Audio Science

Your old Playstation 1 may be collecting dust in your closet, but some audiophiles have allegedly discovered that its CD player function rivals that of $4000-$6000 players on the audiophile market.

It appears that Sony put some very high-end components in it, and it is possible that with some excellent design this player could live up to the claims.
One commentator mentioned that he had liked the sound from his PS1 when he played CDs through it more than the performance of his normal CD player or computer. It seems that there is a consensus of enthusiasts who share this opinion.

However, as is the case with almost any audiophile product, there is some controversy as well. A couple of people declare that the sound is “muddier” and lower quality than their normal CD player or computer.
As usual, take everything you hear with an audiophile-sized grain of salt. What you hear is what counts, and in this case, it’s almost effortless to get your hands on one to try it out for yourself.

(Via Destructoid)

SSD’s are on the rise, and it’s the best thing to happen to data storage since the hard disk drive. The advantages of SSD’s in all types of computing needs are excellent, and DAW workstations, both mobile and desktop, will benefit immensely. I could fill up a good deal of space naming all the benefits of SSD’s, but here are the key features: With no moving parts, they are far more durable and reliable than hard disk drives, they read and write at more than 5x faster, with 0.11 milliseconds access latency (compared with 17 milliseconds latency with HDDs), and use half the power HDDs do.

I started watching the SSD market closely a couple of months ago, and it has been progressing rapidly. It’s gone from 16 GB being the highest known of, to 64 GB approaching affordability. The best is yet to come, as there are already 512 GB SSD drives coming over the horizon, but only a secret agent budget would afford such, as the high-capacity drives are in the unreachable extremes of expensive.

SanDisk recently announced an increase in their 2.5″ and 1.8″ SSD drives from 32 GB to 64 GB. The 32 GB versions will be priced upwards of $300, but there’s no word on what the 64 GB version will cost. They’ll be offering engineering samples in Q3, but as production is scheduled for the end of this year, we probably won’t see these truly on the market until the beginning of 2008.

It is possible to get your hands on a 32 GB SSD right now for about $300-400, as Matt Mullenberg, Wordpress founder has done. I personally can’t wait to get one in my laptop, as I need the speed, but I’m going to have to wait until they’re easier to get ahold of.

(Via Engadget)

The Monome 40h has been a tremendous success, and the 400 units they produced have completely sold out. Monome is now looking ahead to not only continuing production of the 40h in one way or another, but they will be producing two new sizes: a 128-button version (16×8) and a 256-button version (16×16).

From monome’s news section:
“all will feature wood enclosures with recessed aluminum top plates. all monome hardware will be inter-compatible with monome software. we haven’t set firm release dates for the two new projects, though they’re modularly based on the 256 (previously the 100h), so the development time should be very short.”

As always, you can look to the monome user forum if you are looking for a used 40h, but if you’re expensive enough willing to spend a few hundred more, they are producing a 12-unit special edition run with some special features for $800 apiece.

Microsoft’s revolutionary Surface, which will be forth-coming in selected markets (not consumer) by the end of this year, is the same concept as a counterpart you might not have heard of. Although Microsoft began developing the Surface system as we know it as early as 2003, the concept of projection / detection has been floating around; whether Microsoft may have leaked it is unknown to me.

The Multi Touch Console is an open-source project by a couple of independent developers in Berlin, and is pretty much a port of the Reactable (video), which has been around for a little bit now. The system, like Microsoft’s, features a projector, camera, diffuser, glass surface, etc., but the most outstanding aspect of this system is that it’s open-source and can be built from scratch. Go here for documentation and links of the parts.

If you want to see some more demonstration of what multi-touch can do, check out this video of Jeff Han demonstrating a multi-touch system.

This has very exciting possibilities in the music arena, as some of the videos on the MTC website suggest, although I feel the true possibilities of it aren’t drawn out as well in those. I think we’re going to see some amazing things when someone combines these systems with the open-source 64Step software for the monome 40h, as well as other sequencing software.

(Via Music Thing)

There are a number of different brackets that define audio cable quality. Knowing which one your needs fit into is important, as you can spend a sum on high-end lines that would cripple the largest of budgets. One of the questions I’ll discuss is whether or not the audiophile extreme of the market is even valid, and then where it fits into your needs.

(more…)