Key Of Grey

September 6th, 2010 - I've had my M-Audio Firewire 410 for a long time. I picked it up in 2004 when I needed a mobile recording solution and I still use it. Lately though, I've been having audio drop outs. The software mixer will register audio output, and the card itself will light up its LEDs, but no audio will play. I can unplug and replug the interface back in, and it still won't register. What's especially weird, is that it will be ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Make Magazine September 2nd, 2010 - Have you ever seen those sweet custom-molded earphones and actually looked up how much it costs to have them molded, on top of the price of earphones themselves? I don't doubt that they're worth the price, but I certainly can't afford them. I do, however, have a pair of old Shure generic in ear monitors (IEM) that are in need of new sleeves. Make Magazine has a tutorial on how to roll your own out ... Read More

Photo courtesy of iamaruntimeerror August 24th, 2010 - Gizmodo has a pretty damning article on the state of cheap earbuds. In the article, it outlines how all the companies making fashion earbuds likely use the same manufacturer and don't even have inhouse designers or engineers. Companies in China offer a-la-carte choices, and all you have to do is order a few thousand to sell, and you can have whatever you want made. I'm sure you all know that this kind of stuff happens with ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Native Instruments August 16th, 2010 - I'm a big fan of Native Instruments. I like their FM8 and Absynth instruments, and I have a fairly large Kontakt library. One of my next purchases will be Maschine, and I like Traktor Pro quite a bit. Well, today brings exciting news because they've finally released their own standalone controller, the Traktor S4 system. It's a hardware controller with a built in audio card (no doubt using their line of very well regarded audio ... Read More

July 23rd, 2010 - A few days ago, I put out a call on my Twitter account for suggestions of mic preamps that would work well with an M-Audio Sputnik tube microphone. I got several great suggestions, and Randy Coppinger came to the rescue with an awesome Sputnik test he had posted on SoundCloud (embedded below). In the test audio, Randy uses an M-Audio Sputnik tube condenser on 6 mic preamps: Martech MSS-10, True Systems P-Solo, Millennia Media TD-1, Universal Audio Solo 610, ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Sanyo July 22nd, 2010 - Sanyo's Eneloop series is one of the best bets for rechargeable batteries. Thanks to 300Guitars (great site for guitar tech by the way), I found out that they've expanded to the very niche market of guitar pedals. The Pedal Juice, is a lithium ion rechargeable battery pack that will run 9v to all your guitar pedals. It has two output jacks that you can use to daisy chain power to all your pedals. Sanyo says ... Read More

Photo courtesy of ssp July 18th, 2010 - When Motu Released their Moto BPM software, a small contingent of fans were disappointed that Motu didn't also release a hardware interface that mirrored the software's computer-generated eye candy. An even smaller contingent went out and did something about it...well one person really. User ssp on the MotuNation forum created his own using the MIDIbox platform. From the layout, to the silk-screened graphics, the attention to detail is amazing. The Moto BPM software is a ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Mike Walters July 13th, 2010 - That awesome Superman-coloured device pictured above is the invention of mad-genius tinkerer Mike Walters. He sent me the link to his creation and it actually took me a while to figure out what was going on. The Drumssette is the result of a disassembled Tascam four-track recorder that's been repurposed as an "analog" drum machine. Each of the four tracks has a drum sound which is played on a continuous loop. It has a 16 ... Read More

July 7th, 2010 - Peter Cocteau over at nxtasy.org has posted the software he created for a sample-based drum machine hacked into a Lego Mindstorm NXT unit. Using the NXT brain and some rotary dials, you can program some pretty nice sounding drums. I'm pretty impressed by the sound quality from such a supposedly lo-fi device. Check out the link below for more information and to download the code. I might have to get a Mindstorm kit just to make this thing! nxtasy.org ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Ikea Hacker July 4th, 2010 - With Ikea's wide variety of products and comparatively affordable prices, it's no wonder that their products are ripe for the "hacking". Ikea Hacker has a tutorial for making your own speaker stand out of a table leg, and a shelf. I like the idea of using the leg for threading the cables through, but I'm not sure about the benefits of the shelf as the base. If you look at serious audiophile speakers, they usually ... Read More