll eine Software namens „Audio Feeds“ für mehr klangliche Abwechslung und Entlastung im Social-Media-Dschungel sorgen. Noch dazu in virtuellem 3D-Sound.
Ziel der Software ist es, so Mitentwickler Stephen Brewster von der University of Glasgow, den User auf unaufdringliche Art und Weise über die aktuellen Entwicklungen auf seinen Lieblingsplattformen zu informieren. So sollen etwa Facebook Freundesanfragen als Wassergeräusche wiedergegeben werden, Vogelgeräusche Neuigkeiten auf Twitter signalisieren und Windspiele auf New Stories aufmerksam machen. Das Ganze soll mit Kopfhöreren einen räumlichen Klangeindruck simulieren.
Schwer zu sagen, ob diese neue „unaufdringliche“ Geräuschkulisse wirklich zu einer akustischen Entlastung beitragen wird oder ob man in Zukunft bei jedem Vogelzwitschern in freier Natur nervös aufs iPhone schaut. Vorgestellt wird die neue Software nächste Woche auf der Computing Machinery’s Multimedia Konferenz in Florenz.
Wer sich mal einen Eindruck eines dreidimensionalen Klangerlebnisses verschaffen möchte, sollte folgendes Youtube-Video abspielen, die Kopfhörer aufsetzen und die Augen schließen. Schon sitzt man mitten im virtuellen Barbershop. Viel Spaß!
Die wirklich Facebook-Süchtigen kennen es wohl: Plötzlich hört man das wohlbekannte Ploppen, das eine neue Nachricht signalisiert, schon in der U-Bahn.
