Velodyne was kind enough to send me a pair of vPulse earbud headphones to try out.  Hit the jump and see what I thought of these little guys and earbud headphones in general.

So let me just preface this by saying my only experience with earbud headphones have been with Apple’s freebies that come with their hardware.  I never thought they sounded particularly good and I hated how uncomfortable they were.  Not only did the size of them fatigue my ears but they also wouldn’t stay in properly.  I was doing some research on earbuds under $100 for a Father’s Day gift and I came across Velodyne’s vPulse from a CNET article.  They sounded exactly what I was looking for.

Because of my lack of experience with earbud headphones you can take this article with a grain of salt.  My first impressions when putting them on were “damn, how far do I need to shove these guys in my ears?”  My second thought was “where is all of the low end I’ve been reading about?” I decided to look over the manual (yes, crazy I know) to make sure I was doing everything correctly.  The vPulse comes with a good selection of adjustable pads to fit your ears and I wanted to make sure I had the right ones installed.  The thing inexperienced user might not realize is that you have to have these snug and tight in your ears in order to get the low end you’re looking for.  If you decide to just plop them in and they are even the slightest bit loose you will lose an incredible amount of low end information.  After reading it over and trying on a few others size pads I realized I indeed had the right size.  One size smaller and they weren’t snug enough, causing me to lose all of the low end, and one size larger they wouldn’t stay in.  I put them back in my ears and this time I moved them in a bit further.  Ah, there was the low end I was missing!  It was great to finally hear the earbuds at their full potential but it was still a bit concerning.  Being an audio professional I was highly uncomfortable with having the driver that close to my ear drum and the general concept of shoving something that far in my ears.

I queued up some music and the first track was Glassjaw’s “The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports”.  The low end was immediately apparent and a monumental difference coming from Apple’s standard set.  It wasn’t a flat sound and coming from Velodyne, a pioneer in the subwoofer manufacturing industry, it wasn’t surprising.  The low end definitely has some color but depending on what you want to listen to it can be a great thing.  While listening I continued to notice the low end slowly escaping me.  I then realized that having the slightest bit of earwax in your ear (which they don’t recommend in the manual) will cause the earbuds to slowly slide out of their “sweet spot”.  This was slightly annoying because I felt that I had to continually shove the earbuds back in further to get that information I was missing.

The next track on the list I decided to listen to was Daft Punk’s “Da Funk”.  If they’re in your ears correctly, electronic music will definitely be one of the genres these earbuds truly shine.  The high end of the snare and handclap were sharp and crisp with the low end of the kick being remarkably punchy.  I was very pleasantly surprised with how the vPulse sounded on this track.

I decided to check out some hip-hop next.  Dead Prez’s “Hip Hop” seemed like a good candidate.  Holy wonderful low end.  I specifically wanted to hear the low end hit at 50 seconds and was impressed with how well the vPulse reproduced it.  Check. Pass. Moving on.

The final track I will talk about is from Jeff Buckley’s album “Grace”, which I consider to be one of the best sounding albums out there.   I decided to listen to “Last Goodbye” and wasn’t necessarily underwhelmed, but I wasn’t overly impressed either.  I said this earlier but these earbuds won’t shine on every track you play.  The dynamics in this song caused me to adjust the volume once because of pain and I relate a lot of that to the high end coloring of the earbuds.  Things like Daft Punk’s “Da Funk”, where you have quick, transient high end information that comes and goes quickly can sound incredible but a wailing Buckley can become a little harsh and fatiguing.

In conclusion this experience has shown me that I probably wont be purchasing an earbud type headphone anytime soon.  Listening fatigue seems to set in quicker during my experiences and the general concept of placing a driving that far into the ear canal is concerning and could potentially be damaging.  In terms of overall audio quality though, I think the Velodyne vPulse sounds great and the low end reproduction is definitely impressive.  If presented with the opportunity I would highly recommend them for someone looking to specifically purchase a set of earbuds.

