O'Reilly Digital Media

Once again, virtual instrument maestro Gary Garritan has compiled a collection of Christmas carols recorded by his customers. You can download all 19 MP3s plus cover art to make your own CD (or iTunes covers) from his Xmas page. I’m grabbing them right now with the handy Firefox extension DownThemAll.

This year, Garritan’s core software orchestral and band instruments are joined by his company’s new virtual violin and cello. (You can hear the expressiveness of the latter on Digital Media Insider podcast #7.)

What a great showcase for desktop musicians and public-domain music!

For more on Gary Garritan, read our interview, “A Personal Orchestra for Everyone.”

The D50’s electret condenser microphones swivel between 90° and 120° orientations to capture normal and wide stereo. (Click to enlarge.)

If you’re looking for the ultimate handheld stereo audio recorder, you’ll probably want to check out the Sony PCM-D1. Scott Bourne reviewed it for us last year and called it “nearly perfect.” Alas, perfection in this case comes with a $1,995 list price.

Happily for the rest of us, Sony just unveiled a more affordable version — the PCM-D50. For around a quarter of the price, this little guy has some high-end features, like aluminum casing, adjustable mics, 4GB of onboard memory (expandable with Memory Sticks), Hi-Speed USB transfer, discrete circuit boards for audio and power, and a pre-record buffer that continuously captures the five seconds before you hit the Record button. It also runs on standard AA batteries instead of those annoying proprietary types.

Mark Nelson, whose exhaustive yet entertaining reviews of five previous handheld digital recorders grace the O’Reilly Digital Media site, just got his D50 review unit. When he started his last review, we asked what features you especially wanted us to check out, and got such a great batch of suggestions that the resulting article became a true community achievement.

So let’s try it again: Let us know in the comment section below what you’d like to learn about the new Sony PCM-D50 recorder.

We were impressed with Edirol’s R-09 handheld digital recorder when we reviewed it, and thanks to a free firmware update, it just got better. OS 1.30 adds support for 8GB SDHC memory cards, which by my quick calculation should boost the recording capacity to eight hours in 24-bit, 44.1kHz WAV format or more than 132 hours in 128kbps MP3.

The new firmware also adds a splitting function that lets you start a new file with a single button press while recording. That could make it easier to zoom in on specific parts of an interview or concert later.

In other upgrade news, Edirol has released a windscreen for the R-09, addressing one of the main shortcomings we found in our review.

Darwin Chamber, whose “3D” soundscapes I recommended last year (see interview), is back with a new Halloween underscore.

I just received his new album 3D Halloween Sound FX (Collectors’ Edition) via iTunes gift certificate, which is a cool way to do promotion. (Now if only the e-mail were accompanied by the sound of the mail cart that used to set off the “promosexual” reviewers every afternoon at my last music magazine….)

Anyway, Chamber’s new compilation is miles above the typical bucket of clanking chains, fake screams, and goofy cackling you hear on typical horror SFX albums. His tracks are cinematic and lyrical, painting audible pictures in your mind, and the 3D processing adds extra tingle. Check it out at the iTunes Store and get ready to scare your neighborhood.

Chambers says he has a 3D Christmas album coming out in November as well. That might make a welcome change from cloying carols.

Wearable electronics continue to astound. First we had the graphic EQ T-shirt:

Now there’s the Wi-Fi finder T:

With flat-panel displays getting thinner and more power-efficient, I bet we’ll be able to walk around with rotating photo galleries on our chests soon. What will you wear on yours?

At first blush, it may seem odd to learn that National Geographic is making a respectable push into music-related initiatives (as outlined in Digital Music News in early August). With the launch of a new division last summer focused on digital music, National Geographic Music and Radio, the goal is to “engage listeners with great talk and sound, and also offer artists and experts who care about global culture and the environment an outlet to create awareness for important issues,” said Tim Kelly, president and chief executive of National Geographic Ventures. This division will have a broad set of objectives and areas of focus which includes the following: recording, publishing, television, touring, music supervision for films and the National Geographic channel, live concerts, a suite of internet radio stations, and a range of digital efforts in tandem. At its foundation, this music initiative was developed in part to help address societal and environmental needs and issues, so it likely won’t come as a surprise to learn that several concerned artists like Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, and Peter Gabriel have already pledged their enthusiasm and support. National Geographic’s music focus will surely be something worth watching (and experiencing) as it develops further — and as some of the specific components referenced here come into bloom.

