MetaFilter posts tagged with audio

The abnormal has become the norm

tellurian — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:37:55 -0800

Brenda Kenneally documents the effects of illegal drugs in her Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. Money Power Respect and Big Trigg. NSFW [previous comment]

Information from the School of Information

ocherdraco — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:10:52 -0800

Great free lectures online from the School of Information at Berkeley. The lectures are from 2007 to the present and include (among many others):

"The Internets We Did Not Build" (Dave Clark, MIT)
"Combating the Participation Gap: Why New Media Literacy Matters" (Henry Jenkins, MIT)
"(Re-)Defining the Public Domain" (Carl Malamud, Public.Resource.Org)
"Sustainable Innovation" (Judith Estrin, JLabs)

The School of Information "is a graduate education and research community that crosses the boundaries of law, economics, sociology, business, library science, engineering, design, publishing, linguistics, computer science, and information science."

All you need is one channel ... waah-wa-wa-wa-waaaaaah

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:55:39 -0800

You'd be forgiven for rolling your eyes as soon as you hear about yet another Beatles box set reissue whatever, but the upcoming release of practically their entire catalog in the original MONO MIXES is certainly cause for genuine celebration for anyone who cares to hear the Beatles' music in the audio format that they themselves signed off on. Once we hear for ourselves, come September 9, we'll see if we agree with producer George Martin: "You've never really heard Sgt Pepper until you've heard it in mono."

Detroit schools urban exploration & reclamation.

Item — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:49:39 -0800

Urban exploration has been featured here once or twice before, but Jim Griffioen's site photo-documenting his discoveries in and around Detroit deserves a look. Griffioen was recently interviewed [direct mp3 link] on the American Public Media radio program The Story. Jim is most interested in schools. He's taken photos of trees growing through books and other things left behind. Recently Jim has gone beyond documenting what he sees and is reclaiming what he finds. He collects abandoned library books and other school supplies and gives them to community centers. Previously - blog post by Griffioen on Detroit's abandoned Belle Isle Zoo

Jetlag? Tinnitus? Sounds like a DJ...

sam and rufus — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:49:08 -0800

Si Begg has made a new EP. In the spirit of the age he's experiementing with how to get it out into the world, he's given his samples away before, now he's giving all the songs away free or you can buy a nice box set with an 12" made of oak!

Snyderphonics Manta

Señor Pantalones — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:46:31 -0800

The Snyderphonics Manta . With a few exceptions like the rare Buchla Thunder and the ZenDrum, computer musicians were stuck with controllers disguised as traditional instruments, rolling their own, or using grids of generic rubber pads. The Manta, in the spirit of the Serge TKB's capacitance touchplate construction, attempts to do something new, and people are already doing interesting things with it. Videos: polyphonic keys, sequencer, technique, and lots more

chuck chuck chuck-it-too-ee zhew zhew!

not_on_display — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:53:31 -0800

So^* you want to learn the Language of Birds? There's the mnemonic route and the youtube guide. You can listen to the birds in your local habitat or geographic area: New York State^**, Florida, Southwestern US, Tropical America^***, for example. Or, just find your favorite bird out of 104,517 audio and 33,693 video samples at Cornell's Macaulay Library, and listen. ^*From this FPP linking to an article from MIT about birdbrains and song. ^**Tony Phillips' site also has analysis of bird calls using spectrographs and musical notation, along with a mega-links page. ^***See also this FPP. Other sites of interest: • The USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center has a sampling of migratory bird calls. • eNature's bird songs page sorts by bird type, as does Naturesounds.com. • Greg Kunkel has more spectrographic analysis on his page. • Type a word in to have it translated into Nightingale. [previously] See also these FPP's and click on the tags for more birdsounds.

