Audio Playback Bug Fixed in Flash Player 10.0.22.87

Get the Latest Flash PlayerOn December 1, 2008 I posted an article about a playback bug in Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.12.36. At that time I was encoding a majority of my audio clips at 48kHz and 24bit, then compressing the MP3 versions to 192kbps. This caused the audio to playback in the Flash player poorly with considerable amounts of warping and distortion. Since then I have been down-sampling my clips to 44.1kHz and 16bit before creating the MP3 to avoid the issue. Although the fix came out early in February, I think I will continue doing this for the time being, until most readers have had time to upgrade their Flash plugins. If you ever look at archived or random entries, I’d suggested upgrading so you don’t experience the playback problems.

1972 Social Commentary Degraded with a Halftone Pattern

Here is another recently produced example of processing sound with Photoshop via Photosounder. In this instance I applied the Halftone Pattern filter under the Distort sub menu.

With this particular effect I find the sound of the noise in between the phrases of dialogue more interesting than the dialogue itself. It has an odd digital scrambling sort of quality that I can imagine using in a audio project for one reason or another.

1972 Dialogue with Distort Halftone Pattern

Kutiman Remixes YouTube on Thur-You.com

Early last week a student showed me Thru-You.com, a collection of YouTube video mashups by Israeli, neo-funk artist Kutiman. I was thoroughly impressed with his work, but soon afterward the site went down due to bandwidth limits. Since then it’s been up and down several times. Hopefully they’ll have their bandwidth problems sorted out soon, so If you can’t view these videos straight away, bookmark the site and check back because they’re worth the wait. Update: The videos have been moved to YouTube, so there should be no more bandwidth issues.

 

Snow Melting Rapidly into a Storm Drain

Signs of Spring are making themselves heard in Minneapolis. For example, I recorded the sound of snow quickly melting into a storm drain near the Mississippi river in Minneapolis last night. The temperature was approaching fifty degrees Fahrenheit (ten Centigrade) creating a steady stream of water pouring into a grate adjacent to a cobble stone street. The sound was loud enough to capture my attention as I cycled past it, and nearly drowned (no pun intended) out the ambient noise of traffic and a nearby power plant.

Snow Melting into Storm Drain

Reel to Reel Tape JAM!

Hey Cookbookers,

I’ve had a brilliant few last days, and amongst the highlights were the acquisition of a used AKAI 4000d tape machine. A bit on the machine first – I got it through an very healthy program called freecycle.org here in the UK. I simply put an ad up asking if anyone had any old noise making bits that they didn’t use anymore, and I got a response from a decent bloke who offered me a tape machine he couldn’t get to use.

Delighted I picked it up, he showed me how to thread the tape (a bit before my time you see…) and such. I was immensely grateful and helped him out with some technical computer bits out of gratitude.

Story over, now for the fun. I’ve hooked my Tape machine up to the PC, and routed it through a focusrite preamp and sherman filterbank. I love the retro psychedelic sound – type stuff, and was playing around with feedback loops and such. It turned into a jam, with my loops and samples, and feedback etc. and (i’m not sure if this is meant to happen) but the fast forwarding and rewinding of the tape picked up all the noise, but in super high speed. I think this sounds brilliant. Check it out!

*IT’S LOUD!!!* :D
Tape Machine Jam