Fourteen minutes into last week’s Digital Media Insider podcast, "Secrets of the Demo Gods," I asked longtime reviewer Mark Nelson if any recent music-making gear had surprised him.

Mark started praising the M-Audio Black Box, a digital guitar effect co-designed by Roger Linn, the drum-machine pioneer (and a fine guitarist himself). "It was just…inspiring. Amazing stuff would happen," Mark enthused.

Coincidentally, Roger just wrote to say his company is now shipping Version 3 of the Black Box’s big brother, the AdrenaLinn. In case you missed our Black Box review, the AdrenaLinn crosses a drum machine with a guitar-amp simulator and "beat-synched multieffects." Plug in a guitar (or other electrified instrument) and the AdrenaLinn makes it groove by applying rhythmic processing that syncs to the song’s tempo.

This is a Rhino3D model, but the real AdrenaLinn III is now shipping. Click the image for background and bigger graphics.

According to Linn, Version III "a pretty significant step up from AdrenaLinn II." It improves the quality of the amp models and drum sounds; adds stereo reverb, compression, a tuner, new modulation effects, and more MIDI control; and much more. What I find especially interesting in these days of disposable products is how easy the company has made it to upgrade the AdrenaLinn. For $99, it will send you an upgrade kit containing the chips, a chip-puller tool, a new faceplate, and step-by-step photographic instructions. A new AdrenaLinn III costs about $375.

And what of the Black Box? While editing Mark’s review, I was seriously tempted to buy one myself, even though I’m not a guitarist. With this upgrade, the AdrenaLinn pulls further ahead in tweakability, but the two boxes still target different audiences. You can read a comparison on Roger’s site.

For more on the joys of tempo-synced effects, see my article "Sync and Grow Rich" and podcast "(((Echo)))."

If you’ve been following Brad Fuller’s blogs on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement, you’re probably as intrigued as I am by the creative potential of these tools.

Today, though, I received a press release touting a more sinister use of laptops. The Spy Laptop, from an Indian company called SpyInvent, is built around a remote-controlled pinhole camera that lets you “know if your manager is floating a parallel business in your office right under your nose.”

The Spy Laptop. Click to enlarge.

I initially laughed at the paranoid pitch, but then recalled another e-mail from an Indian businessman who was worried someone would swipe his pocket voice recorder and steal his ideas. (I pointed him to a Panasonic model that encypts the recordings, but also suggested he could simply leave a message for himself on his voicemail.)

Do you think this paranoia is a sign of an emerging market? I know I’ll look twice at desktop waterfalls now.

Why put an iPod on your waistband when you can sport a bulbous red guitar effect instead? The pioneering digital kidney bean of tone now comes in a battery-powered version called the Pocket Pod.

Five inches wide yet loaded with 300 digital effect presets and a guitar tuner, the Pocket Pod retails for around $129.

We’re off and running on the bus tour. We changed the front page of the site so you can track exactly where the bus is at any given time. We got off to a later start that we had planned but we had to do some promotional filming and get everyone’s stuff on the bus. We also had to clear space because George P. Johnson, the company that helped us with the tour, left us a bunch of goodie baskets and Media Temple, one of our sponsors, gave us each a bag with slippers and some sleepy items in it.

So far we’ve been loading up on some XBox and getting used to being on the bus. Robert has been feed reading (I think we’re going to try and get him to play some Guitar Hero today) and everyone else has been slowly waking up and making faces at the live video feed and various cameras.

Soundsnap.com launched yesterday with 30,000 free audio samples. As far as I can make out, the sounds are both free to download and royalty-free, so you can use them in your own commercial music productions.

Like the popular Freesound Project, the Soundsnap site has audio and waveform previews, so you can see quickly if you’re getting an individual drum hit or an entire groove. Unlike Freesound, Soundsnap has simple licensing terms and a clean layout.

I also like Soundsnap’s Web 2.0-esque “tag cloud” of popular search terms. When I poked around yesterday, drumloop and impact were the biggies, followed by metal, percussion, drop (?), bass, guitar, and piano. I got forest onto the list by searching for it a few times, but I imagine it will drop off quickly as more people discover the site. Anyone over 18 is allowed to post or download original sounds, so it should bulk up quickly.

Soundsnap’s tag cloud shows that most people are still looking for meat-and-potatoes samples, but I bet that will branch out as they upload files.

