Competition for Divshare? esnips gives Div a run!

So here's the dilemma.

I'm cheap.

There it is.

I need free file storage until this whole digital life of mine starts paying for itself (those of you clicking on ads and donating GAWD BLESS YOU). For the run of this blog, I've been trying to find easy and free ways to link or embed media. Most of what I produce for this site is audio (go figure), and all of the video is handled by other sites. I personally use Revver for the few vids I've made, but Youtube, 5Min, Funny or Die, MetaCafe, all have me covered for video content.

Audio, however, has been tricky. I haven't found a good solution, and sites that look like the holy-grail-youtube-for-audio (like Odeo) end up being to slow, or having odd limitations (like only linking to audio not storing it). For a while I considered just making everything a vid and uploading to the video sites, but those files get big, and I don't want to do yet another round of editing once I've already trimmed and cleaned a recording.

Enter the world of online file storage.
I started with sites like YouSendIt and MediaFire, to send files larger than 10MB to clients. As they evolved, it allowed me to add links to posts so people could download my stuff. Later I stumbled onto DivShare, which allowed me to embed a player. Now people could listen to the audio right from the blog, without having to download anything or navigate to another page to hear stuff.
The problem with DivShare is it can have odd periods of down time. It can be really slow to upload, and sometimes the player can get locked up. It's good for free, but I have a hard time relying on it as this blog gets bigger.

In this continuing search for free file storage, I've just stumbled onto a service called esnips. It's a lot like DivShare, allowing for file storage and embedded players, but it also has a community aspect. You tag your info, and people with similar interests and media can be exposed to your stuff.

I'm trying it out now. So far I don't love the players you can embed, but it seems pretty quick. Over the next couple weeks, I might start moving content over to esnips.

Both services offer 5GB of storage for free, and you can pay for more. That's a lot of space for audio, even uncompressed.
If you need free hosting for your demos, or to send audio to clients, I would seriously check out both Divshare and esnips.

Here's the esnips player:

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

And the Divshare player:

Lifehacker Drops the BOMB on free MP3's

Holy cow!
This has to be one of the most comprehensive articles I've ever read on where to find free music.
Search engines, streaming sites, automation for importing, even tools to "broadcast" your own collection, and what the article lacks, is MORE than made up for in the comments.



It's a good time to be a music fan...

Check it out @ Lifehacker

Traverso Free Audio Recording/Editing Software - Simplicity = Virtue?

A week ago I wrote about Open Source Living, a site dedicated to cataloging open source/free software, and was really excited about their audio page. One particular program caught my eye, and I've finally had a chance to try it out.

Traverso is a multi-platform, multi-track audio recording and editing program that boasts a simple and clean user interface. It's still technically a Beta (I downloaded v.42), but it's fully functional. Best of all, it's totally free!

Right from installing, driver support is great with Traverso instantly picking up my 410, and setting up 2 stereo recording tracks for me to play with. I have to say the interface is a little off-putting at first. It's very stark. There are NO bells or whistles on installation. It does have support for skins (and I don't know how that would affect functionality), but I'll only be dealing with the default.

What's good about this minimalist approach?

Well, this program is tiny (about 35MB full install), and snappy. There was no lagging, stuttering, weird pauses, nuthin. It launches up and is ready to go. Recording and playback are accompanied with a very smooth screen slide , which is very pleasing to watch as you play through longer files. Simple. Clean.
This approach is also very low impact on the computer. Along with having a small install footprint, CPU and RAM use is also extremely low. I don't think I ever got above 5% CPU recording 2 Mono and 1 Stereo tracks, and Memory usage stayed between 15-20MB. Those are Audacity numbers for true multi-track recording (though Audacity does have better editing features). By comparison, to accomplish the same recording in Acid6Pro I'll hit 20% CPU usage and upwards of 90MB of RAM use. This is great news for people who haven't built bleeding edge quad core monster workstations. Add in very good exporting and burning. ogg/flac/mp3 support, unlimited undos, non-destructive editing, and it adds up to a pretty substantial package.