For more information on Velodyne’s vPulse, you can visit their product page here:  http://velodyne.com/vpulse-earphones.html

The vPulse in-ear headphones combine a secure fit with outstanding sound quality, making them the ideal choice for music and mobile calls whenever you want, wherever you go. The vPulse in-ear headphones feature precise, low-distortion audio quality due to its 10 mm driver and aluminum housing. Intuitive in-line controls* provide options for volume, music playback and mobile phone calls. The headphone’s combination of advanced design and superior audio quality allow for hours of comfort and an overall incredible listening experience.

 

*In-Line controls are compatible with iPod 3rd generation and newer, iPhone 3Gs, 4, 4s and iPad only.

• Noise reducing in-ear headphones create an all encompassing listening experience
• Unique design made with quality materials ensures longevity
• Multiple sized ear tips allow a consistent and comfortable fit during activities
• A thicker, stronger vPulse cable minimizes those annoying, messy tangles
• vPulse cable features intuitive phone, playback and volume controls
• Frequency Response: 20Hz -20kHz
• Magnet Structure: Rare Earth

photo by Amy Glass

The NTH Synthesizer is an Open Hardware project between Kevin Holland and John Staskevich of Columbus, Ohio.  I recently came across this amazing instrument during a random search of sound-related Kickstarter projects.  Being first blown away by its beautiful design, digging deeper I found that it was beautiful on the inside as well.  It is more than just a novelty:  it is actually a viable tool for sound designers and musicians alike.  Equipped with MIDI ports, it also plays well with others!  Going even further, the NTH is hackable.  Advanced users can reprogram the NTH’s firmware to adapt the device to their specific needs and tastes.  Below is an interview I conducted with Kevin and John.  For more on the NTH Synthesizer visit nthsynth.com

MC:  How did you guys meet?  Was it a chance meeting?  Was it ill-fated?  Was it destiny?

J:  Kevin and I met in January 2011 at an open house event at a local hackerspace called Columbus Idea Foundry.  I think we were both trying to meet people with similar interests.  So it was lucky, but not completely by chance.

K:  There is a consortium of local makers in Columbus, Ohio called The Idea Foundry.  My understanding is that it was formed to be a meeting ground for people to collaborate on projects together, network, and brainstorm.  They had an open house in January of 2011.  I’ve had poor luck in finding collaborative partners over the years, so I was not too keen on attending.  But my wife encouraged me to check it out, despite my grumbling.  John had a space there where he did work for Highly Liquid (highlyliquid.com) and I was very excited to find someone that had overlapping interests.  Had it not been for my wife’s insistence, I would not have gone to the open house, I would not have met John, and the NTH would likely not exist.

MC:  Do you guys have day jobs outside of the world of music/sound/synth/midi/gear building?  And was the creation of the NTH a way to give yourself a tool you could use in your daily toil?

K: Teaching music pays the bills, but I also run sineqube.com which offers freeware and shareware music software, and do freelance commission work for tv, film, web, ensembles, and custom Max/MSP work.  My degree is in music and I’m classically trained as a guitarist, but synthesis is my love.  The NTH is definitely a helpful creative tool in my arsenal, and has made its way into several pieces of music.  The soundtrack for our Kickstarter video is all layered NTHs with a bit of percussion.

J: My day job is designing MIDI electronics for my company, Highly Liquid.  The NTH is mostly something I use for pleasure rather than a tool I use for work.

MC:  Why synths?  What got you started down the road you’re on now, making audio equipment?  Was it a hole in the market?  Was it as you say, “relief from layered menus and obscured functions” that stood between you and your creativity? 

K: We are well aware of the saturation of gear in the music equipment market, and we didn’t want to clutter the world with more consumer noise.  It was very important for us to create something that bridged the gap between synthesis beginner and pro, and we kept that theme in mind during every step of the NTH’s development.  We wanted seasoned experts to grab the thing and create astounding sonic landscapes in seconds.  It’s probably no exaggeration to say that every aspect of the NTH, from the firmware to the manual to the interface to the enclosure was met with hours of analysis, to make sure that the NTH was as easy to use as it was complex in output.