The quality of the samples was decidedly mixed, but there again the waveform preview helps. I found the wimpy-looking waveforms generally portended poorly recorded sounds. Check it out yourself. Here are quick search buttons for Soundsnap and two other free sound sites I’ve covered.

Despite plunging CD sales and a sour stock performance, Warner Music Group chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. displayed strong optimism during an interview last Wednesday. “This decline is steeper than we expected, but in some ways it means we’ll get to the bottom faster — and after that there’s growth,” Bronfman said during a discussion on CNBC. That’s one way of looking at things. Hmm…..discuss.

Ethan Salwen talks about about photo capture-sharpening practices in AfterCapture and features O’Reilly author Mikkel Aaland.

“There are compelling reasons to apply capture sharpening during the RAW
conversion process,” explains Mikkel Aaland, a San Francisco-based
photographer and digital-imaging expert. “And there are compelling
reasons to turn off a converter’s sharpening function and wait until
the file is in Photoshop.” In accurate, down-to- earth language, Aaland
outlines some of these reasons in his book Photoshop CS2 RAW
(O’Reilly, 2006). However, Aaland encourages photographers not to
hyperventilate over this topic. What’s called for is simply a basic
understanding of how to approach capture sharpening during RAW
conversion (or not) in a way that best meets your specific workflow
needs.”

The entire article is available here.

How about a California seaside photo workshop taught by the award-winning author
of Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography?

Details here.

The folks over at Gizmodo love our Missing Manual series founder, but think the Pogue-man needs a dash of cool. For that, they’re asking readers to wield some Photoshop magic. Says Adam Frucci:

Your challenge is this: make David Pogue as cool as humanly possible. Put him on a Harley with a stogie sticking out of his mouth. Surround him with buxom ladies in a hot tub. You know, cool. Find some pictures of him and use your Photoshop skills and send your best efforts to me at adam@gizmodo.com. Entries are due on Friday, and I’ll post the best results early next week.

Not cool.

P.S. Check out “It’s All Geek to Me” for more ideas.

P.S.S. And David has promised an autographed book to the winner. Check the comments.

One of my jobs as a book editor is to advocate for the reader, making sure the information is accessible independently of whatever inside knowledge I might already possess. So when Derrick sent out an announcement to O’Reilly team that the new Digital Media Newsletter was ready for viewing, rather than just have him send me a copy, I thought I’d sign up to receive it in my inbox like a normal person.

OK, so I already know it’s a nice-looking HTML-liscious round up of the cool stuff our Digital Media group is creating. What I apparently don’t know is how to sign up for an O’Reilly newsletter. So, I cheated and used an inside source. (I asked Derrick how to do it.) But, in my never-ceasing mission of reader advocacy, I share this link to the O’Reilly newsletter subscription management page with the world. Not only can you sign up for the DM missive, but you can click the boxes to have us send you info on O’Reilly conference newsletters, CRAFT or MAKE tidbits, or even that super geek stuff (yeah, you know what I’m talking about).

Arguably the biggest concert company in the US (if not the globe), Live Nation, recently announced that they’ve launched a new online service called Live Nation TV. This new initiative features a vast collection of performances from a large number of venues, including the more intimate House of Blues clubs (which Live Nation purchased last Fall). Hundreds of performance clips and artist interviews are part of the offering, a repository that will grow over time.

The plan is to bring fans a richer concert experience on the Live Nation web site, which with this latest addition will include: concert listings, ticketing purchase opportunities, and premium upgrade options (like VIP pricing — for preferred seating, parking, artist meet & greets, etc). The hope is, with Live Nation TV as a part of this suite of services, that excitement will increase among concert-going fans — encouraging them to purchase more tickets and to be part of the action of the ‘live’ show themselves.

The whole video angle is part of a growing concert industry trend to ‘verticalize’ the concert experience across multiple platforms (i.e. the Internet, mobile devices, the television, satellite radio, and more). We’ve seen companies like Control Room (formerly Network Live) break the mold in this context, and the Knitting Factory also recently annouced plans to move into this general area more broadly themselves. The goal is to generate more excitement for the ‘live’ show experience, sell more tickets, and of course to monetize the concert experience through this wider range of distribution platforms at the same time.

If you’re a frequent user of the free Pandora music service, as I am, you’ve noticed their powerful web interface has been updated. Along with the update are two new announcements providing users access to Pandora’s large music database, and your musical preferences, on the road and in the home.