What didn't I like about Traverso?

Well not a lot. With such a stark interface, it can be a little frustrating digging through menus to get to the features you want to use. None of the keyboard commands are anything like any other DAW I've ever used, so be ready to hunt through right click menus when you start. Along with that note, the cursor is frustrating to use. I spent 5 minutes alone just trying to playback something I had recorded. The selection and playback cursors are different cursors, and to move the playback cursor you have to hit the shift key. This is a bad decision. I got myself into a little trouble trying to rapidly make some quick edits. I ended up hitting the shift key so quickly that Windows tried to enable sticky shift, which is a major pain.
Also I had a small bug where I couldn't see waveforms while recording, but I'm pretty sure that's a me thing.

All in all I'm VERY impressed with the functionality and stability of Traverso. If you need recording on the cheap (heck on the Free) this is an excellent DAW, and one you should totally check out. Using this program with Audacity, was very much like working between Soundforge and Acid. It's a great unofficial software suite, and you wont spend a penny!

Traverso can be downloaded for Mac or Windows.

Traverso

Open Source Living: Audio Page

Free Open Source Software for You for Free. Did I Mention that it's FREE?

I'm a big fan of the free stuff. I write a lot about Audacity. I've checked out programs like Reaper (sadly no longer free) and Wavosaur. I would gladly ditch Windows were it not for a small (and shrinking) number of programs that I need to use.

Enter Open Source Living, a web site dedicated to collecting and cataloging Open software. Right now the collection is a little lean, but already has some great software finds, a few of which I had never heard of but will be downloading soon to try out.

Their Audio Section is already pretty formidable with Players, Podcasters, Recording software, Mastering, MIDI, and Rippers.

If you're looking for some great software (and hey the price is right) I would highly recommend checking this out!

Moby is ready to help you soundtrack your student or indie film! For FREE!

I don't know HOW I missed this!
Futuremusic's blog posted this up a week ago, but apparently Moby is feeling for indie, student, and ultra-low-budget film makers.

I just signed up for an account to check it out, and there is a pretty substantial chunk of his catalog up to help you out, 90 songs in all.

Check it out here!

Now before you go crazy requesting licenses for everything up there I would highly recommend reading the terms of use. If Moby holds to his intention of this being non-profit (for him) that's great, but this is still the music industry, and if you aren't careful (holding to the terms of the agreement), you could manage to put yourself in a pretty actionable position.

From MobyGrais.com:

hi,
i'll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, 'film music', is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password.
you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it's being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that's generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you're looking for,
moby

BioShock Orchestral Score Free Download

You can download the music from the game. Nice.

"Need something to listen to as you wade through more BioShock news? 2K Games community manager Elizabeth Tobey alerts us that Garry Schyman's BioShock orchestral score is now available as a free download.

The 12-track compilation can be harvested on the Cult of Rapture website. Give it a listen, and let the sounds of Rapture slowly wash away the pain of SecuROM."

Check it out! I'm downloading it now!

read more | digg story

Free Ringtones and Alerts: UnHelpful RoBot!!!

So I finally finished the editing for my UnHelpful Robot series of ringtones and alerts. I designed the alerts around my Windows Mobile phone, so there might be some alerts in here which only work for the features of a WM phone, and I might be missing alerts for other types of phones.

My general inspiration for U.R. comes from classic "evil" sci-fi computers. They always seemed to deliver vital information just a split second too late for the villain to do anything about it. Almost as if they had their own nefarious goals to fulfill.
A perfect example would be the Nod Computer from C&C. It always seemed to let me know one of my units was under attack just after it was to late to save them.

So anywho, please download these ringtones and alerts, give em a spin, and let me know what you think. The link contains a zip file with over 27 individual files, each a 128Kbps MP3.

