O'Reilly Digital Media

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.

I see Visual VST/i Programming: Synthedit is out now. I haven’t sighted it yet, but it includes some of my custom SynthEdit modules, so it is quite fun for me. SynthEdit is a shareware application for PC that is a kind of modular synthesizer; it gained a lot of traction early because it had one killer feature in particular: you could save your creation as a VST and sell it or use it in other sequencer or studio applications. (Actually, it gained traction because it is fun.) I

SynthEdit comes out of New Zealand and has a public API, which has meant that there is quite a rich variety of custom modules, programmed with C++. SynthEdit modules are notoriously CPU hungry: a combination of a design preference that disliked zipper noise and the fact that it is quite easy to make big creations. The custom modules go a long way to help performance but still SynthEdit has a legacy problem that many modules are not compiled to use the SSE2 or SSE3 pipelining instructions of the recent generation of CPUs. So it is good to see that the book has a section on optimization: I see in the sample page of the link above that my 2 cents on optimization made it (which is to set your interface up to discourage long release times) so I suppose I must consider the authors very sound fellows!

From the look of the table of contents, Fortune, Schoffhauzer and Haupt (who are all active on the Synthedit group at Yahoo! Groups: most of the modules are sourced from participants there, it is a great community) have a useful book on their hands.

There has been a long (five years?) wait for the next version of SynthEdit. The developer puts an absolute priority on getting any problems with the current version fixed fast, and has worked on a couple of releases of the API first. Apparently the new version of the API will be available real soon now, but it is obviously a labour of love and pride, not of deadlines, which I find pretty admirable. What would be great would be some book on the API too, but that would have to wait for the new release, and perhaps be too specialized.

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.

When I worked in Silicon Valley, I realized after a short while that a big part of my job as a manager amounted to finding ways to help people be creative. After all, if you have a collection of very smart employees, it’s wasteful to just tell them what to do - they probably know more than you do about the challenge at hand. So I started collecting my own thoughts on the subject, and also looked into a lot of the academic literature (in recent decades a sizable field of creativity studies has grown up). I guess I shouldn’t have been, but I was struck by the similarity of my personal experience and the research. It appears that many if not most creative people work in roughly the same way.

But only recently did I come across a slim, decidedly non-academic volume that, it turns out, pretty much said it all back in the 1940’s: “A Technique for Producing Ideas”, by James Webb Young.

Popular Mechanics have a great Hey Martha article 25 Skills Every Man Should Know. How did I rate, as red-blooded Aussie Urban Hobbyist keen to get more analog skills in this digital world?

1. Patch a radiator hose

Oh, that would assume I had a car. Almost no-one I know has a car, one friend does, and I think Marcus at the office does. But I think I can do that. Tick

2. Protect your computer

I protect my computer by trying to use free or open source software where possible. Hackers and virus-writers go after mass software, by and large. Tick

3. Rescue a boater who has capsized

I learned surf rescue at school. I wonder if they mean rescue like take to the shore or rescue like swim out and right the boat? Hmmm. I am much more buoyant now. Half tick

4. Frame a wall

I don’t even know what this means. Does it mean I could put a wall frame up. I’ve helped making walls before, so I guess so. Tick

5. Retouch digital photos

Tick

6. Back up a trailer

Again, a car would probably come in handy. I have backed up trailers before, but Australia is actually full of trailer-backing-up experts who will kindly insist on taking over the job at the slightest wobble. Half tick

7. Build a campfire

Are they kidding? In Australia? Start a fire in our droughts and you can set the country on fire. The ability to build a campfire should be a criminal offense here. Our Parks service thoughtfully provides gas barbecues along the highways for this. And who would go camping with all our snakes? No Tick

8. Fix a dead outlet

I can certainly check a fuse. But our power is 240 volts, not something you want to be poking around with. (Actually, I probably would be able to do something.) Half Tick

9. Navigate with a map and compass

And go where, exactly? East is the Pacific Ocean. North is bush. West is bush. South is bush. When I lived in Taiwan I used to get terribly lost, until I realized that I was unconsciously checking the direction using shadows: I had no idea I used shadows for direction until then. Nature’s compass. But I am OK with maps, from navigating when flying with my dear old dad. Half tick

