News Sound Bites - Revision3, Engineering, Earthquakes in LA, Audiobooks, and More...

Hey All,
Just some fun links for you to check out.

The LA Times has a great look at up and coming media giant Revision3. I'm a HUGE fan of the "network", even if I did just recently pick a fight with Tekzilla.

AUDIOTUTS has a great tutorial on processing vocals for musicians. Totally worth a read for you VO folks as well, especially if you ever have to engineer or produce your own content.

So I was REALLY close to the earthquake that hit CA yesterday, and it was quite a jolt. To hear a special report from Loony Tunes News (courtesy of Bob Bergen) CLICK HERE.

Wired's Listening post has a really funny (and frustrating) article about how Hell Is Other People's Music.

Sound on Sound is reporting on an update to Reaper, a great little audio suite that I would put up with programs like Audacity and Traverso.

Not Just Voiceover has a great vid up of a narration session with audiobook virtuoso Scott Brick. It's so much fun watching you guys work...

Part Three of Bob Souer's interview with Voice Over Xtra has just been posted, so head over and check it out. Here are parts one and two if you're a little behind.

Is MP3 about to become obsolete?

In a word "no".

But if I didn't write BOLD headlines, would you even be reading this?

Wired's Listening Post has a really interesting post up about a new type of music reproduction/digital compression.
Unlike MP3 it doesn't work as a way of compressing and sampling actual sound, but as a way of reproducing the performance of the original. So really, in a way, I was being even MORE misleading with my post title, as this isn't so much competition for MP3 as it might be for MIDI.

So? We've been using MIDI for a while. What's the big the deal?

Well, checking out the samples on the post, the research team (using an actual recording of a clarinet) has been able to create a MIDI-like recreation of the clarinet, (which would normally be around 32KB
in MIDI), but with this new method takes up less than ONE kilobyte (1KB).

For those of you like me, who weren't math majors, that's less than ONE THIRTIETH the file size!

Check out the post, with samples to listen to, over at Wired!
someaudioguy some audio guy audio voice over technology voice acting demo agent compression

News Sound Bites

Blu-Ray BD profile 1.1, any good? Only two players can use it right now anyway...

Sony sees the light, and drops DRM, is the last major label to do so!

Sirius denied merger, in the red $1.3 billion, subscribers up 38%, good year?

Chuck D wants Def Jam, has 4 point plan to fix it!

Variety: Hollywood discovers Voice Acting more than just "talking"...

CNet slams Washington Post for not correcting RIAA story.

Guardian delivers HUGE collection of niche music sites!

Upgrading your computer monitor might cause DRM conflict in Vista, block Netflix, invalidate other legitimate purchases, only bother paying customers...

Deaf Porn? (via Wired, links on following site might be NSFW)

Avoid "Red Sauce" on your iTunes, buy the real thing instead...

Wired delivers the Top Ten Love!

What can I say? I'm a sucker for top ten lists, and Wired's got a bunch of them for us.
Top Ten Gadgets
Top Ten Gadget Let Downs
Top Ten Videogames
Top Ten Vaporware
Top Ten Earth "Hacks"



All in all, I'm totally there. I only have two issues.

1. The kindle being on both the the TT gadgets AND the TT Heartbreaks.
2. The Tesla being on the Vaporware. Living in LA and driving by the Tesla store that's being built (Santa Monica and the 405, not cheap), kinda shows a bit more promise than true Vapor.

News Sound Bites - high end audio, Telcos given immunity, art of audiobooks, more...

Hey lets get to it!

The Consumerist (through Slate) takes a look at high end audio systems. I think it's funny to do that as most people listen to some form of compressed audio. Even CD's (to an extent) are not full representations of the sounds we hear.

Wired's Threat Level kindly informs us that our government is getting ready to sell us out again, by offering amnesty to Telecoms that spy on us, without the involvements of the courts, on behalf of the American government. Yay! GOOOOOOO WARRANTLESS!!!!

I love reading Katherine Powers' audiobook reviews over at Book World and The Washington Post. This link is out to four more short reviews to check out.

Martin Jarvis makes this book a greater pleasure to listen to than to read, his extraordinary vocal characterizations transfusing it with life. Though one of his American accents is a mutinous mish-mash with a will of its own, its bearer is, fortunately, bumped off early on.

Ahhhh Classic!

Sound Designers, Puremagnetik has released their Technosphere toolbox. I'll let Sonicstate tell you about it:

Puremagnetik has released Technosphere, a sound design toolbox of over 100 sonic textures and composer effects. Produced from a composite of live field recordings, studio instruments and intensive effect processing, Puremagnetik say that Technosphere brings a unique palette of soundscapes, transition effects and scoring tools to the Puremagnetik catalog.

If you're looking for even more Voice and Audio news. Check out The Voice Over Times, which I believe just went live today. I've already checked it out, and they've got some decent talent writing articles, and some very helpful content. That is, go check them out AFTER you've finished reading through my archives...

;-)

Great Vintage Christmas Recordings with Lapsed Copyrights!

Tis the season, and Wired's Listening Post has you covered!
They've got links to holiday music that has lapsed and fallen into public domain. Most of it is pretty old (one song going back to 1904!), but if you're looking to fill out your holiday play list, this stuff is classic!

CHECK THEM OUT HERE!

And just for kicks, heres Eddie Cantor's "The Only Thing I Want for Christmas (Is Just to Keep the Things I Got)":

Wired and PBS test Analog versus Digital

Wow,
This is a great run down on the differences between analog and digital recording.



I started out as an all digital kid. Nothing but software and plugins, but recently I've been branching out into more hardware. I'm kinda in love with tubes right now. Mics, preamps, anything you can cram a tube in I'm sold.
I think in terms of recording the argument is kinda silly. If you keep your audience in mind, then doing a bunch of analog tape recording only to bounce it to a CD (or a full digital setup to transfer to an LP) seems like a waste. Why not just use the best of both worlds?
A rack full of crunchy warm vintage gear fed into a 32bit float at a high sample rate sounds just fine to me...

Hollywood Line Up for Turok

It's all video game news tonight.

A quick follow up to the Wendee Lee interview I JUST posted, apparently the new Turok game's got it's self a nice little star studded cast...

There's no shortage of talent on the roster of voice actors for Turok,
due out February 5th for 360 and PS3. The name of Gregory Norman Cruz,
Turok himself, might not be familiar to you, but the other members of
Whiskey Company include the likes of Timothy Olyphant (who also plays
Agent 47 in the Hitman movie), Powers Boothe, Ron Perlman, and Donnie Wahlberg.

The other actors featured are long-time TV vets, including Prison
Break's William Fichtner and Stargate SG-1's Chris Judge, or video game
voice acting pros, like Gideon Emery, Steve Van Wormer, and Sean
Donellan.

From the Wired Games Blog