Thicket Transforms Your Apple Device into an Abstract Instrument and Visualizer
By Kira Grunenberg Not long into the Music Tech Fest’s final day in Cambridge, all serious work came to a temporary standstill with a single presentation, and not just due to sound cutting through a silent room. “Thicket,” an interactive app for iPod, iPhone, and iPad, is the brainchild of “creative technologist and artist,” Joshue
Patatap Brings Joyous Visual Music to Your Browser
Press any key, A to Z or spacebar, and turn up speakers. We like instructions like this, but little did we know the next 15 minutes would be a captivating sensory overload of sound, color, and graphics. Patatap is a visual music browser application controlled by pressing alphabetical characters on a computer keyboard, which trigger
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Roundware: Connecting Spaces, People, and Sensory Experiences
By Kira Grunenberg This past weekend, on a single floor of the Microsoft New England Research and Development Labs, the Music Tech Fest, Boston edition, crammed in three full and continuous days of presentations, demos, questions and answers. One of many laudable presentations from the festival was Roundware, presented by sound artist and musician Halsey Burgund.
Can Pono Change the Face of Mainstream Audio Quality?
By Jason Epstein “WE’RE NOT CHANGING MUSIC. WE’RE LETTING MUSIC CHANGE YOU”, is the message emblazoned across Pono’s landing page. PonoMusic promises to take artist-approved master recordings and put them in the listener’s hands, with fidelity anywhere from 6 to 30 times that of a regular MP3 file. This is Neil Young’s (a man who is
Traktor Audio 2: Tiny, Loud, and Portable
By Ruben Lone Native Instruments has released the newest, smallest device in its line of digital DJ hardware, the Traktor Audio 2. As “the world’s smallest audio interface,” the Audio 2 is an ultra-compact, high-quality sound card, processing audio at 24-bit/48 kHz. Made for use with Traktor’s iOS app Traktor DJ, as well as the Traktor
Soundwave Doubles Down with Desktop Music Capture Update
By Kira Grunenberg You might wonder why a widely successful mobile-only app would expand to the stationary side of the technologic border. That’s what Soundwave has done with their most recent update, now available in the iTunes App and Google Play stores. However, the tagline for the update, “Soundwave moves to capture desktop music,” is assuredly