All the prices listed below are in Australian Dollars priced on 11th February 2008 – prices may very due to the exchange rate at the time you buy, hence the (approx.) after most of the prices. I compiled this list for my bit on RRR FM’s computing and IT show Byte Into It. You will find a player with the show at the bottom of this post!

The Unarchiver – http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html
Cost: FREE

Multi format de-compression utility. Quick, fast and easy. Takes care of standard stuff like ZIP but also stuff rare to Macintosh like RAR.

1Password – http://1password.com/

Cost: $33 (approx.)

Full featured password management application. Automatically keeps track of any password and/or form you enter into your browser. Automatically fills forms based on an identity you enter – and you can have multiple identities. Also will automatically generate a strong password for you and keep track of all the passwords generated.

Little Snitch – http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
Cost: $28 (approx.)

Little Snitch is an application that works like a dynamic firewall. Basically, if an application tries to connect to something else on your network/internet the Snitch let you know by popping up a notification on the screen and ask you if you want to allow or deny. It also has a handy network monitor to show you which applications are talking to the ineternet, how often and how much. Essential!

Adium – http://www.adiumx.com/
Cost: FREE

Open source multi-messenger application. Supports: AOL IM (inc ICQ & dotMAC), Jabber (Google Talk & LiveJournal), MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MySpace IM, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, QQ, Lotus Sametime. Well supported with help, updates and customizations/add-ons.

Skype – http://www.skype.com/
Cost: FREE

Ubiquitous multi-messenger and internet telephony application.

NetNewsWire – http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/
Cost: FREE

King of mac news readers. Once you get RSS/Newsfeeds you realize how much easier it is to collect info from the web. NetNewsWire is a full featured reader, with it’s own browser functionality, can download podcasts/vodcasts and feed them to iTunes, ability to take clippings and also save all your feeds and their read/unread status to the web for remote RSS access via the NewsGator service.

Mars Edit – http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/
Cost: $33 (approx.)

Great blogging tools – allows you to write and format blog content off-line and post directly to your feed. Also has facility for posting MP3′s and other content via your blog. Allows you to set categories and keywords. Also pings RSS search engines when you upload a new post. Integrates well with many blog formats such as WordPress, Drupal, Live Journal, Movable Type and so on.

Transmit – http://www.panic.com/transmit/
Cost: $33 (approx.)
This is a great FTP client. Fully featured with a great UI.

VLC – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Cost: FREE
This is a great additional media player for the macintosh (and other OS’s as well). This bad boy will play pretty much most media you throw at it – divx/avi’s, DVD’s, MP3′s, etc. If QuickTime won’t play it, VLC will (except for RealMedia, but no so many use that now anyhow…)

Growl – http://growl.info/
Cost: FREE
This is an on-screen notification application. Handy when an application you’re using is in the background as it makes sexy little windows pop up on screen to let you know when stuff happens – like people sending you a skype message, iTunes tracks at they start playing, when FTP uploads/downloads completed and many more.

Flip4Mac – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx
COST: FREE
This is a set of system extensions that lets QuickTime play Wimdows Meida (WMV) files. Many sites like The Age newspaper and even RRR use Windows Media for streaming services – this way you won’t miss out on the action. Also there is a PRO version available if you want to make Windows Media content on the Macintosh.

Skitch – http://skitch.com/
COST: FREE
Skitch is a very sweet little application that is super-handy for doing fast image editing. A very simple user interface and a great demo movie make this even easier to use. Also has built in services for simply uploading your images to dotMAC, an FTP server of your choice and even Skitch themselves offer a free space for uploading! Also made by a company with local (Australian) talent!

AppZapper – http://appzapper.com/
COST: $15 (approx.)
When the time comes and you need to get rid of an application – AppZapper zaps ‘em. Neat, tidy and simple – this application gets rid of the main application and all associated files on your machine.

SuperDuper – http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
COST: FREE. Extended functionality: $31 (approx.)
This application is a great, simple and effective back-up tool. Lets you back up a BOOTABLE copy of your whole drive. Also lets you do many more tricky back-up scenarios with the extended functionality.

QuickTime Pro – http://www.apple.com/quicktime/pro/
COST: $45
QuickTime has a lot of stuff under the hood and the only way to get to it is to go Pro. Lets you do things like save embedded QuickTime content to your local drive. Also lets you export any QuickTime media to other QuickTime formats. Good for shrinking movies for the internet and other things like taking audio files out of QuickTime movies.

WIDGETS FOR DASHBOARD
Send SMS – http://www.smsmac.com/widget.php

FREE TO DOWNLOAD, BUT IT COSTS PER SMS TO SEND
A great widget for send SMS from your machine. Does cost for the messages, but is easier to set-up & use than free bluetooth alternatives. Also has Address Book integration for you stored contact and group SMS

iStat pro – http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html
COST: FREE
Overview of what your computer is up to right now with things like drive space, network address, CPU temperature and many more.