10. Use a torque wrench

Oh, now the pretense at not being a complete girly boy falls into a shambles. I don’t even know what a torque wrench is. No tick

11. Sharpen a knife

I can sharpen carving knives, but my success with other knives is not good. Half tick

12. Perform CPR

Again, we learned this in our life-saving training at school. But I wouldn’t choose myself if I needed it. Tick

13. Fillet a fish

Sure. But some fish are more tricky than others to do well. It really is a job for the professional. Tick

14. Maneuver a car out of a skid

See 1 Half Tick

15. Get a car unstuck

If your car is stuck in mud here, you probably have a bigger problem than the mud: you have to watch out for flash floods or crocodiles. Half Tick

16. Back up data

I use web-based software for most things to do with important data, so I don’t have local copies. But for my hobby stuff, it is a good reminder. Tick

17. Paint a room

Tick

18. Mix concrete

I think I can remember. Tick

19. Clean a bolt-action rifle

Guns are illegal in the cities here; the government had a big buy-back project a few decades ago that was very successful. I suppose things are different in the USA, which is so full of bears and the vicious coyote and the varmint, and which is surrounded by neighbouring countries who are likely to invade at the drop of a fur-skin cap or sombrero, hence the need for a well-formed militia. I gather the North has been having trouble with the South too. I’ve never even touched a gun.No Tick

20. Change oil and filter

No Tick

21. Hook up an HDTV

I don’t watch TV except for Dr Who, and that not on HDTV, so I expect I could. Half Tick

22. Bleed brakes

No Tick

23. Paddle a canoe

Tick

24. Fix a bike flat

Tick

25. Extend your wireless network

If extend means to add another node, the sure. If it means wander around the house trying to find some position for the receiver that actually makes it everywhere that people go, then sure. Tick

So my score: 16 out of 25. I think my three brothers would each have gotten almost 25/25 each: they are the butch ones. But the article does strke me again with the same impression I get whenever I am in the USA: how gadget-centered people are. I suppose that is a pretty poor criticism for an article from that magazine. An accompanying article justifies the article in terms of are people becoming less handy which is a fair question.

However, the differences may be that people are becoming more handy at small-room skills and less handy at large-workshop skills. In Taiwan, the DIY stores provide an assembly service because it is not cultural to DIY. But I notice in the local hobby stores here, especially for modeling, that almost all the customers were Chinese, so I don’t think it is fair to say that the urge to build isn’t cross-cultural. But what is interesting about the Popular Mechanics list is that almost all of them are useless skills for me to have: urbanization is what deskills people. We are in the age where we should be asking “Can you use a Dremel?” rather than “Can you use a torque wrench?”

What about “Can you shape and fibreglass a surfboard?” Or “Can you sew a patch into your jeans?” or “Can you trap a spider?” or “Can you fight fires?” or “Can you remove ticks from pets?” They are more practical mechanical skills for us here!

Finally, when I lived in the country and needed something done, the thing to do was to ask a woman. It is not so tragic if men don’t know all these skills, because they are only half the population. I guess that goes without saying.

Recently I needed to develop a storyboard in a hurry for a TV commercial. Problem: I can’t draw. Solution: FrameForge 3D Studio 2, a pre-visualization tool popular with film & TV directors. Unexpected extra: Flow! I loved working with this tool.

I found that it was so intuitively designed that I was able to learn the basics in an hour or so. And shortly after that I was using it to generate and explore new ideas faster and more easily than I could have otherwise.

But helping non-illustrators to produce usable 3D sketches is just part of what FrameForge Studio does.

Podcast producer Daniel Steinberg has a unique audio editing technique: he uses a Wacom pen controller in one hand and a Countour Design Shuttle controller in the other. I asked him to write a tutorial on his system, which obviously works well because he cranks out a huge amount of high-quality material. We hope to have it online soon.

In the meantime, I was intrigued enough to order my own Wacom pad. DealNews.com found them on sale at J&R Music, so in bargain-hunter mode, I also peeked at the site’s audio clearance section, where I found this beauty: 8GB of royalty-free WAV files for $9.97.

