BeOS, which many audio engineers are familiar with due to its use with LCS (Level Control Systems), is back. A few years ago, BeOS sold all it’s assets to Palm, and Be disappeared. With the exception of a few enthusiast web sites like BeBits, and a couple of opens source builds of Be, there was no supported version of the OS. LCS has changed its OS requirements, and development path, and now supports builds of CueStation on OSX, WinXP and Linux (first RedHat, now SuSe).

BeOS was ahead of its time. I still have 2 machines that I use for LCS that run BeOS. They boot very fast, and run reliably.

There is a really good history of BeOS and a review of Zeta on ArsTechinca.

ZETA 1.0 by yellowTAB

I was watching some episodes of Sports Night tonight, and a line stood out to me, again, so I thought I’d post it. It’s worth mentioning.

“If you’re dumb surround yourself with smart people, and if your smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you”

We have to move forward, we have to think about what we’re doing. The notion is not new…

As an aside, Aaron Sorkin is great, I recommend picking up some of his writing, in the form of his television shows and movies.

Aaron Sorkin media…

The West Wing Script Book

The American President

Sports Night - The Complete Series Boxed Set

The West Wing Seasons 3 & 4: The Shooting Scripts: Eight Teleplays by Aaron Sorkin (Newmarket Shooting Script)

A couple of years ago when Stephen St. Croix wrote about iTMS in his column in Mix Magazine, The Fast Lane, he expounded on how cool it was to use this new distribution method. It offers those of us who don’t like to wait the opportunity to get a song or and album, NOW. While the lossy encoding is a drawback for pro audio applications, the quality is acceptable (for the most part) for casual listening.

What do you get for your dollar? Compressed, DRM restricted, AAC encoded computer file. You can listen to the song on your iPod or in iTunes, but only one iPod and one copy of iTunes. (although there may be more possibilities, see the ml_iPod post) One gets to see a small jpg of the album art, but not much in the way of liner notes. Let’s assume there are 12 songs on an album. iTMS generally charges $.99 per song or $9.99 for an entire album, which is a small savings if you want the whole album. One selling point is that you don’t have to buy the whole album. You can get just the songs you want, and you can get them now, but you pay a premium for this feature.

That’s great, but what about other things that can add value to the digital music experience. While low bit rate files may be ok for listening by the computer, what if I want higher bit rate versions or CD bit rates for listening on the stereo in the living room. Or even higher bit rate and word length versions for those who care. What about the liner notes, and high quality album art. How about going the extra mile that the DVD has gone, and offer the musical equivalent of “deleted scenes” or the “bloopers reel.” $.99 seem like a lot of money for restricted low bit rate, non-transferable tunes.

Perhaps Nine Inch Nails has hit on something….They are offering the song “Only” for download, as a ProTools session. This is cool. For the audio geek, professional engineer or the basement engineer, you can take their tracks and mix it yourself. Now that’s a Value Added concept. While the “Mix Your Own” concept might be more than most people want, it demonstrates an important concept in digital music distribution, the ability to offer a much wider range of “products” to a wide range of customers. It feels empowering to me. I tend to purchase CD’s. It puts the decision in my hands as to how I want to deal with the music. I can have it any way I want it, from the CD to 48kbps MP3 or anything in between. Being able to download an entire ProTools session of a piece expands the possibilities even further.

Nice work….

ProSoundNews Online Daily - Digidesign & NIN Offer Free Pro Tools Session Download of “Only”

This is from Mix Magazine. A little computer assembler named Musicxpc has created a recording workstation in a Shuttle XPC chassis.

I have a Shuttle XPC, although not from Musicxpc, and I love mine. While based on the published spec one could build one for a few hunderd dollars less than the retail price of the fully assembled machine, Musicxpc has a few items that add value. Most noteably the system recovery software. Some may not find this to be all that, but for the musician, who doesn’t want to be the IT department, it may be worth the premium.

