The Jupiter Foundation and the Whalesong Project are both organizations which record humpback whale songs from floating buoys; some of their archived recordings can be found here, here, and here. (Warning, last two may resize your browser.) DOSITS hosts a more comprehensive collection of oceanic sounds, with seals and fish along with its whales and dolphins. It also has a couple of nice sections on how animals use sounds in the ocean. (Previously.) [more inside]
posted by Upton O'Good on Sep 7, 2008 - 9 comments

Holophonic sound is an audio recording technique which operates on a principle similar to Holography. The result has been reported to be realistic and life-like three dimensional sounding audio recordings. [more inside]
posted by sambosambo on Dec 13, 2007 - 34 comments

David McCallum's Warbike, which chimes away as it passes by (and detects) stray wifi signals. Torontonians can ride the Warbike for free until the beginning of December as part of Interaccess. [more inside]
posted by myopicman on Oct 10, 2007 - 18 comments

There are good beeps and there are bad beeps. Beep beep beep beep beep. Previously: 1, 2, 3.
posted by jiiota on Aug 26, 2007 - 30 comments

What is the relationship between the optical groove in a record or wax cylinder and sound, and how can we use this to recover analog recordings from the past? Dr. Carl Haber explains IRENE (.pdf; begin at slide 44 for audio samples).
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 16, 2007 - 25 comments

A veritable plethora of online sound toys to tinkle your fancy.
posted by Twang on May 5, 2007 - 17 comments

University of Arizona physicists have discovered how to turn single molecules into working transistors. The research could result in much smaller, more powerful computers and other devices with the ability to process many more channels of high-resolution audio and video than current products can manage. The abstract is available in PDF.
posted by terrapin on Nov 28, 2006 - 17 comments

A Piano In A Gallery. David Cunningham (the guy behind The Flying Lizards! Wikipedia because the main at-least-quasi-official site's down, but while you wait 16 days for that, why not read this interview with Deborah Lizard for your FL Fix) and his new project... A Piano In A Gallery. No, he's not actually PLAYING the piano -- the visitors are. It's a sort of similar thing to both Brian Eno's gallery work with ambient tape loops on different time cycles, creating an ever-shifting collage of sound and David Byrne's recent Playing The Building. The room is mic'd, and the sound is run through a piano, and amplified, both bringing background noises to the foreground AND creating feedback-style loops, as those sounds are also run into the mics and so forth. So... if you happen to be in London.... [via WFMU]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Jul 15, 2006 - 5 comments

Engadget points out Sven König's Scrambled Hackz, an Ableton Live-like app that takes in sound samples, analyzes their spectrum, and builds a triggerable, interactive beatbox set upon which hilarious and remarkable performances can be built. A GPLed package will be released soon.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 27, 2006 - 23 comments

A world of sounds. Despite their difficult URL, The Freesound Project has grown at a rapid pace over the last year, arguably surpassing archive.org's audio library when it comes to sound effects, field recordings, site design, and usability. Now Freesound is combining their sound library with geotagging and Google Maps, allowing users to navigate the world by sound too! (previously on mefi)
posted by insomnia_lj on Mar 4, 2006 - 11 comments

Super Mario Brothers sound effects. Boing! Boing! CRUNCH! Ding! Ding! Ding! Whoop! Boing!
posted by Robot Johnny on Feb 3, 2006 - 23 comments

Ear Hair Cell Rocks Around the Clock
posted by buriednexttoyou on Jan 23, 2006 - 5 comments

Listen to the Many Moods of the Manatee: annoyed, frightened, hungry, and flatulent.
posted by ottereroticist on Jan 18, 2006 - 21 comments

...lights, sounds, rhythms, pulsating your bones, moving your body, we all know this language, we can all sing and dance...
posted by loquacious on Nov 29, 2005 - 5 comments

Would you pay $9000 for speaker cables? No? Ok, how about $11,700? These are just a few of the seemingly overpriced audio components listed on this page.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Nov 1, 2005 - 119 comments

Henry Jacobs is, a unique and mostly forgotten (but recently reissued) sound artist and humorist, an inventor of surround sound and, apparently, really really good at left handed ping-pong.
posted by gilgamix on Aug 23, 2005 - 6 comments

DIY Guide to Recording. Set up a home studio. This seems to cover a lot, and not being a pro at audio recording, I found it pretty useful.
posted by ginbiafra on Jul 18, 2005 - 13 comments

If listening to sound of different languages is something you may be interested in, visit the multimedia language project website hosted by the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. It features the sound files of a small blurb from Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince read outloud in a 100 different languages. The blurbs are also textually transcribed. [See more inside]
posted by gregb1007 on May 17, 2005 - 22 comments

Explore your sense of hearing with LSD... the Leamon Sound Device, that is. The LSD is an extremely interesting audio project that I'd love to be able to listen to. [via]
posted by thebabelfish on Mar 20, 2005 - 15 comments

Listening to Antarctica is a daily web diary, including audio clips (RealMedia) of ambient sounds and conversations onboard the Aurora Australis, a research vessel currently on its way to the Australian Antarctic bases. Margot Foster's next port of call is Casey Base.
posted by Jimbob on Mar 16, 2005 - 4 comments

Don't know ADR from THX? Filmsound.org is for you. Check out their cliches section, and much more besides.
posted by WolfDaddy on May 12, 2004 - 7 comments

SBaGen is software (Windows, Mac and Linux) that generates binaural beats - interactions between sound waves that mess with your brain, to induce sleep, relaxation, activity, and allegedly even hallucinogenic states. SBaGen relies on text-file presets (although it comes with dozens of files to experiment with) but if you want a "quick start", there's also the Windows-based Brain Wave Generator.
posted by Jimbob on Mar 20, 2004 - 15 comments

Videohelper.com sells music and sound effects to film/video producers. Here's their FAQ. It's the most fun FAQ I've ever read when I wasn't even trying to have fun. Though they are a serious business, their entire site is in this style. I want to work there!
posted by grumblebee on Oct 23, 2003 - 10 comments

< earshot >
Live improvisation with digital audio. Play, loop and compose with multiple sound file formats, including: wav, aif, aiff, aifc, mov, au, mid, mp3, swa, mpg, mpeg, snd... Found while Googlifying for links to the currently tanked Johnny Spencer's 'vanity site' directed towards fans of Black popular music c1940's to 1970's. I have not a clue as to the what or why of it but thought the teeming geeky horde might. Provided for your consumer testing.
posted by y2karl on Jun 27, 2003 - 6 comments

Mix Tape for Dead Girl. Writing a eulogy used to involve hours of revising and a good thesaurus. Joshua Allen opts for a cassette of field recordings and madrigals instead. Found sounds find their way to lost loved ones.
posted by botono9 on Dec 11, 2002 - 11 comments

FindSounds.com is your source for on-line sound effects. Their search engine has found and catalogued sounds in several formats. You can search by name, and their spectral analyzer can help you find sounds similar to your search results.
posted by ewagoner on Oct 15, 2001 - 17 comments

Audio spotlight directs sound as precisely as, well, a spotlight What an amazing idea, although as the article says "Most of the uses of sound involve spreading it around."
posted by flimjam on May 17, 2001 - 5 comments

There's been a lot of talk of late about signal-to-noise ratios here on MeFi (er, Ashcroft who?...). Generally, we think of noise as something that always degrades the quality of a signal. Sometimes, however, the opposite can be the case. Here's a neat little demonstration of a non-linear system in which noise can be used to amplify a signal that would otherwise be too be faint to detect any other way. It exploits a phenomenon known as Stochastic Resonance.
posted by lagado on Jan 28, 2001 - 25 comments