ISP Usage Widget – http://lemonjar.com/?p=products.widgets
COST: FREE
Find out how many schmegabytes you’re schlepping back from them interwebs using these handy dandy widgets! Most big aussie ISP’s covered – Optus, iiNET, Internode, NetSpace, etc..

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Byron J. Scullin.
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Ambient Diary Podcast.

My list of MUST HAVE Macintosh applications.

Before my appearance at Beats N Bleeps, I’ll be on the radio in my regular capacity as Apple commentator on RRR FM’s Byte Into It. This week I’ll be talking about my clean Leopard install and all the apps that I’ve re-loaded without thinking twice – call it my must have’s for your machine. The show starts at 7pm (AEDT) on 102.7 FM in Melbourne, via live stream and also via podcast.

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Talk about using Ableton Live to create generative music.

Sony BMG spokesperson: We’re pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can’t trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what’s with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?

Sony BMG dude: They appeal to the sort of mainstream consumer who will see the convenience of our revolutionary music cards!

Kid #2: Like my mom? Dude, she’s not going to buy a card. She’s going to buy a CD. Because she’s at the CD store. Where she can buy CDs.

Sony BMG dude: They also make lovely gifts!

Kid #1: If she gets one as a gift, all she’s going to do is ask me how the heck she’s supposed to use it. And then she’s going ask me to get the download for her. Like I’m not busy. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to return the card for cash, and then I’m going to download the album off of Pirate Bay, because you’ve confused and upset my mom. And annoyed me.

Sony BMG dude: Uh.

Kid #2: So to recap, what you’ve got here is a system that makes people leave their house in order to download music at their house, and makes them go to a store to get music that they could get at the store, somewhere else.

Sony BMG dude: Er.

Kid #1: Why don’t you just sell non-DRM’d MP3s off Amazon, like every other major music corporation?

Sony BMG dude: Well.

Kid #2: You don’t actually want to sell unprotected MP3s, do you? You want to be able to say you’re doing it, but really, you want to make it so ridiculously inconvenient that people keep just keep buying CDs and DRM’d tracks off iTunes. Just admit it, bro.

Sony BMG dude (pointing): Look! It’s Celine Dion! And Barry Manilow! (runs away as kids avert their eyes in terror)

Poor, stupid deluded Sony BMG.

This MusicPass thing: six months at the outside.

Jon also sent me this gold – Vinyl Sleeve Heads

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Byron J. Scullin.
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Ambient Diary Podcast.

Great stuff about SONY/BMG’s MusicPass scheme/scam

For me, one of the interesting things in this article was information about an organization called Turn Me Up! which is attempting to bring The Loudness War to an end. I’ve joined them for certification as a mastering engineer and I also hope to submit records that I produce/mix for certification as well – as long as my clients are up for making their records less loud!

It’s hard to say how effective any “bottom up” campaign will be against overly loud records. Whenever I talk to my clients about this, or discuss it with other people in the music business it would seem that everyone is reluctant to be the among the first to take the “risk” of making a less loud, yet better sounding record. And being a mastering engineer working in a service industry, I have little option other than to deliver what my clients want in order to keep my business afloat. What we need is high profile bands and artists to put out records that are less loud and make a point of doing so. Much like when Radiohead used the release of their In Rainbows LP to promote a new business model – a similar thing could be done for forwarding the idea of quieter and better sounding records. And Radiohead would probably be a great band to do such a thing.

…

So after writing that, I went over to the forum attached to the Radiohead site and posted this.

Will anything happen?

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Byron J. Scullin.
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The Loudness War & mixing for MP3 – why music quality drops with better technology.

There is no one single way of doing business these days. There are, in fact, six viable models by my count. That variety is good for artists; it gives them more ways to get paid and make a living. And it’s good for audiences, too, who will have more — and more interesting — music to listen to.

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Byron J. Scullin.
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David Byrne on the changing face of the music business.

In this book Mr. Gibson lays down the idea that our future pop stars will be purely synthetic creations. When you look at the current state of pop music in it’s totality it seems perverse that we should subject humans to all that expensive surgery, studio magic and photoshop re-touching to get the latest variation on ‘perfection’. After their moment passes it would seem we end up with severely broken humans like Michael Jackson or Britney Spears. As the famous flesh human ages, a dark battle rages inside these fading stars that appears on their faces and bodies – take a look at the vast swathes of ‘legends’ as they slide up the red carpet – it’s a god-damn horror show. They appear like Sam Lowry’s surgery addicted mother Ida, in the film Brazil, usually more bronzed than Han Solo encased in carbonite. Unlike Han however, their attempts at suspended animation are somewhat less successful.