DOWNLOAD UNHELPFUL ROBOT HERE

Don't hear what you need?
Would you like to customize U.R.'s alerts?
Would you like to hear U.R. say "I'm a big fat doody head"?
U.R. will say anything you want for $1.99 per ring tone/alert. Contact me at SomeAudioGuy@gmail.com for more info.

ENJOY!


***Update 8/25/08***

Recently I've been using Ventones to get ringtones and alerts on my friends cellphones.
It's the first service I've found that plays well with most cell carriers (even Verizon Woot!), and it's pretty easy to use.

How to Record Streaming Audio on The Internet

So if you need to record something that streams on line, you can patch in a mixer, making sure to route a few Aux channels, or you could check out FreeCorder.



It's a plugin for Firefox that gives you the ability to suck the audio down from any web item and save it as an MP3 or WAV. It also does a pretty good job of ignoring system sounds as it's tied to the browser not to the internal "what you hear" soundcard drivers.

Pretty sweet!

More write up @ DownloadSquad

OH! Did I mention that FreeCorder is ... FREE!

HOW TO TEASER! CHEAPSKATE GUIDE TO HOSTING AUDIO!

If any of you remember back, I was having some major problems find a free way to host audio on the blog. I'm just about done, I think, with what my setup will be for the future here.

For those of you interested in an easy, and no-cost hosting solution, I'll be posting up a guide later tonight ... maybe tomorrow ... whenev...

I'll also be trying to showcase a couple simple ways to help increase listener-ship.

Mobile Music Software NOW FREE!

For Symbian and Windows Mobile Users!

I've been using Syntrax for years. Back when it was $30, it was an impressive little audio suite, but now that it's free, well free is just ... better.

Works with MIDI, and can manipulate .WAV files (even the PCM ones you can record from the PPC). When you're finished just sync up with a computer, and you can transfer you're work over too. Neat Stuff!

For audio "Doodling" on the go, you really can't beat it, and while I haven't NEEDED it very often, it has saved my @$$ a couple times.

See also:
PhoenixStudio (sorry for the Handango Link) and Golden Crater Pocket Mixer (Baby Sound Forge!),

Learning Another Language: Lifehacker Edition

Man I LOVE Lifehacker. One of the best blogs on teh intarwebs.

I'm just going to link to their post here about find foreign language podcasts (through Open Culture). I've already put 2 gig worth of Spanish, German, and Italian on my Nano.

Good times!

Go ahead, learn another language, take your pick...
someaudioguys some audio guys voice over talent languages accents voice acting auditions animation narration

COOL FREE PROGRAM! Sonic Visualizer! Free!

Holy crap this one is good.
I know I've become impatient when loading Sound Forge is inconvenient for a quick analysis of a sound.

This product seeks to eliminate that.

I've just loaded it up, and thrown some voice work in. It's quick. It's clean. It does just what I need, and also has the ability to load plugins.

From their site:

"Sonic Visualiser is Free Software distributed under the GNU General Public License. The 1.0 release is available now in source code form or as binaries for Linux, OS/X, and Windows."

Pick it up here!
someaudioguy some audio guy recording voice over auditions software free plugin voice acting animation production demo engineering

FREE PLUGIN VST!!! Sound Like a Dalek!

So yeah,

If you've been reading, you'd know that a couple days ago, I expressed a concern over not being able to make myself sound like a Dalek.

I have now corrected this.

NDC Plugs have a great freebie ring modulator to play with (called "The Modulator 2"), and with a little simple tweaking (and judicious use of a good compressor) YOU TOO can sound like a Dalek.

SCHWEET!

Go get the kit here!













Just make sure you clip your breath and room noise out before compression...
someaudioguy some audio guy recording voice over demos production animation sound design voice acting free plugin vst software

THIS IS SPINAL TAP! FREE!!!

This is why I LOVE "teh intarwebs".

I wont blabble, go watch the short. It's a "sequel" to the original 'Tap', and it's being hosted on MSN.

Enjoy!