For ten bucks, I got 10,000 royalty-free sounds in WAV format. The catch? Using them on commercial productions requires displaying the Magix logo.

The Magix Sound Pool Collection 2005 DVD is listed as a Windows product, but in reality it’s a two-sided DVD containing 10,282 16-bit WAV files and a handful of documents designed to import those files into Magix’s music-arranging programs. I had no problem loading them into my Mac.

The package arrived today and I’ve been plowing through the sounds with RapidPreview. (I’ll soon switch to AudioFinder, which has a killer rename-by-BPM feature.) Many of the sounds are goofy, and the pitched ones are often repeated in six keys, but at a tenth of a penny a piece, I’m still smiling.

What audio bargains have you found lately?

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.

I’ve been playing with the Cepstral speech synthesizer, which offers a unique twist: You can buy individual voices at bargain rates. The standard voices cost just $29.99, and the special-effect ones, which I find have more creative potential, are just $6.99. The synth runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, and even Solaris, and sounds at least as good as the one on this site. (Which you can hear by clicking the Listen link above.)

You can even add effects, including Dizzy Droid, Liquid Love, Old Robot, PVC Pipe, Spacetime Echo, and Split Personality. Here are the $6.99 Damien and Whispery voice reciting a phrase my 5-year-old son suggested, monster house darkness power super monkey fruit pizza:

• Damien Voice (MP3)
• Whisper Voice with Echo (MP3)

Another fun twist is that the downloadable version nags you to pay up by inserting random comments into the speech output. For example, when I rendered a phrase with the drill sergeant-like Shouty voice, it interjected, "This voice is not licensed! Purchase a license!"

This preference pane shows the Cepstral voices I’ve installed. You can adjust their pitch range and add effects, but it would be interesting to be able to adjust the "age" and gender as well.

Cepstral’s FAQ page explains how to render speech output into WAV files using the Terminal, but you can also use a streamripper program such as Audio Hijack.

For more on creative speech synthesis, check out our Digital Media Insider Podcast #3: Singing Computers.

Here’s the wackiest warning sticker I’ve ever seen on a musical instrument. What’s stranger is it was from a keyboard designed for little kids! The image below is a scan of the sticker laid on top of a photo from the company’s website.

Insert your punchline here….

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.

The German webzine “heise mobil” has an excellent 8 (web)page article on the XO (English translation provided), A good review of the hardware, the XO’s unique dual-mode display, the innovative software (including Etoys!) and the cooperating developers and sponsors.

I have created a variety of views for the Audio sessions for this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (much faster than waiting for GDC's site). Even if you are not a composer or sound designer, there are plenty of sessions worth checking out:

• All Audio Sessions in chronological order
  
• Lectures
• Mobile Audio Sessions
• Panels
• Roundtables
• Sponsored Sessions
• IAsig recommended sessions (more about The IAsig)

Conveniently formated for printing and in other formats such as iCal.

And don't forget to stop by our panel on Mobile Audio Has Gone Bizerk. See you at the show!

(Dabble DB was used to create views from the GDC Audio Track)

You know how I am…I never recommend gear, I just wax all philosophical about theories and such.

However.

I am currently so stinking excited I can’t sit still!!!!

Don’t tell the other guys, we jam tonight, and I have a–no, no, not “A..”
no, I have THE–coolest secret weapon ever. I’m giddy.

It analyzes what your guitar is playing, and based on that, sings harmony with you. Correctly. Musically. Amazingly. This is not just a matter of breadboarding a circuit and shoving it into the market’s soft underbelly…this thing is WARM, musical, and Beautiful.

They call it the Digitech Vocalist Live 2. Yes, I know, the name is unspectacular, and yes, it looks like an even less spectacular ’80’s early digital crummy stomp box. But I’m tellin’ ya, this is a “push-one-button, sound-like-God” box.

Have I earned your trust by keeping quiet so long? It doesn’t matter. You can click on the demo, or you can miss out…

CLICK ON THE PICTURE. LISTEN TO THE DEMO.