Editorialization aside, Vocaloid 2 is a piece of software from Yamaha that let your create a synthetic vocal track just by entering lyrics and the melody into the software. It costs about AUD$165.00. Have a listen to the file below for a demo. It would appear that we’re now one step closer to our idoru pop-stars of the future. Let’s stop this madness of trying to make the flesh and grey-matter bend to the will of 14 year old girls and half-witted fashion crazed A&R douches.

Listen

via HobbyBlog, via BoingBoing

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Byron J. Scullin.
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Pure Synth Vocals – The Future Of Pop Music

On the face of it, much has been added to Logic which has been well overdue and which Pro-Tools has had from day 1. Sample accurate editing is essential in any serious DAW, and finally Apple has included this into Logic. Gone also is Logic’s messy old any-way-you-like-it interface. Apple appears to have tightened up the interface considerably. Gone are all the separate windows like the audio window (Hooray! I hated the audio window), hyper edit, mixer, and so on. Instead all of this same functionality is viewable via a single main window. Gone also is Logic’s configureable multi-window interface (this was a confusing and redundant nightmare). It looks as if making new tracks is a hell of a lot easier as well – making a new audio or MIDI track shouldn’t require creating several new objects over multiple pages as in previous versions. The mixing interface in Logic 8 has also been stripped back and sorted out. Generally is seems all the bad interface stuff that stopped me using Logic in a serious way 6 or 7 years ago appears to have gone.

Now, these interface changes in Logic are not really revelatory for us Pro-Tools users. It is right out of Pro-Tools 101 but here’s the thing – as well as getting some of this basic stuff right, Apple have also upped the stakes on several other key fronts.

Firstly right out of the box Logic 8 gives you up to 255 channels with 32 busses – this appears to be the case regardless of sample rate or bit depth, but I’m thinking that your storage hardware and CPU power will probably dictate exactly how much of this you can use. This is unlike Pro-Tools LE where you only get 24 tracks out of the box and have to pay additional to step that up to 48. Like wise the same thing goes for people who want to work with video. Logic 8 will allow you to import movies and import a variety of mixed media formats such as XML, AAF, OMF and OpenTL. It will also display timelines as timecode as well. Again if you’re looking for this functionality in Pro-Tools LE – you must pay extra, US$1,295.00 extra to be precise! In addition Logic 8 will allow you to mix in surround (up to 7.1) and comes with at least 16 plug-ins/effects that are true surround plug-ins. The Logic Studio suite also includes Compressor 3 which will allow you to encode your surround files to AC3 format for DVD authoring or burn uncompressed surround straight to DVD-A. While surround is common to Pro-Tools HD, you must pay extra for surround plug-ins and it comes without any software to encoding or authoring of surround material for DVD. If you are a Pro-Tool LE user, then you have no surround sound option at all!Unless of course you upgrade to a basic Pro-Tools HD rig for an extra ten grand or so…..

The Logic Studio suite contains a massive offering of additional software and content that does not come close to either Pro-Tool LE or HD. There is the Studio Instruments with 40 vintage, synth and sampled instruments. The Studio Effects package has 80 different effect plug-ins (no doubt all in Audio Unit format) which cover about most anything you would need to do – from EQ and compression through to delay, reverb, amplifier cabinet simulation and so on – there is even an impulse response reverb. Also included in these plug-ins is the industry standard ESX-24 sampler. The beauty of these plug-ins is that being in AU format you will be able to use them in other applications such as Abelton Live or even Final Cut. These Audio Units having been designed by Apple to run using the Core Audio services in OS X, you can be sure that these plug-ins will be very CPU efficient. You can expect that even on an entry level Intel-Mac laptop your plug-in count will be really very high. This is unlike Digidesign’s sluggish and flakey RTAS format used in LE and HD – which can only be used in Pro-Tools and nothing else. Digidesign do offer a small suite of rather bland RTAS plug-ins with Pro-Tools – the Digirack plug-ins. Digi also offer “Factory Bundles” (for which you again pay extra) but these bundles look like a complete joke compared to what you are now getting from Apple with Logic Studio. Digi also offer nothing as powerful as the ESX-24 with any of their free or packaged options (please don’t even try to talk up SampleTank LE that comes with PT LE – it’s a red nightmare). You can buy their Structure LE sampler, but it does not come close to the power of ESX-24.

The other thing to add here is that there is a vast developer community writing for the Audio Unit format, many of whom are offering there software free for download. Again – there simply is nothing like this in the Pro-Tools/RTAS community. We are still not done yet however – Logic Studio also includes the following sound file content:

• 18,000 Apple Loops, including 12,000 loops from five Jam Pack collections
• 5000 Foley, sound effects, and music beds, including over 1000 options in surround
• 1300 EXS instruments, including 248 instruments from five Jam Pack collections
• 400 channel strip settings and plug-in settings, for a wide range of high-quality sounds

You also get a copy of Waveburner for setting up and burning red-book CD’s as well. Gone as well is the old copy protection dongle (XS key) with only a serial number now required for authorization. This pretty much covers most of the important changes, however there is even more on offer from Apple, but I’ll let you go on over to Apple’s web-site for more info…

In terms of comparative functionality, the Logic Studio package will put you somewhere between Pro-Tools LE and HD. I’d say you’d generally be closer to HD than LE with what you can do using Logic Studio. Now, let’s compare dollars involved and see what we’re getting – and why Logic has got it all over Digidesign in terms of value for money.

