Notion Ink’s Adam Android OS Tablet

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I realize that I am running the risk of turning AudioCookbook into AudioSlateBook with all my tablet articles of late. However, I just have to say that based on the video from this article the Notion Ink Adam is pretty amazing. Notion Ink, based in Hyderabad, India, have designed the device with a 10″ transflective LCD that only uses 200 milliwatts allowing for up to 24 hours of battery life, or more than 10 hours of HD video playback. Another cool feature is a backside trackpad, apparently a first on any device. I like this idea for control when you don’t want to obscure the screen. I find it exciting that new technology is starting to respond to humans in more human ways, like Google’s voice to text in Android OS, and multitouch and accelerometers for gestural input on mobile devices.

The Slate Race is Official

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Gizmodo has a couple of interesting articles illustrating how the race to release a multi-touch slate device is heating up. First up is Slate Showdown. In this article specs from a broad collection of upcoming slates have been compiled and compared. Devices running Android and Windows 7 will be the most prevalent competitors to Apple’s iPad.

Another impressive development are new details regarding Notion Ink’s Adam Tablet. Reportedly the Android device will output 1080p video via an HDMI output, has a 10.1″ capacitive touchscreen capable of recognizing six simultaneous points of contact, and supports Flash.

Love or hate the iPad, it has certainly stirred up the pot. Most of these devices were under development long before Apple’s announcement, so what we’re seeing is not necessarily a “jump on the bandwagon” effect, but more of a “hey look, over here, we’re already working on that!” reaction.

The alleged fear of litigation over Apple’s supposed multi-touch patents has seemed to evaporate as more and more devices are announced. And let’s not forget Jazzmutant’s beloved Lemur. Take a look at Peter Kirn’s article What’s Next For Lemur for a lively discussion about the controller, it’s future, and competitive products.

Free Stuff for AudioCookbook Readers

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Glyn over at ProKits has offered a few free downloads for ACB readers. ProKits is an online resource for custom-made, individual and unique sample kits in formats like Native Instruments Kontakt and Battery. Here’s a few descriptions of their sample kits from Glyn:

Grainy
This instrument is a granular synthesis pad machine created in Kontakt using devious scripting to firing thousands of tiny ‘blips’ at your ears at random. The frequency of the effect can be controlled using the mod-wheel and the custom interface has additional controls for release-time, choral layer volume and distortion. The whole effect created a texture that can go from sonar-ping blippy to the Russian red army chorus to a desert wind howling in the night.

Wooden Frog
A Kontakt instrument created from the humble little wooden percussion frog. A wide selection of sounds were recorded at different velocity levels, with alternate sounds triggered in round-robin fashion, for a very expressive instrument (over 40 samples), going all the way from the frog’s natural range to a pitched-down bass thud.

The Kontakt script has knobs for tuning the sounds, and the mod-wheel brings in an impulse reverb. The reverb is based on an impulse made by my very own acoustic-space modeling program, and is not available anywhere else.

Here’s what Glyn has made freely available for AudioCookbook readers. To extract the RAR files linked below use the password “audiocookbook”.

http://www.prokits.co.uk/user_folder/audiocookbook/mellovtronika_kontakt_prokits.co.uk.rar
http://www.prokits.co.uk/user_folder/audiocookbook/cheesekeys_kontakt_prokits.co.uk.rar
http://www.prokits.co.uk/user_folder/audiocookbook/glassworld_kontakt_prokits.co.uk.rar

Native Multitouch Support on the Nexus One and Beyond

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I successfully installed an official Google Nexus One update to my phone last night and have been giddily pinch zooming to my hearts content ever since.

The previous lack of multitouch support on the N1 led to speculation about Apple patents and possible litigation against American companies including it on their handheld devices, but Google no longer seems worried about it.

It will be interesting to see the reactions to this, but in the meantime I’m feeling pretty glib about my decision to buy the Nexus One.

Of course this doesn’t change the potential of the device for multitouch control or music apps, however, it might attract more customers, and as a result, more developers to the platform.

Furthermore, I have been researching a variety developing stories about multitouch tablet devices to compete with the iPad. MSI is releasing a tablet running Android OS later this year. And Google has released concept photos of a tablet running Chrome OS, that is reported will support multitouch capabilities.

So, for many of us who were disappointed by Apple’s iPad announcement last week, there are a variety of competing and more open devices on the horizon that could very well satisfy some of what we’re dreaming of for open, multitouch, interactive, music devices.

Speak & Spell Like Vowel Simulation

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While reviewing my set for last night’s Ostraka performance, I noticed that using filtering followed by down-sampling produced a robotic vowel like sound applied to synth bass. It’s got a nice vintage vocoder or Speak & Spell graininess to it.

Finding this effect was really an accident, because I had been using this particular effect chain on my master track in this set for a while, but hadn’t stumbled across the settings that produced this sound until last night. Placing the filter before doing the the down-sampling is the key. It does not work the other way around.

Here’s a couple of minutes to illustrate how to apply the effect. I was making real-time adjustments to the frequency of the low pass filter, and the amount of down-sampling. Toward the end I upped the reverb to give it some tail.

Speak & Spell Like Vowel Simulation