Apogee Discontinues Windows Development

As of 2009, Apogee Electronics will no longer develop products for the Microsoft Windows platform. Apogee has made this decision in order to focus all research, development, and support resources on the Apple platform with its unparalleled power and stability. Apple offers a wide range of affordable, powerful desktop and laptop solutions ideally suited for music creation and audio production.

Apogee will continue to develop and manufacture premium converters, microphone preamplifiers, clocking solutions, and supporting technologies that provide world-class solutions for Mac-based production environments.

Windows users can obtain the Apogee sound by connecting Apogee converters to their Windows-compatible audio interface via AES, optical, or S/PDIF. Apogee technical support will continue to support legacy Windows configurations installed on Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Death To Music and Media?

Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow depicts an unfortunate near-future for a handful of media industries being transformed or killed by the Internet. Predicting a large-scale transformation of the music, movie, book, and newspaper industry, Doctorow says, 'The Internet chews up media and spits them out again. Sometimes they get more robust. Sometimes they get more profitable. Sometimes they die.' While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry, for example, Doctorow predicts the 'imminent collapse' of the American newspaper industry because advertisers are uninterested in spending money on the remaining offline readership, such as senior citizens, who prove less valuable.

Last.fm Shoots Down Rumors Over U2 Album Leak

Internet radio site Last.fm has denied reports that it told the record industry which of its members had listened to a leaked U2 album. The site claims the entire story, published by Techcrunch, was made up. Last week the record industry became extremely concerned after U2's forthcoming album appeared on several torrent file sharing sites. While there is no way any users could have acquired the album through Last.fm, the site's statistics suggest that more than 8,000 users have played the unreleased album on their machines.

A New Direction for Sound

Ultrasonics have been successfully used in medicine to break up gall stones, but from a consumer point of view our electronics provide relatively little control over how our sounds behave. In a hi-fi system, loudspeakers are still spreading waves in all directions (possibly upsetting the neighbours in the process).

Woody Norris has invented a system which provides much more control over sound waves. In fact, his speakers are so directional that you could listen to music in bed at full volume and the person beside you would not hear a thing.

In the following TED video, Woody explains a bit about his invention. One of his most avid early adopters was the US miliary - they used his device to create the sound of troop manoeuvres on a hillside a mile away, while the actual troops could proceed unheard. An even better tactic was to broadcast choice verses from the Koran straight into the ears of a suspected terrorist - the voice of God is now under military control...

Internet Killed the Satellite Radio Star

As Sirius XM faces bankruptcy, Slate's Farhad Manjoo reports that the company has bigger problems than just the end of cheap credit. While it has what seems like a pretty great service — the world's best radio programming for just a small monthly fee — Sirius XM has been eclipsed by something far cheaper and more convenient: the Internet. Load up Pandora or the Public Radio Tuner on your iPhone, and you've got access to a wider stream of music than you'll ever get through satellite. So forget the satellites, the special radios, and the huge customer acquisition costs, advises Manjoo, and instead focus on getting Howard Stern, Oprah, the NFL, and MLB on every Internet-connected device on the market at very low prices.

Music Xray™ Makes Artists' Marketing Challenges Easier

Music Xray works to give artists the ability to control, optimize and present essential statistical, analytical, biographical, review and tagging information about their song within one song capsule called a Music Xray. Over the past eighteen months, Platinum Blue Music Intelligence Inc has quietly licensed and developed music information retrieval technology to help song owners streamline their efforts in promoting their music. Platinum Blue's initiative to alter the music promotion landscape is called Music Xray and is now available at www.musicxray.net.

The majority of people working in the music industry today suffer from the inefficiencies of the marketplace - the challenge of getting a song into the hands of the right person, the costly promotion of songs, the difficulty in reaching their audience, etc. Millions of dollars are spent ineffectively. Great music goes unheard. Music Xray address these challenges by capturing the things artists need to measure, monitor and grow the market demand for their songs into a simply designed, widget-like song capsule.

Bass Drum Condenser Mic

The BDM-01 is a brand new bass drum microphone that has a condenser capsule hand built by Milab in Sweden and provides superb attack and high-frequency response, especially when compared to dynamic capsules, which are found in most bass drum microphones.

The electronics have been specifically designed to handle the power of the most hard-hitting drummers - the BDM-01 takes 155 dB without audible distortion. The dynamic range, frequency response, sensitivity and pop filters have been optimised for the sound and power of the bass drum and other bass instruments.

http://www.milabmic.com/