Tag: AUDIO

You can tell somebody is into exercise for the right reason (namely, to stay healthy, and not to get "totally ripped"), when they're willing to look completely goofy while doing it. "After all," says the true health nut, "the more comfortable I am, the further I can run/bike/speed-walk!" Well, sir, meet your new best friend: the Uplink. Designed by Adam Hammerman, this solar-powered personal ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. Watson, I.B.M.'s Jeopardy-playing supercomputer, gets profiled in the New York Times Magazine. See how you fare against a chunk of silicon that can understand ...

With the prevalence of digital music, we've stepped so far away from the physical realm that audio entertainment often seems like an abstraction (Perhaps why so many indie/hipster folk have tried to revive the vinyl LP). In light of that, programmer and artist Tristan Perich decided to bring back the physical -- well, sort of physical -- components of music-making with his "album" '1-bit ...

Aviary has made a name for itself by offering creative types free, Web-based tools like image editors and color palette generators. Not long ago, it got into the audio editing game with Myna, a simple but functional tool for recording and tweaking sound. Now the company is expanding its music creation lineup with 'Roc,' a basic sequencing app for creating loops. 'Music Creator,' as it's ...

The word "adorable" doesn't do justice to the telephone conversation you're about to hear. An old woman named Lorraine recently called a tech-support hotline to ask how to "disable" the annoyingly noisy Pac-Man display that Google embedded on its home page a couple weeks back. In a nearly six-minute back-and-forth with an incredibly patient guy named Brian, the elderly woman tries her darndest to ...

When it comes to modern day auteurs, David Lynch is easily one of the most visionary, having directed such modern classics as 'Blue Velvet' and 'Mulholland Drive.' This week, Lynch adds speaker design to his already varied artistic repertoire (which has included painting, furniture design and collaborating with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse on their 'Dark Night of the Soul' album). Lynch's ...

We're sure that you've all found yourselves in a crowded noisy bar at some point, struggling to hold a conversation with the person sitting next to you. Scottish design student Elaine McLuskey was studying hearing impairments when she discovered during her research that, sometimes, a person's environment can more detrimentally affect hearing than any physical disability. She explained further to ...

The newly independent Rhapsody is moving at lightning speed to steal back some market share by slashing prices and marketing the iPhone's offline playback support of the service. The former Real subsidiary has beaten other would-be killer iPhone music apps to the punch, as it's the first on the block (in the U.S., anyway) allowing users to tag songs they want to play -- even when no Internet ...

Some musical prodigies can listen to a song once, then bang it out, note for note, on a piano. Others can pick out A-flats and C-sharps from the cacophony of rush hour traffic. These rare kinds of aural abilities, though, are no longer restricted to the domain of Mozarts and Mendelssohns, thanks to a new music-transcribing software developed by Spanish engineers. As PopSci explains, the ...

Until now, most music Web apps have been little more than fun distractions, great for making noise, but not very good for serious music production. Audiotool changes that. While it probably won't lead you to ditch Ableton Live, Logic or even Garage Band, it does show how powerful Flash can be in the right hands. Audiotool has a surprising amount of depth for something that exists in a browser ...

Here's the thing about heavy metal. There comes a time in some young men's lives when we they realize they suck at football, don't know anything about cars, are not "intelligent" in the conventional sense and are less than admired by the ladies. At that point, possibly as a function of biology, their hair grows longer, their lips turn to sneers, and their ear drums demand thunderous bass lines, ...

Those of us in the U.S. have been waiting rather impatiently for the arrival of music streaming service Spotify. We were originally told that the top notch music service, which allows you to select what you stream, would hit the states in late 2009. Of course, 2009 has come and gone, and we're already entering spring of 2010 with very little word from the folks at Spotify. Bloomberg News reports ...

As our military and aid organizations scramble to deliver much-needed food and clean water to Haiti, other groups are also sending goods they deem necessary. Like, according to Reuters, 600 solar-powered, talking Bibles to the island nation. The Proclaimer broadcasts a Haitian Creole version of the Holy Word in digital quality audio to 300 people at once. According to the Faith Comes By Hearing ...

Geneva Lab's GenevaSound minimal iPod hi-fis have been around for a while, but now the ultramodern speaker has been shrunk to fit smaller spaces on tighter budgets. Last night at Digital Experience, we got a hands-on demo of the Lilliputian version of this sleek treasure, and it's fair to say that, despite the raucous environment and zebra-striped booth babes competing for our attention, the new ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2009/12/17/design-concepts-avant-garde-audio/'; The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never move from the planning stages to the mass market. ...