Sophie, a project to create multimedia books, is now available in Alpha release. Based on Squeak, Sophie is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Sophie is not a tool to render traditional paper books to read on your PC. The Sophie project is aimed to go beyond print and utilize the interactive capabilities of the personal computer. From the Sophie Project site:

Sophie is a digital media assembly tool which allows you to combine images, text, video, and audio into a single multimedia document. It is an easy-to-use program that let’s you put together documents, slideshows, presentations, annotated videos, and more.

Sophie is based on the idea of authoring digital multimedia documents that you can publish for others to experience. It uses standard interface ideas that will be familiar to users of multimedia authoring tools such as Sony Vegas, Adobe Flash or Adobe Premiere: a time-line for time-based media, drag and drop of resources on a paged book and a traditional menu bar.

Usable right out of the box, Sophie comes from a highly experienced and dedicated team, but don’t expect this version to be free of bugs. The release will give you a good idea of the product and of what’s to come. The Mac and Windows version is a bit farther along than the Linux version, but the team is quickly fixing bugs on the Linux version, too.

I think the team’s real challenge is not technical but business: how does one promote a new multimedia format that will compete against predominant formats such as PDF (Adobe has just released PDF format), Adobe Flash and other eBook formats?

Why don’t you try it out and let’s share some Sophie books. It looks like fun!

Links:
Download Sophie
Sophie tutorials
Institute for the Future of the Book

Annoyed by the handling noise my pocket voice recorder picks up, I bought some external mics last fall. Not only did the noise disappear, the recordings also gained much more bass and stereo depth.

The mics I got were Sound Professionals SP-TFB-2s, which someone recommended in this field-recording forum. Interestingly, the TFB-2s are designed to fit in your ears, using the shape of your outer ears and head to create a binaural image. When I wear them, people just assume I’m wearing ear buds, which is great for covert recording.

The TFB-2 mics, with and without optional windscreen. Installing them in your ears takes some practice and a mirror at first.

The mics use an omnidirectional pattern, which produces a very spacious sound, but picks up lots of reverberation indoors. You can hear the effect in this recording of metronomes at the NAMM musical instrument show. The first part of the recording uses the voice recorder’s built-in mics. Then I switch to the in-ear mics.

• Metronomes (MP3)

Here’s another before-and-after example—a bagpipe troupe from the opening day at NAMM. You can hear the drums overwhelm the voice recorder’s automatic gain control, but the difference in frequency response and imaging is obvious.

• Bagpipes with Onboard Mics (340KB MP3)
• Bagpipes with TFB-2 Mics (948KB MP3)

I put some more TFB-2 examples in the Digital Media Insider podcast about portable recorders, including one recording I made outdoors, where I think these mics work best.

I got the beige color; the mics are also available in black.

What happy recording discoveries have you made?

Trade shows can be murder on your ears. Especially music shows like NAMM, where every booth is trying to out-crank the next. This year, I made two discoveries there, one scary and one pleasing. First, the scary one.

My first stop, at 9:30 on the day the show opened, was at the House Ear Institute booth, where they were giving free hearing screenings. I see this booth at every audio show, but it’s always booked up. This time I got right in, and was sent back to the soundproofed trailer with three other guys. One said he made the booth his first stop at every show.

After peering into our ears with an otoscope, a technician sent us into the next room, where we sat down with headphones and a button. He didn’t explain the test very well, but I soon realized the goal was to click the button whenever I heard a series of three beeps, which played back at different pitches and levels in first one ear, then the other.

The headphones, which looked like something out of a grade-school library, didn’t fit too well. And the trailer wasn’t soundproofed enough to keep out the piano demo in the next booth (coincidentally playing the same frequency range as the test tones). So I wasn’t confident in my guesses, but I figured the test would still tell me something.

This electron microscope image of an inner ear shows the hair bundles projecting from the surface of the cell. (Courtesty HEI.)

Leaving the trailer, I received a graph of my results. As I stared at the slight dip in the 4–6kHz range (still within the normal range for my age), the guy next to me said, “Want to see a bad one?”

His graph looked like a ski slope. "That’s what 25 years of mixing live bands will do to you," he said, wisfully.