MusicXPC Professional C3 and C4

M-Audio just released a control surface for use with GarageBand. It’s called the iControl and it looks pretty cool.

iControl gives you total tactile control over GarageBand. You get dedicated transport buttons and jog wheel, eight rotary encoders for track functions like volume or pan, or effects parameters in GarageBand’s EQ or any other AU plug-in. You also get dedicated mute, solo and record-enable buttons. Automatically recognized by GarageBand.

I don’t have a copy of GarageBand, but this caught my eye, as I am always interested in what companys are doing to interface the real world with the digital world.

In these days of digital production and digital audio consoles, and the plethora of other gadgets used in audio, interface design has become an even bigger project than it used to be. In the days of analog gear, the controls were all there because they were part of the electronic circuit. Some of the layout was “designed”, but some of it was the way it was because it had to be for the electronics to work correctly.

Now, designers of interfaces have a different set of choices to make. To take a conception of what is possible in the digital world and translate that to a useable, intelligent tactile control surface, can be maddening. Especially when a particular piece of equipment crosses between different markets and uses.

M-AUDIO:iControl

Who Links Here

If you have a weblog you can participate too!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a paper on a proposed music licensing scheme that is very interesting. Basically it works in a manner similar to the method venues use to license music (perhaps through ASCAP or BMI). A flat fee which makes it’s way to the artists, writers and copyright holders of the material. It may, depending on contracts with record companies, partially cut record companies out of some revenue, but the creators get their due. It’s a shame that the record companies can’t seem to embrace the electronic distribution model, and truly take advantage of the massive distribution potential of the internet, including P2P.

EFF: A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing

I don’t know why I found this intriguing, but I did. I think I have most of these around the house somewhere.

There all here, from Atari2600 to PS3 and everything in between. If you ever wondered about the evolution of the game controller, check out Sock Master’s Video Game Controller Family Tree

OK, I drive a little Mazda P5, which I love. I’m not really into moding my primary transportation, so the only upgrades I really have installed are a high performance air filter (look out) and window tint. (Which isn’t much of a upgrade, but more of a necessity in the desert).

I do, however, have the desire to listen to my MP3 player in the car, which is the stock radio for the Mazda Protege5. I tried using FM modulators, and they suck. I did know that the factory radio in my P5 has an “expansion bay” which allows one to purchase a cassette deck or MD deck that can be integrated into the form factor. Actually a cool idea. I had speculated that one could use this bay, and it’s associated connections to supply an Aux input for the unit. After searching periodically for information on connector type, pin-outs, or a how-to file somewhere in the internet, I came up empty handed many times. I mostly found postings on various fourms and discussion groups expressing the same problem.

Well, I think I finally found what I need to make the factory radio in my Protege5 work the way I want. As it turns out the radio in my 2002 P5 is virtually idetical to the units Mazda put in the Miata. Take a look at Stephen Fosketts collection of photos and pin-outs. The radio in my car is close to the 4262, and as it turns out, the differences are mearly cosmetic.

Heres the thing I had been looking for, the Pin-out and photo of the connector in the expansion bay.

Upon futher snooping, I also discovered that a little company called Sylfex is manufacturing a plug-in circuit board for expressly this purpose called AuxMod!!! It doesn’t appear that there are many avaliable, but the second generation stuff looks really cool, and may have the ability to interface with an iPod or CarPuter using the radios front panel interface. You can find pictures of the installation process and an installation guide in pdf format.

UPDATE 7-17-2005:

So I’m on the wait list for the SuperAuxMod. #1150. I’ll update again when I have one in my hot little hands.

Other Resources:

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Geek My Ride by Auri Rahimzadeh with a foreword by Steve Wozniak. Pretty interesting, and the car used in the book (although I don’t think it’s stated anywhere) appears to be a Mazda Protege5.

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Car Hacks and Mods for Dummies by David Vespremi.