You're Not My Father
posted on Apr 16, 2008 - View this thread

A geek named daniel_k wanted to help his fellow Vista users. He created a set of drivers that would get their Creative sound cards working under Vista -- something beyond the ken and expertise of Creative's engineering team. Creative VP Phil O'Shaughnessy, however, took umbrage. The results? A PR disaster with hundreds of users pledging to boycott.
posted on Mar 30, 2008 - View this thread

Things That Look Like Other Things. Also known as pareidolia, it's the phenomenon in which our brains perceive familiar things (especially faces and human forms) in random places. See also The Pareidolia Museum and the Flickr pareidolia pool. [Previous pareidolia-related threads here]
posted on Mar 28, 2008 - View this thread

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison
The Phonoautograph
The history of the Phonoautograph. A technology in which you can still buy stock.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

Elisha Gray could have been known to us as the inventor of the telephone. Instead, he goes down in history as the accidental creator of one of the first electronic musical instruments, the "Musical Telegraph." There are many other examples of early electronic instruments, including: the Teleharmonium, the Audion Piano, the Optophonic Piano, the Trautonium, the Ondes Martenot, the Rhythmicon, the Theremin Cello and the better-known Aetherphone (aka Theremin) to name a few. MetaFilter discussed odd music previously.
posted on Mar 25, 2008 - View this thread

The Sound Of Clothes features the precise sound of fashion materials such as feathers, sequins, glass crystals and beads, nylon, taffeta, leather, velvet, jacquard, zips and metallic chains, recorded in an anechoic chamber. Videos linked from the page might be NSFW.
posted on Mar 12, 2008 - View this thread

I Am Not Sitting In A Room With Reynols.
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

New Scientist has a feature on 5 great auditory illusions. (via Mind Hacks)
posted on Feb 21, 2008 - View this thread

Ron Murphy cut records, but not just any records. Responsible for cutting the actual vinyl master plates of much of the now revered Detroit Techno including Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Underground Resistance's seminal Knights of the Jaguar, and much more - he demonstrated impeccable craftsmanship and skill in both mastering records for sound and aesthetics at company known as Sound Enterprises source link AKA National Sound Corporation. Schooled in Motown, dubplates and jukeboxes, he is the bespoke-crafted, analog link between the digital future and analog past that is the roots of Techno music and modern techno DJ culture.
posted on Feb 13, 2008 - View this thread

Edward Samuel's Illustrated History of Copyright A fascinating illustrated historical tour, looking at how different technologies have shaped how we think about copyright and intellectual property.
posted on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

What do you call capturing sound the way the human head hears it, that is, three-dimensionally? Nope, not stereo. Binaural recording. Holophonics. Dummy head (no, not you) recording.
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

The Death of High Fidelity
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

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.
posted on Dec 13, 2007 - View this thread

See For Yourself - Purves Lab's optical illusions web page with empirical explanations of familiar and unfamiliar illusions.
posted on Nov 16, 2007 - View this thread

AEROTONE. | Hello!
posted on Nov 10, 2007 - View this thread

Serein v3
posted on Nov 9, 2007 - View this thread

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.
posted on Oct 10, 2007 - View this thread

HOMOPHONI
posted on Oct 7, 2007 - View this thread

Steve Mann's hydraulophone with sculpture gallery and performance video snippets: [1] [2] [3]
posted on Aug 27, 2007 - View this thread

There are good beeps and there are bad beeps. Beep beep beep beep beep. Previously: 1, 2, 3.
posted on Aug 26, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread

Growing.
posted on Jul 7, 2007 - View this thread

Powernap MP3s.
posted on Jun 21, 2007 - View this thread

The Sancho Plan "create live audiovisual performances and installations for your listening and viewing pleasure." Spacequatica, recently performed at Martyn Ware's Future of Sound event, is an intriguing mix of live sound and animations triggered by electronic drums -- worth a few minutes on a Friday.
posted on Jun 8, 2007 - View this thread

Tape Findings. Every week RJ from Sweet Thunder posts excerpts from one of a kind cassette tape recordings he finds at garage sales. Found due to Week 15 [better recording]. Other greats: Week 49, Week 73, Week 86. Dog damn.
posted on May 19, 2007 - View this thread

A veritable plethora of online sound toys to tinkle your fancy.
posted on May 5, 2007 - View this thread

Abnormal Behavior Child's got some interesting things to look at and watch or play with. Site self-describes as "visual poetry". {second link's got flash/sound}
posted on Apr 17, 2007 - View this thread