Another guy noted that his hearing performance had actually improved since the previous year. (HEI keeps your results on file so you can compare graphs.) We wondered if he’d taken the test later in the show last year, when his ears had already become fatigued.

Looking back at my graph, my first thought was, “Oh $#!+! My audio career is over if my hearing isn’t perfectly flat.” I wondered wildly if I should reduce the 4–6kHz range in my mixes to compensate for the deficiency. I later learned it doesn’t work that way:

“In sensory hearing loss from age or exposure to noise, the apparent loudness does not shift with thresholds,” writes Dr. Halpin. “You just lose the quiet tones. To adjust mix EQ based on thresholds is not a valid concept. Instead, you should be thinking that when it sounds good to you, it will sound good to the audience.”

Which brings me to the happy hearing discovery of the show. In his booth, sound designer Gary Garritan was demonstrating his new software synthesizers using Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones. Designed for drummers, these hearing protectors with integrated speakers reduce ambient noise up to 28dB. Putting them on, I was enveloped in an oasis of quiet. It was hard to ignore the bear-like grip on my skull, but reviews say it relaxes over time. They reminded me of some industrial ear muffs I wore while mowing lawns as a teenager — very likely the reason my hearing hasn’t deteriorated more.

The Extreme Isolation headphones are now on my shopping list, and I know what my first stop will be at NAMM 2008.

There’s a fantastic “must read” article gracing the cover of this month’s Fast Company (February 2007) entitled “Music’s Secret Money Machine” talking about a company called Music Today that connects artists and fans — and is making a boatload of money for artists. Artists like John Legend, Gwen Stefani, Dave Matthews Band, and hundreds of others are taking control over their relationship with their fans in ways that are not only bringing them closer to those fans — but are also bringing the artists additional revenues.

From the article: “They (the artists) found that the Internet has become not only a channel for distributing music but one for insinuating bands into the lives of their most enraptured fans. They found that the efficiencies of the Web are such that for very little cost, an artist can build his own online operation and outsource everything, from peddling “merch” to boosting the fan club to ticketing and marketing. And they found a full-service company that had built an infrastructure so vast and so efficient that no one could rival it.” That company is Music Today, started by a forward-thinking long-time artist manager named Coran Capshaw (Dave Matthews Band, Phish & more). The industry no longer hinges on the CD in terms of revenues — there’s a vast fortune to be made in touring, merchandising, and in fan subscriptions. And Music Today is leading the charge with a cost-effective machine and infrastructure that enables artists to take control of these facets of their career (and much more) in a turnkey fashion.

If you’re interested in new models of commerce for artists, you’ll want to read this article in full; Music Today is miles ahead of anyone in this space — and this article does a great job of providing specifics.

People ask some revealing questions when they hear that I review music technology gear.

• “Do you get to keep it?”
• “Don’t advertisers get better reviews?”
• “Do manufacturers ever tuck a $100 bill in the box to influence you?”

Canadian music journalist Kyle David Paul wondered about these issues and more after reading my article “The Secret Life of a Product Reviewer” and sent me some inspired follow-up questions. You can read my answers in his column for Inside Pulse, Let’s Rave On: Testing Products with David Battino, or on his blog.

Kyle relates some of my review philosophies to his own experience grappling with a high-tech audio product, concluding that publishing his thoughts on it would be “slander,” because he hadn’t invested the time I do. But I don’t agree. What better time to have the beginner’s mind I mentioned than during the first few hours with a product? That’s part of the reason Harmony Central’s community reviews work. (They’re actually called Pro Reviews, oddly.) A recent study claimed that Americans mess with new gear for only 20 minutes on average before giving up. And after all, Kyle did note that his impressions of the product were his initial ones.

(Magnifying glass image from Open Clip Art.org.)

Brad Fuller’s article “Inside Pandora: Web Radio That Listens to You” went behind the scenes of the Internet radio station with the human touch. As Brad explained, Pandora’s playlists are shaped by a staff of expert music analysts. Now one of those analysts has launched a podcast that goes inside the music itself.

