Windows users who have upgraded their Adobe Flash players to version 10.0.12.36 will hear warping and distortion in most of the audio examples on ACB. The problem is a documented bug in the Flash player that only manifests while playing audio that is rendered at either 22kHz or 48kHz. Since most of my mixes are at 48kHz before I convert them to mp3s this problem will effect a lot of ACB readers. Hopefully Adobe will have a fix out soon, but until then please click on the title of the audio rather than the player button to listen if you are experiencing playback issues. If you have an older version of the player, or use a Mac you will not be effected by this bug. Update: apparently Mac users with the new version of the plugin have the problem as well. The problem is described here with an AS2 workaround. I’m still looking at solutions, in the meantime, other than clicking on the title versus the play button, the only other solution is to downgrade your Flash player.
Flash Player Version 10.0.12.36 Audio Playback Bug
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Here’s a rough mix of a track that I’m working on for an upcoming album of material that I’ve been producing since August, 2008. I have committed to a release date of March 24, 2009 on 
A variation of this clip is probably going to end up in a new track that Nils Westdal and I are working on. After a recent session Nils left his Boss OC-1 pedal in the studio for me to mess around with. The first thing I did was plug the Rhodes into it. The cool thing about the OC-1 is that if you play intervals into it it gets confused and randomly switches between notes. The results are unpredictable, but it’s also possible to get consistently unpredictable results. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but duplicating certain intervals at specific dynamics allows you to mold the output into something usable. This is what I was going for in this example. I edited the recording to a suitable length, added some delay, and then automated a filter to manipulate the texture.
I time stretched this recording of my dog Tia barking on the PCM-D50 using the built in DPC or Digital Pitch Control. I don’t know why they call it pitch control when it doesn’t change the pitch, but rather time compresses or expands the audio by percentages, from -75% to +100%. The intent is for musicians to practice difficult passages, but I think it has a nice eerie, metallic effect on voice and other sounds. For comparison I’ve posted her barking with out the time expansion as well.
One of the very first tests I made using my DIY binaural mics was this example of back alley ambiance. I stood as still as possible because this first version of the headset had a stiff cable that was very sensitive to vibrations. Birds and traffic are the most obvious sounds, but there is a high pitched screeching going on throughout the recording that became even more noticeable after applying normalization. While making the recording I actually took the mics out of my ears to make sure they weren’t generating the tone and I knew I wasn’t going crazy when it turned up in the recording. The sound is either a near by train, or a neighbor using a power tool. It sounds more like a tool, but the freight trains that go through my neighborhood make some very similar sounds to this.