C'est la vie, says the old folks, it just goes to show you never can be too careful

hypersloth — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:03:53 -0800

The Tarantino Mixtape from Eclectic Method is not the first mashup to cross the audio/video copyright streams, but they are pretty good at it.
via the always excellent giavasan Biography Lock Up Your Videos ^

The Altmann DIY Turntable

jim in austin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:20:59 -0800

The Altmann Do-It-Yourself Turntable:

"After the success I had with my homebrew tonearm, I decided to build a turntable that is able to fathom the sonic delicacies that the tonearm is able to produce ... Depending on your local price for wood, and your ability to find some surplus parts, total cost can be as low as $50."

Nebula Best Short Story Nominees 2008

Artw — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:29:41 -0800

StarshipSofa has podcasted all of the Nebula Best Short Story Nominees for 2008, following on from podcasting all but one of the 2008 BSFA short story nominees. Previous StarshipSofa.

Sound as clear as light

squalor — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:28:33 -0800

Well, I'll tell you, Yanni would sound great on this system at The Great Theater in Ephesus, Turkey. A log cabin in the Bluegrass mountains would be another perfect setting for this system. Wow - the possibilities are endless.

A battle of perceived qualities

filthy light thief — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:42:58 -0800

Sennheiser, a family-run company with an interesting history of searching for audiophile quality, has created what it boasts as "the new standard for audiophile headphones." But will it matter in the long run, when the next generation of listeners enjoys the "sizzle sound" associated with lower bitrate MP3s? (via) CNET's Crave has a look at part of the process of assembling the $1,400 (£1,000) headphones by hand. (via) And while debating perceived qualities, do coat hangers sound as good as monster cables?

Dude, I never made it to this screen before!

Miko — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:19:34 -0800

The niftiest thing at Coin Op World? The mp3 files of Classic Arcade Sounds. "We recorded our video game experiences from 1982 until 1988 in a variety of locations on the east coast. Most of the recordings come from Ithaca, NY, Albany, NY and Ocean City, MD. Other locations include Lancaster, PA, Falmouth, MA, Rehoboth Beach, DE and Key West, FL. Luckily I stored all fourteen audio tapes in a safe place and rediscovered them when I moved the rest of my stuff out of my parents house in 1997. In the last several years I digitized these nostalgic recordings to preserve and share them."

The history of the experimentalization of life.

tellurian — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:52:23 -0800

The Virtual Laboratory - A collection of essays, biographies, instruments and trade catalogues (e.g. experiment kit) from between 1830 and 1930. I must warn you that some of the films are a bit disturbing. Check out the eerie sounding vowel experiments in the audio section too.

Revival Revival

Miko — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:06:52 -0800

The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."

Déja vu ?

nicolin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:05:38 -0800

A tale of two countries Some time ago, the french & German tv channel Arte had created an internet extension devoted to audio only, Arteradio. This website contains hours of audio creations. This is the place where you can listen to The first radio drama /la première fiction radio /in two languages and one version /en deux langues et une seule version /a BBC-ARTE Radio coproduction /enregistrée à Paris et London /recorded on location /diffusée en hertzien /broadcasted on BBC Radio 4 on February, 4th, 2009 /online on arteradio.com. You can also listen to McKenzie Wark, or to the moment of silence created on September the eleventh 2002, to Steve, to English pupils in Paris, to Susan George, to Dean Hurley commenting his work, and then dive into the complete unknown, and pure French sounds, like these testimonies about masturbation, or about la chanson, like a Paris postcard, or even a street snapshot.

What else is there besides matters of taste?

ersatz — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:59:28 -0800

It's almost as good as being at John Ashbery's home (bio) and there's more, including a preliminary inventory of his library* (search for "inventories" or scroll down). Ashbery's poetry is still very much invested in the reader's pleasure—more so than many supposedly "approachable" poets. You can hear him read his poems (more), watch him (here's -transcript- a brief taste and a half-hour video) or read a few of his poems. The Ashbery Resource Center has plenty of material including a list of Ashbery's cited influences. You can find more poems, reviews and pages on his work and be sure to click through to the Jacket feature. Skip to the conversation with Kenneth Koch about art and if you aren't satiated yet try this article, a TLS review of his latest or an older effort by the Boston review. Finally, you can see his collages and read an essay on John Ashbery's surrealism. For completeness' sake, here's an animated poem. *Yes!