J: I’ve been very interested in synths since childhood and have been designing related electronics for a long time.  Our market analysis was minimal.  We just built something that we thought was cool and hoped other people would like it too.  The simple control scheme was a result of that approach.

MC:  Where do the NTH’s roots begin?  How did this collaboration and project come about?

J: Shortly after we met, we decided to build a synth that could function as a cool stand-alone toy.  We wanted something universal and approachable.  That was the starting point, but then we made sure it was also very musical and could interface with other gear.

K: After the Idea Foundry open house, John and I met for coffee and discussed the type of work we were involved in, and found a good deal of common ground.  He asked me to write a little Max/MSP patch to help demonstrate one of his products on video.  Since I had helped him with a project, he gave me the opportunity to suggest the next collaboration.  I said, “I want to build a synthesizer.” We began prototyping and quickly saw the potential to release it into the wild.  People at the Idea Foundry would stop by John’s studio as we were working to see where all the noise was coming from.  Queries like “When can I buy one?” became more common, and a fun side project became something more.

MC:  At what point in your creation of the NTH did you decide to take it more large-scale?  At what point did Kickstarter factor into your financial plan?  Was the NTH always meant to be a Kickstarter project? Were you surprised that you met your Kickstarter goal? And, not only met but more than doubled your initial request?  Is it something you expected?

 J: The NTH was meant to be a Kickstarter project from the very beginning, as far as I can recall.  We did some production cost estimates pretty early in the design phase and it was clear that we would need a 5-figure funding target.  We had no idea what kind of response to expect.  The pledge activity during the first few days was a pleasant surprise.

K: Using Kickstarter was John’s idea, as he had been following and supporting other projects.  It is a great vehicle for connecting creative people with patrons.  As is our way, we kept tweaking our launch plan right up until we clicked the green button.  We went into the experience feeling confident that we had done everything we knew to do to ensure its success.  If the NTH failed, we would learn from that data.  It is very difficult to gauge the reaction of a large group of people, so we spent less time worrying about that, and focused our energy in trying to make the NTH a high-quality product.  We are humbled and grateful that so many others seem to “get” the NTH, and are excited to hear what people do with the instrument.

MC:  What are your favorite features of the NTH?

K: My favorite features change every time I use it, but overall I love that we were successful in making something where you could get to its creative punch quickly.  I’ve used so many great pieces of gear over the years that take forever to set up and get going.  With the NTH, you flip the power switch and you’re ready to go. I also enjoy using it as an extensive MIDI controller and sequencer.  The NTH is a great solo synthesizer, but it sits very well in the mix while syncing it up with external drum machines and other synths.

J: I like how anyone can pick it up and start experimenting without any instruction.  Most people seem to be able to figure out all of the control functions with a few minutes of experimentation.

MC:  Can you talk more about how you expect people to hack your design to make the NTH their own?  What is the most common modification you think will be made to the firmware?  In your opinion, how difficult would it be for a beginner to dive into the hackable capabilities of the NTH?

K: John is responsible for the firmware, so I’ll let him speak to that in more detail, but I imagine that people will add their own gliss/scale patterns, tweak the available waveforms and envelopes, and test out different filters and DSP functions using the on-board prototyping area.  I think there is potential for people to use the NTH in ways we haven’t thought of yet ourselves.  Because of John’s MIDI-implementation, there is a lot of power lurking inside that little box.  I’m very excited to see what users will do with the NTH.

J: The easiest firmware hack will be to change the data tables in the EEPROM.  These define the oscillator waveforms, amplitude envelopes, gliss envelopes, and note frequencies.  So anyone that is willing to change some constants in the code will be able to experiment with those.  The code is written in assembler, so algorithmic changes will be more challenging.  But we have setup a Google group for code discussions.

