As Allan points out, there are two very strong pieces of evidence for this: 1) Allan emailed Robert, who told him Magnetosphere had been sold to a "third party", and 2) a twitter from Digg founder (and amateur Apple rumor mill) Kevin Rose on Sept. 2nd describing the new visualizer as "planet like objects wrapping around each other w/stars/light streams". As you can see in the image above, this sounds like a pretty apt description of Magnetosphere, which visualizes sound as particle explosions like supernovas. The Barbarian Group website's page for Magnetosphere says that "We've had a ton of interest in it, and we've got some exciting plans, but it's gonna take us a couple months to make it all happen."
Of course, nothing is confirmed, but it all points in the right direction. Personally, I'd love to see Magnetosphere on every iTunes user's screen, and not just because Robert is an amazing artist and also always gracious and helpful when I email him because my Processing particle system animations don't look as cool as his. The world just needs stuff this cool-looking everywhere.
More audio news on the Mac today: the undeniably cute, surprisingly functional TapeDeck recording app (yes, it looks exactly like a cassette deck, and works pretty much the same way) has been updated to version 1.1. The headline features in this version are improved export capability (to most QuickTime-supported audio formats, including MP3 and AIFF), the option to record high-quality at 320kbps, and built-in YouTube exporting, complete with a charming tape-playing video.
TapeDeck's simplicity, and the very easy (possibly too easy) YouTube export, are bound to have plenty of Mac users releasing their quick & dirty audio recordings to the world in short order. TapeDeck (Universal Binary) is $25 and a demo is available at the tapedeckapp.com site.
Video of the YouTube export in action after the jump.
In the Mac audio software market, Ambrosia's WireTap Studio made a splash last year when it launched, offering lossless capture and audio editing with a fresh interface (and competing with incumbent heavyweight Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba). Although it aimed at being an end-to-end solution for basic podcasting and audio production needs, the limitations of the built-in editor meant that high-end and pro users still needed to export from WTS to complete a project elsewhere. Since most pros end up in another editing environment anyway, why not have the underlying capture engine from WTS available to any recording application, and turn your Mac into a virtual patch bay?
That's the concept behind Ambrosia's new pro-level (and pro-priced at $129US) capture tool, WireTap Anywhere. Rather than the two-channel recording options of WTS, with the WireTap Anywhere preference pane you can route and mix multiple audio sources and deliver them to the recording application of your choice. Want Skype, iTunes and QuickTime sources all to end up in Peak or GarageBand? WTA has your back. You can check out several demo movies at Ambrosia's site or download the 13MB demo.
I've experimented with several combinations of recording software and application audio capture tools (Soundflower, Übercaster, Call Recorder, Audacity and AHP among them) and I've yet to find the perfect setup that allows me to combine live audio chat from Skype with music or sound effects played in QuickTime or iTunes, all audible to the remote call participants while being recorded cleanly and latency-free on my end; Übercaster comes awfully close, but the current 1.5.5 version still has issues with Skype dropouts. I'm looking forward to giving WTA a test run to see if it can meet the challenge.
Since switching to the Mac full-time last year, my only remaining complaint has been the abysmal (and finicky) FLAC support in iTunes. FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec, is an open source lossless compression format that offers a nice compromise betweeen storing the uncompressed music file -- which is very large -- and converting the file to a lossy format like MP3 or AAC. Apple has its own lossless format, Apple Lossless, and Apple Lossless is great -- but I have lots and lots of live performances archived in FLAC and haven't wanted to spend the time converting all those files so that I can play everything in iTunes. About 6 months ago, I pretty much gave up and started just ripping CDs in Apple Lossless and using Max to convert favorite albums or performances.
Reader Mitchell wrote in and told us about Fluke, which aims to be an easier way to play FLAC files in iTunes. I've used other XiphQT based solutions, but none have worked as well as Fluke. Install Fluke and then open up a FLAC file with it (or drag your FLAC files to the icon) and it automatically runs a script that tricks iTunes into adding a FLAC file to the library. For the most part, tagging and even album art will be converted -- though I did have to add track numbers to some of the files I tested. It isn't as seamless as an actual FLAC player, like Cog, but it is certainly more hassle-free than some of the other script-based solutions I've used in the past.
Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music has weighed in on early iPhone music apps. His verdict? You'd still do better to get a PSP or a Nintendo DS for handheld music apps. While the App Store has metronomes, guitar tuners and the like, there's nothing really exciting there yet.
It's a shame, too, because the iPhone / iPod Touch seems made for doing cool future-y music stuff. I'd personally love to see an app that simply lets you put interface objects like sliders or buttons or X-Y pads on the iPhone screen and link each one to a MIDI control sent over Bluetooth to a host machine running a synthesizer. You could turn the iPhone into a far cheaper (though far smaller) version of the JazzMutant Lemur, using your shiny new phone like a Kaoss Pad or an Akai MPC drum/sample pad. Or you could use the motion sensors to scratch samples, ala Serato or FruityLoops. I even suspect that Apple may soon drop an app that lets you use the iPhone as a virtual mixing board / transport control for GarageBand and Logic like the now-defunct and frankly unlamented iControl. The ability to control Logic remotely from inside my vocal booth (aka my closet) would be enough on its own to make me give up my tasty Nokia futurephone and drop a couple of Benjamins on the iPhone.
I agree with Peter that it's early days yet; it's just a matter of time before you see groups of kids hanging out on the corner with their iPhones making beats in real-time, a high tech version of the guys who hang around in Manhattan making music with plastic buckets.
Here we are with the long-awaited third part of my series on how to make music with your Mac. In the first installment, we looked at audio hardware; in the second installment, we discussed digital audio workstations. Today we're going to look at useful DSP (or digital signal processing) plugins and software synthesizers to help aid in your music making.
Again, a disclaimer: these are only a small handful of the options open to you. There are thousands of Mac-friendly synths and plugins out there, and you can spend as much time playing with demos and tweaking presets as you can making music. Having said that, these are a few tools I've personally found useful in my quest to become a halfway-decent digital producer.
Korg is introducing the nanoSeries line (Japanese link, Google translation) of digital music controllers. There will be three USB-powered models: a 25-key velocity sensitive mini keyboard (nanoKEY), a 12-pad mini drumpad (nanoPAD), and a 9-fader mini mixer (nanoKONTROL). As you can see they're clearly intended for use with a laptop running the Korg Legacy Collection synthesizer software or similar, and nicely integrate with the white MacBook.
The Korg nanoSeries is expected in October for around $100 - $120 each.
Developer Intua has just announced BeatMaker, a sampler / sequencer for your iPhone / iPod Touch that allows you to record and make beats on the go. It appears to function similarly to hardware like the famed Akai MPC sampler, allowing you to create loops and beats and play them back in real time. BeatMaker also includes a three-channel EQ, synchronized delay and a bitcrusher, for those of you who like to rock the 8-bit sound.
No word on availability and pricing yet -- Intua is, like almost everyone in the Apple world, waiting for more info on the iPhone App Store. Developer Mathieu Garcia also says that, though MIDI won't be in the initial release of BeatMaker, it's planned for inclusion in upcoming versions, along with Open Sound Control, the successor to MIDI that's becoming standard in more and more music-making apps these days.
Last time, I looked at hardware audio interfaces for getting sound into your Mac. But now that you've got it coming in, what do you do with it?
You need a DAW, or digital audio workstation. DAWs are to audio what Photoshop is to image processing: they allow you to layer, mix and manipulate your sound into something resembling music. Most DAWs also allow you to incorporate MIDI sequencing to drive your hardware or software synths.
DAWs vary in terms of feature set and usability. At the high end, recording audio is a highly technical process, and many DAWs look like the control panels for nuclear submarines. But don't be discouraged if it all doesn't make sense at first -- as you learn the underlying concepts behind recording digital audio, all those little buttons and windows will become second nature.
There are a lot of different DAWs out there, but we'll take a look at a few of the Mac offerings here. These are the main contenders in the field, along with a couple of interesting also-rans.
In addition to the otherupdates released today, Apple has also released an update to Logic Express 8. Software update gives us the following information about the update:
Logic Express 8.0.2 addresses specific customer and compatibility issues of Logic Express 8.0. This update is recommended for all Logic Express 8.0 users.