The working title Pandora Podcast is the only bland thing about the show. In each fast-moving but clear episode, host Kevin Seal demonstrates some of the “dimensions” by which Pandora analysts classify songs. Episode 1 explores types of vocal harmony; Episode 2 demonstrates drum patterns. Each episode starts with a basic definition and then rapidly walks through short audio examples to reinforce the concepts.

One listener compared the effect to developing a greater appreciation for wine after hearing an wine expert talk. Another wrote, “Is the ultimate goal to turn us all into music analysts? Fine by me.”

An especially nice touch is the list of Pandora song links in each podcast’s show notes. Although the music clips to which they lead don’t always reflect the point of the episode, it’s a quick way to learn more about each artist. Highly recommended.

Have you ever driven past your favorite arena or club in town, and noticed that somehow you missed one of your favorite groups who just performed there a couple of nights earlier? Or maybe you heard about the show around the watercooler - the next day. Frustrating right? Well say goodbye to that challenge.

A new widget has become available, OnTour, courtesy of PassAlong Networks, that when deployed ensures you’ll never miss one of your favorite bands when they come through town. OnTour is available both for the Mac and the PC (in fact it was #1 on Apple.com not long after it launched in September). Once loaded onto your system, it notices what songs you’ve downloaded onto your hard drive (which artists) & then matches that info with the Pollstar touring database to alert you when one of your favorite artists will be performing in your area. It’s really pretty cool! (Full disclosure: PassAlong is one of my clients, and I’ve been working in support of OnTour directly myself).

OnTour launched with Barenaked Ladies in September of this year; in fact, OnTour just won the Billboard DEMXX award for Best Use of Technology in Service of Artists two weeks ago in LA. Other touring artists and labels will soon be making use of OnTour, and encouraging their fans to download it too.

Building on Frederic Vavrille’s Liveplasm site (a visual search engine he created 3 years ago), Mr. Vavrille has created a visually-entertaining web radio where listeners select music from a mood-energy matrix or from a genre selection box. Manuel Lima states that Mr. Vavrille combined sound from Pandora and Last.FM with Liveplasm to create a dynamic mind-map of related music. He calls it Musicovery

Some have reported that it doesn’t work quite right - songs won’t stop and the classification needs work. But I think it’s a whole lot of fun! And, you have to admit it’s a great looking piece of human-computer engineering.

links: Inside Pandora
Technorati tags: musicovery pandora Last.FM

One of the great things about working for O’Reilly is that I get to check out the latest books. Yesterday I got a PDF copy of iPod: The Missing Manual, 5th Edition, by New York Times Circuits writer J.D. Biersdorfer. My mission: to extract some of the tips and present them in HTML so you can see them too.

On the surface, that seemed like a simple cut-and-paste exercise, but as soon as I cracked open the PDF, I was struck by the book’s elegant layout. It was colorful, concise, and clear. This is a manual?! I ended up reading quite a bit of it instead of just trawling along with the text-selector. I was particularly impressed that some of the screenshots seemed to have been taken this week; it really felt up-to-date.

Biersdorfer says she wrote the book for “beginner to intermediate iPodders of all ages,” but it has extensive coverage of iTunes tricks as well, quite a few of which were new to me.

As background before I began the tip extraction, O’Reilly’s Sara Peyton forwarded this recent interview with Biersdorfer. It’s not often that you get to see the humanity behind a manual, so I thought I’d share it here.

I spent the last month making my own home-made USB control surface: a Velleman USB IO board, a multiplexor board of my own, some home-made pressure pads/ribbon controllers, and various pots, switches and plugs for external pedals and controllers. Looks good in a brown leatherette upholstered box. I’m working on programing the USB to MIDI software so that it can be an input for VSTs. Lots of fun.

Then, I return to the office this week only to discover that while I have been away, our friend Gilles from Cordanova had popped over from France to Sydney to deliver a Cordanova VMX Studio MIDI/USB control surface. Gilles used to work at my office when he started designing the VMX, so it was interesting to see which of the ideas that people had floated about had made it into the final design: I had suggested that it should have at least one big knob and a slider so that it could function as a DJ control surface as well as for synths and mixing, and also have a variety of switches and knobs, and I am happy these made it through.

But it is embarrassing to see how much better build quality the commercial product has over my home-made one.