MC:  Where is the least likely place you think that you’ll stumble upon an NTH?

J: In the future, all synths are NTH Music Synthesizers.  They will be everywhere.

K: Walmart.

MC:  If you could give an NTH to one musician to use for an entire album, who would it be?

J: Ryuichi Sakamoto

K: Well, I’m a fan of Autechre, and appreciate the ways they incorporate disparate pieces of gear into their work.  But I think I’m most excited about hearing what random people do with the NTH.  I’m curious to see if our design philosophy was effective, and compare what beginners and pros create with the NTH.

MC:  Do you have any more open hardware projects in the works that we can look forward to?  Do you plan on an NTH2 or any other NTH versions that expand or focus on a particular element or feature?

K: We are always brainstorming when we are together.  We often laugh that “ideas are the easy part.”  We are hesitant to discuss future designs and releases at this time, but haven’t ruled anything out of the realm of possibility.

J: We have informally discussed some kind of “NTH2″.  I think we could make some improvements based on what we’ve learned from the initial project.  We haven’t pursued any ideas in much detail yet because we are still quite busy getting the NTH shipped.

MC:  How many rounds of production are you going to go through?  Will more people be able to get in on the fun of creating with such a wonderful and inspiring instrument?

K: That’s a great question, and one that we have gotten from others.  There are many people that missed out on the Kickstarter and are interested in getting their hands on the NTH.  All we can say at this time is that we are taking names for the NTHSynth mailing list, and if people are interested in being kept informed about future releases, contact us: nthsynth@gmail.com.

J: It’s very difficult to say.  If there are enough buyers to make a second production round viable, it is a possibility.  Anyone that is interested should email us.

MC:  Who do you think will be the most likely of folks to use your tool?  Musicians?  Sound designers?  Film? Games?

J: Almost all of the buyers are people that we don’t know personally, so it is hard to guess.  I hope they enjoy using it.

K: It’s early to tell, but I hope that the NTH will appeal to a wide variety of people.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brendan Chilcutt has a small collection of what he is calling the Museum of Endangered Sounds.  It’s hard to believe that a lot of kids graduating from high school this year may have never laid ears on these sounds!

Scientists from the University of North Carolina have been conducting tests on lab rats using ultrasonic radiation as a form of contraception.  So far the process has worked but what are the drawbacks from such treatments?

Read more about it over at i09.com

The Sonic Spread is looking for casual contributors for the site.  A lot of my free time has been allocated to other things lately so the site has been suffering as a result.  If you would like to contribute please feel free to contact me. After the jump you can read a bit more about what we would be looking for, both contribution and content wise.

If you are a regular reader you probably have noticed that this site covers a broad spectrum of audio related content.  I think that’s where this site is kind of special.  There are tons of audio related sources out there, expanding multiple industries, that can be both educational and entertaining to all of us.  I would like to continue sharing these resources with the public but as I said above, my free time has been mostly taken up by other things.  This is why I am asking for help and here is what I am proposing.

I would like to get a group of people together that would enjoy posting here. In fact, they don’t even have to post regularly. The only thing I would like is that they are conscious to what the site represents both content wise and visually. As you have noticed I have tried to use thumbnails and images for most of the content.  I really think this helps make the site both easier and fun to read. I also try to add a few sentences outlining a referenced article or video.  The site needs a little personality from the authors and I would like to keep it from turning into a “bot-like” link feed.  People can just use RSS readers for that.

If you think you would like to post or share things you have found interesting from time to time on the site please contact me using the envelope icon at the top right of the page (with the rest of the social icons) or leave a comment below.  I will also still be posting from time to time and I will share my Google Reader (RSS) feed with anyone that wishes to contribute.

Thanks everyone!

Gamasutra has a pretty cool article about the design process for the original Xbox’s boot sequence.  It goes into details about the limitations and hardware used in order to match the eight second animation with a very small memory budget.  Check out an excerpt after the jump.