You can download this update by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software update) or by downloading the installer package from the Apple Support downloads website.
It's well known that Macs have always been favored by musicians. And why not? Macs are the only computers that come from the factory with a starter-level digital audio workstation, or DAW as the hip kids call 'em.
Point of fact, these days it's entirely possible to make perfectly respectable, professional quality music with your Mac and some relatively inexpensive outboard gear. Gone are the days when you could only use your desktop or laptop for sequencing MIDI tracks and writing lyrics for songs that you'd have to take to a professional recording studio to realize. You may not be able to make a Dark Side Of The Moon or an OK Computer in your bedroom but if you're a singer-songwriter, hip-hop artist or if you're in a band making music with simple arrangements, you can skip the studio process almost entirely.
Of course, when it comes to music, most of the quality has to do with talent and skill, not technology: despite tools like Antares AutoTune, no amount of digital wizardry can make you a better songwriter. And you'll still need to understand the fundamentals of audio production, which can be as exciting as watching paint dry.
But if you're wiling to educate yourself a bit, there's no reason you and your Mac can't make beautiful music together.
In this four part feature, we'll look at what it takes to turn your Mac into a music studio.
A few days ago I posted about the problems that the 10.5.2 update was causing with audio recording hardware and software from various manufacturers. Today, in a follow-up post to his original roundup of the issues at hand, Peter Kirn weighs in on Apple's accountability.
Kirn's position is that Apple is responsible because all the evidence suggests that the problems lie with the 10.5.2 update, not any one vendor's drivers. "Problems haven't affected everyone," says Kirn, "but they have been widespread enough that we have a right to be disappointed. As a user, I think I have the right to be disappointed. As a writer, it's my obligation to point it out. And I hope they do better in the future."
Of course, as Peter points out, rumor is that 10.5.3 is right around the corner, so hopefully these problems will disappear and Trent Reznor can get back to making music instead of standing in for angry Mac-using music geeks in my music-related posts.
Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music (one of my favorite music-making blogs, by the by) has a post rounding up a lot of the issues OS 10.5.2 seems to be having with various drivers for audio interfaces, including those manufactured by Digidesign (aka the Pro Tools folks) and its subsidiary M-Audio. This is a pretty big problem, as Digidesign and M-Audio are two of the most popular manufacturers of prosumer/professional audio interfaces. Peter's post links to apologies and explanations from the manufacturers as well.
According to Dave Lebolt, general manager at Digidesign, the 10.5.2 upgrade may have actually broken fixes that appeared in 10.5.1. And Kirn goes as far to say that he "certainly can't recommend Leopard in its current state," at least for making music, which is why I haven't upgraded from TIger myself.
Does this affect you if you're not a music geek? Probably not. But when your psycho microhouse-obsessed beatmaking roommate starts swearing and kicking his MacBook and ProTools rig around in the middle of the night, at least you'll know what the fuss is all about.
Back in 1984, Roland released the TR-909 drum machine as a successor to their legendary 808. Over the years, the 909 became one of the most influential and widely-used instruments in the history of electronic music, right up there with the Minimoog and the AKAI MPC sampler.
Now you can pick up IR-909, a free iPhone / iPod Touch version of the 909 over at roventskij.net. It has the 909's 16-step sequencer, eight drum sounds, and four pattern storage.
The minimal, lovely interface is close enough to the 909 for aficionados of the original hardware without sacrificing usability on the iPhone / iPod Touch's small screen.
IR-909 may not be a full-fledged replacement for your software sampler or old-school hardware 909...but I'm betting it's fun to play with on the bus or the train. Or hook it up to a pair of portable speakers and get your "Planet Rock" on anywhere and everywhere. 'Cause I know you got the funk in you.
More audio news on the Mac today: the undeniably cute, surprisingly functional 
Since switching to the Mac full-time last year, my only remaining complaint has been the abysmal (and finicky) 
Peter Kirn over at 
In addition to the 
It's well known that Macs have always been favored by musicians. And why not? Macs are the only computers that come from the factory with 
A few days ago I posted about the 