Created beyond space and time.

Brocktoon — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:01:19 -0800

As you may know, acoustic treatment of your listening room is very important. But many people want to use their space for both music listening and entertaining guests. Quite often large and effective bass traps can rob your space of its grace and majesty and make your guests feel weird and uncomfortable.

On The Origin of Darwin

Alvy Ampersand — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:39:07 -0800

2009 marks not only the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species* but the 200^th anniversary of his birth as well. To celebrate, BBC Radio 4 presents a special series of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time exploring Darwin's life and work: Episode 1 explores Darwin's unhappy childhood, his time at Cambridge University and his failure to become a priest, episode 2 focuses on Darwin's round the world voyage on the Beagle and the objects and the ideas he bought back, episode 3 looks at the publication of Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, and the controversy it stirred, and episode 4 is set in Down House where Darwin lived out the final years of his life and which became both family home and experiment lab. The BBC also presents Dear Darwin, a collection of letters written to Darwin by modern academics and scientists. If you prefer to read actual correspondence between Darwin and his contemporaries, you may enjoy perusing the Darwin Correspondence Project *.

Video and audio from jettisoned solid rocket boosters, STS-124

not_on_display — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:26:21 -0800

Video and audio from a camera mounted on one of the side solid rocket boosters during the launch of STS-124. As the camera is initially facing the main booster, there's not that much to see (except water vapor collecting on the lens and interesting-looking changes in the main booster's surface) until around 1:50, when the booster rocket is jettisoned. After that, enjoy the ride from space to splashdown, but watch out for flying debris! Here's the view from the other booster, without sound. More onboard STS cameras, previously. [N.B. -- Adjust volume accordingly, it gets loud! Looks even better in high-quality and full-screen modes.]

Just People, Talking

Miko — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:09:32 -0800

The recent passing of Studs Terkel sparked a renewed interest in his interview projects, like Working, Race, and Hard Times. But Studs was not just a broadcaster who liked people; he was a practitioner of oral history, a method of gathering information about the past through preserving individual recollections. It's a subfield of history, with its own ethics, techniques, professional literature, uses, and limitations. Learn how to collect and share oral histories yourself, from interviewing to recording and getting clearances to preserving and disseminating. Oral histories have been preserved as text transcripts for decades; now digital media isreinvigorating the form, bringing new ease to recording and wider opportunities for the public to see and hear the content. Explore oral history projects on the web with stories of veterans, suffragists, Tibetans, jazz cats, Nevada nuclear test site witnesses, Basque Americans, rodeo cowboys and cowgirls, musicians, Katrina survivors, ACT UP activists, Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge, Native Americans, women whose lives were affected by the Pill, survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,women in World War II, Hawai'ians, workers in Paterson, NJ....

Pseudopod

Wolfdog — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:14:22 -0800

Pseudopod - a podcast of short horror stories.

OMG life is just an imitation of art amirite

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:53:41 -0800

xkcd had an idea to counter YouTube comment stupidity, and apparently someone at YouTube was paying attention. Not everyone is convinced however. (And there's always Comment Snob).

audio memories of the world

nickyskye — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:25:12 -0800

Sound glimpses into the past. The Phonogrammarchiv was founded in 1899 and is the oldest audiovisual research archive in the world. There are some fascinating sound samples listenable online from the Historical Collections-1899 to 1950, including: The First Expeditions 1901 to Croatia, Brazil and the Isle of Lesbos; Zulu Recordings 1908; Papua New Guinea (1904-1909) and some lovely recordings of old Musical Boxes from Vienna and Prague. The Austrian Audiovisual Research Archive For the sound samples of the musical boxes, click on the images.

make your own

nickyskye — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:06:31 -0800

Postcard.fm Send audio postcards to your friends. Free. Upload any photo of yours or image off the web and any MP3 you choose in a single upload process, then enter your email address and that of the person to whom you wish to send the mix. Done— it’s simple. p.s. postcard does not sell, spam, or share the email addresses of senders or recipients. via