“For raw materials, I used a couple of different techniques.  I was able to synthesize on the fly a few very useful waveforms: white noise, sine and sawtooth waves.  These are fast and easy to calculate and also provide great raw material from which to make sequences, particularly given the signal processing available on the Xbox.  And they required virtually zero ROM memory!  But that wasn’t quite enough.  So for additional waves, I recorded 8-bit sound data, concentrating on the attacks.  In total, 3 short digitized waveforms were used, a thunder sound, a cannon sound  and glockenspeil, each recorded at a horrifyingly low sampling rates of between 6kHz and 10kHz.   I also wrote a quick piece of code to reverse the data in the thunder sound, which provided me with a 4^th digitized sound “reverse thunder” without needing any extra ROM memory which is mixed in as part of the lead-in to the big green flash about 6 seconds in.”

Read the whole article here: Gamasutra

Click here to view the embedded video.

As it grows I picture it becoming a great place to organize meets ups
and share pictures or videos from these events all around the world.

If you feel like joining, here is the link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/136133059769967/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a another great TED talk from Woody Norris on similar technology.

There’s a ton of information on this technology online. If you still interested in seeing more a simple Google search for “audio spotlight” will give you loads of information.

The guys over at Electronic Arts Black Box have put together a nice video showcasing the work done for Need for Speed: The Run.  I love a good racing game with killer sound work.

“HP and EA present a 4-part series covering all aspects of sound in the latest entry into the Need For Speed franchise: Need For Speed The Run. We will take a behind-the-scenes look at how the team captures everything from a super car engine to the sound effects of a tense action sequence to create one of the most well-respected soundscapes in gaming.”

via Need for Speed

Click here to view the embedded video.

via Designing Sound

What would you say are some of the greatest recent accomplishments in video game audio, focusing on games in the last 12 months that have used audio particularly well?

Kenneth Young: One of the talks with the highest attendance from last year’s audio track was Martin Stig Andersen’s session on the soundscape composition in Limbo. This is significant not only because it’s an indie game (the audio track doesn’t get many submissions from that scene, good or bad, so please shake a leg indie devs!), but also because there were a lot of non-audio people in attendance, which I’d love to encourage.

The real strength of the audio in Limbo is that it consistently reflects and supports every other aspect of the game and contributes towards a player experience which adds up to more than the sum of its parts. That’s something I aspire to in my own work, and it’s a real joy to see such a brilliantly pure example of it. I don’t think the game is for everyone, but you can’t really criticize the audio direction because it’s just so beautifully integrated in to the whole.

Chance Thomas: I’m not one for uber-violent video games, but I couldn’t resist tracking down and listening to the music score from last year’s Dante’s Inferno. The harmonic richness, tonal palettes, rhythmic interest and sheer ingenuity of that score set new standards for dramatic music in games. It’s clearly among our greatest accomplishments in recent memory.

Scott Selfon: As Kenny mentioned, I continue to be impressed with the boldness and uniqueness of indie titles and their ideas of how to make sound a key gameplay component. We see great and ever-increasing sophistication of the epic scores for AAA titles, but I love to see games push into new musical and sonic territories.

In addition to Limbo, Papa Sangre was a great mobile title that told its story nearly exclusively through sound. And the Independent Games Festival saw numerous unique and innovative uses of audio; that continues to be one of my favorite areas to visit at the Game Developer Conference.

Tommy Tallarico: The interactive audio experience in Red Dead Redemption has got to be one of my favorites. Rockstar seems to always take the time, make the resources available and spend the money to ensure the highest possible audio outcome. L.A. Noire is another great example. But the interactive music, sound design, voice-over acting and overall audio integration and mix was absolutely phenomenal in Red Dead.

via Gamasutra

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36557/GDC_2012_Young_Selfon_Tallarico_On_Goals_For_Game_Audio.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29