Lets look at a comparison between a Digidesign based LE set-up that comes close to what you get with Logic Studio right out of the box.

• mBox 2 factory bundle with Pro-Tools LE. US$595.00
• DV Toolkit to add up to 48 tracks, timecode, OMF/AAF/XMF file import/export. US$1,295.00
• Digidesign Structure Sampler US$499.00
• Roxio Toast 8 US$99.00
• Total Cost: US$2,488.00

This compares to:

• Logic Studio US$499.00
• Apogee Duet US$495.00
• Total Cost: US$994.00

So it’s getting close to being a 3rd of the cost of the equivalent Digi set-up. And I still think you can rightly argue that you are still getting more (both content and functionality) from the Logic Studio offering than what is on offer from Digidesign. You could even add Ableton Live to the Logic Studio list and you’d have yet more options and power for less than this basic Pro-Tools package. Plus, if you don’t need an audio interface, you can still use Logic Studio without one – just the minijack output on your laptop or the optical I/O on your Mac Pro and you’re good to go! Of course, you must have a Digidesign interface attached to even get Pro-Tools LE or HD to load.

All in all this great bundle from Apple should be a massive wake up call for Digidesign. While Digi may trot out the old, “We’re the industry standard.” routine it’s important to note that Logic is based on the old “industry standard” sequencer Notator, and in many ways the development curve of Logic has followed a generally similar path to that of Pro-Tools. Furthermore, for many people that are scoring for TV and film, Logic has for many years been the standard music writing tool, in preference to Pro-Tools relatively more recent attempts to offer itself as a music creation (rather than post-production) tool. You’d hope that we’ll see some really competitive and generous offers from Digidesign shortly. If not, this could mark the beginning of the end for Digidesign and Pro-Tools as the preeminent digital audio and music platform.

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Byron J. Scullin.
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Ambient Diary Podcast.

Logic Studio – The return of a competitive DAW market.

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Byron J. Scullin.
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free ambient music podcast

Apologies that I haven’t been posting in a while. Much has been happening. Here’s a little summary of what’s been happening.

• Work has began on the Acolytes soundtrack. I’m assisting my long time friend and accidental brother JD Franzke on his first feature film score – which basically entails being a Pro-Tools nerd, making some sounds and recordings and also being a dogs-body and roustabout.
• OUTPOST which is the A/V laptop jam night that I help run with some friends will have been running for one year this month. The next night is on 26th september at Horse Bazaar. On the same night at Horse Bazaar will be the launch of Digital Fringe as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. More info @ the OUTPOST website.
• The Red Tree’s EP is closer to finishing – some vocals, overdubs and the final mixes to go.
• All India Radio have been collaborating on a new album with Steve Kilbey. It looks like I’ll be mixing it sometime toward the end of october. Mr. Kilbey talks about the record here. It seems I’m someone….
• The ambient diary is on it’s way. It’s a collection of the ambient music I make on a semi-regular basis. They’re made from a collection of synthesis stuff, found sound and binaural recordings. The idea is that it will be a podcast for people to download and have for free. When it’s all ready I’ll post more about it.
• There has been much mastering happening. Among others – a new KES record mixed by James Cecil from Architecture in Helsinki. New LP’s for Wagons, Basic Shape and a new compile for Filter Music.
• I ate a bunch of apples on-air for each apple user that subscribed to Byte Into It as part of RRR FM’s annual subscription drive. Check out the flickr pics of what ended up being a rather cleansing experience here. Also, Phil and I went down to the Malthouse Theatre to interview Cory Doctorow for the show. Corey was in town for the Melbourne Writers Festival. The interview is here. Cory is an absolute champ and pretty much takes the cake for being one of the most articulate people I’ve ever spoken to.

Well now that you’re updated, I’ll leave you to back to get back other things…

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Byron J. Scullin.
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long time postage

Here is a guy with a set-up in his lounge room.

From:

This Should be Played at High Voltage: “Steve Ward’s Singing Tesla Coil video. Previously.“

(Via MetaFilter.)

UPDATES:

Here are two geeks riffing on how to make a musical Tesla coil. Cool/nerdy. As usual there is no accounting for taste – consider yourself warned.

Damn, someone already made six of them for a concert! See some of these posts…

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Byron J. Scullin.
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singing tesla coils