Did the roof of the Pantheon influence Copernicus? Are the planets of the solar system aligned in accordance with a nearly-forgotten hypothesis known (unfairly) as Bode's Law? A fascinating wide-ranging discussion on BLDGBLOG with Walter Murch, the visionary editor and sound designer for such films as The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, THX1138, and many others. [Murch's film work has previously been discussed here and here.]
posted on Apr 7, 2007 - View this thread

Nerve pulses are sound pulses. The membrane of the nerve is composed of lipids, a material that is similar to olive oil. This material can change its state from liquid to solid with temperature. Molecules that dissolve in membranes can lower the freezing point of membranes. The scientists found that the nerve membrane has a freezing point, which is precisely suited to the propagation of these concentrated sound pulses. Their theoretical calculations lead them to the same conclusion: Nerve pulses are sound pulses. This comes from their work on the Thermodynamics of General Anesthesia (pdf). (via Stereophile?)
posted on Mar 12, 2007 - View this thread

The idea of treating everyday, ambient noise as music is not terribly new, but Noah Vawter's device turns ambient sounds into music (in a somewhat more traditional sense of the word):

Ambient Addition is a Walkman with binaural microphones. A tiny Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip analyzes the microphone's sound and superimposes a layer of harmony and rhythm on top of the listener's world.

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 on Nov 28, 2006 - View this thread

"Sonic fabric (woven from 50% cotton and 50% audio cassette tape) emits sound when you run a tape head over it. Because the tape retains its magnetic quality through the weaving process, it acts as a big wide band of tape." Here's an interview with the creator. {via Apartment Therapy}
posted on Oct 29, 2006 - View this thread

What does the Digilog Dynamicator (DD-301), the 3P-III Palindrometer and the AP-302 Algorhythmic Prosecutor have in common? They're all products of Funk Logic; a company that designs filler panels for studio/live sound racks (or to quote them: "rack filler panels with stuff all over em'"). Notable: Their "Ideas That Never Made It" section.
posted on Sep 29, 2006 - View this thread

20Hz not low enough for you? Aching for 5Hz notes? You need the rotary woofer.
posted on Sep 28, 2006 - View this thread

Color of My Sound. Choose a color of a sound or song and see how others have voted with their comments. Add your own audio files. (more)
posted on Aug 22, 2006 - View this thread

The tabla is the most popular and widely used drum of North India. Origins (embedded sound and mp3) of the tabla and tabla bols, the fascinating spoken sounds of the percussive beat. [more]
posted on Aug 12, 2006 - View this thread

Sonic Postcards - winner of the New Statesman New Media Award. Explore sound. Via the Sonic Arts Network, UK exponents of Electroacoustic music.
posted on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Jul 15, 2006 - View this thread

David Webber makes awesome sound art things from christmas trees, pot plants, household stuff, food blenders and hard drives. His good friend Ray Wilson builds awesome modular synths. Ray will also show you how to make your own Weird Sound Generator.
posted on Jul 5, 2006 - View this thread

Len Lye: New Zealander Len Lye was a restless maverick - a pioneer of films without cameras (drawing directly onto the celluloid) and kinetic art (CD available through Atoll, sound samples here and here), and he was also quite handy with poems and inks. More about his Windwand and recently installed Waterwhirler on Flickr. Coralised open directory of short Waterwhirler movies here.
posted on May 30, 2006 - View this thread

What? From WFMU: "What happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room covered with speakers? Feedback. Lots of it." (might be NSFW)
posted on Apr 7, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Mar 27, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Mar 4, 2006 - View this thread

9dots. En quelques mots, 9dots est un dispositif visuel et sonore qui vous permet d'éditer une séquence de 8 images sur lesquelles vous pouvez afficher ou masquer des points. Chaque image de la séquence est construite sur une grille de 3 points de haut par 3 points de large.
posted on Mar 1, 2006 - View this thread

Super Mario Brothers sound effects. Boing! Boing! CRUNCH! Ding! Ding! Ding! Whoop! Boing!
posted on Feb 3, 2006 - View this thread

Ear Hair Cell Rocks Around the Clock
posted on Jan 23, 2006 - View this thread

The Hitachi Hard Disk Drive Knowledge Base does very little to distinguish itself from other knowledge bases, except that it includes some fantastic examples of what your hard drive may sound like when it's dying or dead. Note: all links except first are .wav (via)
posted on Jan 23, 2006 - View this thread

Listen to the Many Moods of the Manatee: annoyed, frightened, hungry, and flatulent.
posted on Jan 18, 2006 - View this thread

Mathematical proofs in sanus, with some visualization from Martin Wattenberg's The Shape of Song. "The music here...is a raw and unadorned representation of the mathematics itself, involving few human preconceptions beyond a basic mapping needed to accommodate the Western tonal scale."
posted on Dec 4, 2005 - View this thread

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