I’m always on the lookout for impressive, extremely time-consuming ways to make a case or envelope for a newly burned CD.
Tech
Audio company GGRP (Gordon, Gibson & Ramsay Productions) put together this beautiful little promotional mailer. It’s a cardboard envelope that unfolds to become a record player with a 100% cardboard amplifier.
Once assembled, the record can be spun on the player with a pencil. The vibrations go through the needle and are amplified in the cardboard material. The players were sent out to creative directors across North America as a creative demonstration of GGRP’s sound engineering capabilities.
- (From Ads of the World)
“It’s actually shocking how good the sound quality is,” said Geoff Dawson, associate director at Grey Vancouver, the marketing company that helped to develop the piece for direct mailing. He added that it took a long time to play with different materials and designs to get the audio just right. Dawson says they hit on the idea while creating a website and new brand identity with GGRP earlier this year.
If GGRP can do this with cardboard, I can only imagine what they can do at, you know, their actual working studios with real equipment.
I’ve run sound at a wide variety of live shows, and one of the 2 things that bothers me the most about inexperienced bands is that they frequently have slightly out-of-tune guitars (the other is that they all crank their amps up to 11, but that’s an issue for another day). One reason for this is that it’s a bitch to tune a guitar in a noisy room.
Thankfully, that is no longer an excuse! With the Stimmmoped, you can use light instead of sound to check your tuning. Utilizing the stroboscopic effect, with 2 lights flashing out of sync in specific patterns, the tuner makes the string you pluck appear to be completely still – but only if it’s perfectly tuned. Otherwise, you will see movement and/or the light dancing along the string.
You can build the Stimmmoped yourself, with a little bit of basic electronics knowledge. Fortunately, there are several pre-made options for the same thing – my favorite is the Planet Waves SOS Tuner, in a nifty little guitar pick shape.
Gotta Groove Records is a new vinyl pressing plant in Ohio, specializing in 7 inch and 12 inch vinyl record manufacturing. In this video, they let us see some of their manufacturing process (after plugging their company for several minutes).
http://www.vimeo.com/8754017Yanko Design gives us the MU SPACE, a pillow & mat inside “A cross between the boombox on your shoulder and an MP3 player”. I think I’d rather carry my iPod and a pillow, but maybe I’d change my mind if I got to try it out… Feel like sending out a free sample, Yanko?
Vinyl records have been making a fairly strong comeback lately, with well over 2 million sold in 2009. While that is still less than 1 percent, you have to do more than collect a few records nowadays to be the coolest hipster on the block. Fortunately, Gakken has come to the rescue with their Premium Gramaphone Kit.
A replica of gramophones used in the early 20th century, it supports all record sizes and even lets you record. The gramophone, once assembled, is powered by hand crank, and uses either a bamboo or metal needle – both included.
Oct
15
![paint-anti_wi-fi[2]](http://ufonyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/paint-anti_wi-fi21.jpg)
If horrible internet signal, slow loading speed, and firewalls weren’t enough to slow down your process of listening to music on the web, a new paint job might destroy your chances as well. A special kind of paint that blocks out wireless signals has been developed at the University of Tokyo. The paint contains an aluminum- iron oxide that resonates at the same frequency as wi-fi, absorbing the airborne data and blocking it. The makers of the paint developed it as a cheap way of preventing access to data from unauthorized users.
[via BBC News]
Apple is holding its annual media event tomorrow, and there are plenty of rumors surrounding the event. Here are our predictions for the big announcements to be made:
- An iPod Touch update may be announced, with the new model including a built-in camera.
- Cocktail will be introduced. This is Apple’s digital album format, which we reported on last month in our article on CMX (a similar format under development by all major record labels). Cocktail will include pictures, liner notes, lyrics, and sometimes video in addition to all of the album’s audio tracks.
- iTunes 9 will be introduced. Major new features will be support for Cocktail (of course), Blu-ray support, social media integration including Twitter and Facebook as well as Last.fm, and visual management of iPhone/iPod Touch Apps. We will possibly see the addition of pre-cut ringtones for sale on the iTunes Store as well.
- The biggest news will be that Apple and the Beatles (or, more fairly, EMI) are finally playing nice, with a complete re-release of the entire Beatles catalog coming to the iTunes store.
- The highly rumored tablet Mac will not be introduced. This will almost certainly be announced in January. (Please, please, PLEASE let me be wrong about this!)
Times Online reports that Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are about to release a new album download format that will include digital versions of all the materials that normally accompany a physical CD – lyrics, artwork, even video. The aim is to expand the sales of complete albums rather than individual songs. CMX, as the format is currently being called, will be launched in November – but only accompanying a handful of titles at the start.
Not surprisingly Apple was asked to support the format as a part of the iTunes Music Store, but declined. Instead the company is apparently opting to create its own format, codenamed Cocktail. Although it would be nice to have a standardized format agreed upon by all the major players, at this point in time I tend to think that any format supported by iTunes/iPod is going to end up being the the only format that matters – and since Apple is the only company mentioned here who has stated a preference for open, non-protected formats, that’s probably a good thing.