Take a peek at Missing Manual founder David Pogue’s new TV show, “It’s All Geek to Me.” Each Friday, they’ll air one new episode and one re-run, on two channels: Discovery HD and The Science Channel.Click here to see the complete schedule of episodes!

Preview “It’s All Geek to Me”

If you missed it, see 60 Minutes interview with Negroponte about the teams dreams and the origin of the laptop idea.

We’re excited about the Science Channel’s new show, “It’s All Geek to Me,” a weekly series
starring O’Reilly author and The New York Times personal-technology
columnist David Pogue.

David’s show premieres Friday, May 18, at 8 PM (ET/PT) and
will air every Friday on The Science Channel.

Get tech tips and view exclusive video sneak peeks of of David’s new television show, It’s All Geek to Me.

One of my clients, PassAlong Networks, offers a very robust platform for independent artists called Speakerheart. PassAlong is all about creating new digital media services that empower the connection between artists and their fans (can you tell why they’re a client of mine? ;) ). While the major labels are working to figure out what comes next in their evolution, there’s a massive, thriving independent music market. PassAlong figured out that this burgeoning indie music community needed a highly effective, easy-to-use method of enabling online commerce for artists through a system enabling direct transactions between fans and artists.

Speakerheart is such a service. It enables artists to upload their own albums and tracks & convert their songs to ringtones; in turn, it allows fans to preview songs (and ultimately music videos), and also to purchase tracks, ringtones, CDs, and merchandise if it’s available. Artists can take the Speaker (preview function) and Heart (bookmark function) and transport these functions across the Web via promotional tools known as “Shelves”; these will allow fans to browse the artist’s Speakerheart ’shelf’ on the artist’s web site, a MySpace page, a blog, or wherever HTML is accepted. Another nifty feature (one of my favorites) is that the artist can set their own pricing for a track; no longer are they tied to a 99 cent model where they’ll make a few pennies if they’re lucky. Now, they can set the pricing higher or lower than 99 cents a track (at their discretion); Speakerheart keeps 25 cents as a transaction fee — and the rest goes directly in the artist’s pocket. This means that artists no longer have to sell millions of copies of a song or CD; since they’re keeping the vast majority of the proceeds they can get by quite nicely on smaller volumes. PassAlong is the first company in the space to make variable pricing available for MP3 downloads. Speakerheart offers a big step in the right direction in terms of artist & fan empowerment.

Get the most out of your Sony Alpha DSLR A100 with this essential manual designed for shooters of every skill level.

Sony Alpha DSLR A100: A Better Manual is a PDF so you can read it on your computer or PDA. It is laid out on an 8.5 x 11-inch “page” so if you want to print it, you won’t have to waste paper or spend time configuring your printer.

Read more here.

If you haven’t heard, Paul Davis and friends have just released the second version of Ardour - a free open-source multitrack recorder for Linux and now for OSX. The intro on the site gives a good summary:

“Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-destructive editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a powerful mixer, unlimited tracks/busses/plugins, timecode synchronization, and hardware control from surfaces like the Mackie Control Universal. If you’ve been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Pyramix, or Sequoia, you might have found it.”

2 years in the making, Paul lists some of the new features for this version:

* new user interface featuring:
- more accessible menus
- improved overall GUI design
- instant accelerator key rebinding direct from menus
* destructive recording (”dubbing”) capabilities (as used by the new Harrison Xdubber)
* undo/redo across program startup/shutdown
* redesigned and more stable support for VST
* support for 24 bit integer native files in addition to 32 bit float as in 0.99
* modular support for hardware control surfaces, including the Frontier Designs Tranzport and Mackie Control Protocol devices

If you’re not familiar with the product, you should read the features. Why not download it and try it out? I’ve always found it to be easy to use and rock solid. Paul and his team have done a great job. I’m excited about diving into the upgraded VST support.

If you need help, try the forums on their site. Or, join the Linux Audio User group mailing list.

O’Reilly recently snuck a wacky speech synthesizer into our blogs: Clicking the “listen” link above will play back these words with a robotic voice. As a speech synth enthusiast, I immediately started looking for phrases that would produce funny rhythms. I found the first in Peter Drescher’s recent blog about the Game Developers Conference:

I love the Game Developer’s Conference! the lights, the cameras, the action, all the best and brightest coming together for meets and greets and foods and drinks, it’s exciting, exhilirating, and completely exhausting!

(Robot photo by AZAdam.)

I captured the synth’s output with Ambrosia Wiretap, imported it into Ableton Live, and cooked up the following ditty: