The AudioOrchard blog has moved! We can now be found at our new blog site. We’re going to leave this blog here, just for old times sake. But don’t come round here looking for anything new, ‘cuz we’re gone!
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Doctor: I have some good news and some bad news.
Patient: What’s the good news?
Doctor: The good news is they are naming a disease after you!
That’s a little how we feel this week. The good news is that the latest version of AudioOrchard is now live and you can check it out. And you should check it out. It’s pretty cool if we do say ourselves. There are lots of goodies in this release, but the far-and-away the biggest addition is effects. AudioOrchard now has EQ, Reverb, and Delay. There’s a lot more coming soon, so stay tuned. And, as always, please let us know what features you’d like to see added.
The bad news? AudioOrchard is going away! We’ve received the old “Cease and Desist” from the lawyers. Ok, ok, we’re not exactly going away… just the name is. From now on AudioOrchard will be know as <drumroll> um, we’re not sure yet. That’s where you come in. Let us know which of these names you’d be most likely to tell 1,000,000 of your closest friends about. Or, suggest something else. Really, we’re pretty open.
Well, you’re poking about AO’s site and perhaps making music here. You probably like DIY stuff, eh? After all, instead of just listening to Pandora all day, you’re making some of your own music.
I love me some DIY. Here are some other types of do-it-yourself things involving music, mostly hardware:
- fEarful™ Bass Cabinets. Build your own bass guitar or double bass amplification cabinet (you’ll need your own amplifier in addition to the cabinet). The plans are free, and the threads on TalkBass.com are copious. Being that TalkBass is a huge forum, if you have a question during the build, ask away. Someone’s bound to answer. While doing this woodworking is pretty time-consuming, you’ll save a lot of money in sweat equity if you do it this way, and the chosen speaker drivers are supposedly killer for great tone and lots of headroom. Small, lightweight, and loud. That’s a triple threat.
- PAiA Audio Projects. There are tons of projects here. You can build a full-on analog synth with MIDI capability, a theremin, guitar stomp boxes, studio gear, mid-side microphones—the list goes on. Some of the projects, like the Quadrafuzz (which I’ve built), are designed by Craig Anderton, one of the biggest names in DIY music electronics. If you like the smell of solder, and you don’t mind putting together some relatively easy projects, check out PAiA.
- Line 6 ToneCore Developer’s Kit. Now we’re talkin’. I like woodwork, and I like solder, but this is just cool. Having designed DSP effects over the years, this is some cool stuff. In short, you get a guitar stomp box that you can program with your own DSP effects. Yes, you have to know something about DSP, but that’s what www.musicdsp.org is for! Not for the faint of heart or for the luddite, but if you have a mind for a little math and a little research, this is an incredibly cool thing—a platform for your flights of FX fancy.
A little Google-fu will give you tons more options for Guitar Stompbox kits, tube amp kits (guitar or hi-fi), speaker designs, and the like. If you do music, enjoy the process of making something, like to learn, and can afford to spend time in exchange for cash, DIY audio projects might be worth it.
If you haven’t read The Long Tail, well, don’t worry. I haven’t either.
But the concept is familiar to many of us. Instead most of us getting our stuff—our information, our products, our services—from a few providers, as in the “old days,” now we get a little bit of stuff from a lot of different providers.
In the old days, there was NBC, CBS, and ABC. Now, those networks’ news divisions are all hurting, and we have CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox Business, CNN Headline News—you get the idea.
Record companies are not just trying to deal with rampant piracy on the Internet; they’re also having to deal with the next true threat: the Long Tail of small-time-cum-big-time musicians on places like YouTube. The Pomplamooses and OK Go’s start out small, but then go viral. That’s the kind of thing that sells deodorant, if you’re marketing to the suits at the RIAA.
Places like WordPress allow tons of different people to publish their thoughts for the world to see. Bloggers routinely move up in the world nowadays, just based on viral spread (cf. Waiter Rant, Julie and Julia, Sleep Talkin’ Man). Places like Cafepress let, well, bloggers and many other resourceful folks print T-Shirts and coffee mugs and baby clothes for others to buy. Nickel and dime, for the most part. Which is the point.
We live in the Age of the Long Tail indeed.
And, if you’re on Audio Orchard, you’re part of it! You’re perhaps not a professional musician, but you hope to be. But you can not only publish your works on the site, you can also invite others to participate in yet unfinished songs. Lots of people doing what they like, and sharing it with lots of other people who like the immediacy and reality of music that’s not overproduced and not churned out of some pop music hook machine.
So if I can massacre a Shakespeare quote, “If lots of ‘small-time’ music be the food lots of us love, then play on.”
Did you know that you can spend $7,250 on a pair of speaker cables? I mean, this is hard to fathom. I didn’t spend that much for our last car. My professional tuba my parents bought me back in high school was only about $4,400.
So what is the deal with audiophile stuff like this? There are so many examples of high-dollar equipment like these speaker cables. $1000 for interconnect cables. And hundreds more for things that you actually don’t need in order for the stereo to produce sound: CD spray, cone points to “isolate vibrations from sensitive audio circuitry”, amp weights (yes, you put brass weights on top of your amp and they are supposed to help it sound better) etc. You do need an amplifier, speakers, a sound source (CD player, MP3 player, DVD, radio tuner, etc.), and cabling to hook ‘em all together. But these accessories are extra $$ you can spend to (if you believe the hype) get the last 5% of audio nirvana out of your system.
I have no problem with folks selling this stuff, as long as they are truthful. And I have no problem with folks who buy the stuff. It’s their money. What I do have a problem with is that, for me personally, and for anyone within earshot (screenshot?), there is very little research data to back this stuff up.
In psychological research, if you want to measure if there was a “just noticeable difference” (JND) between two stimuli, you do a double-blind study. That is, neither the experimenter nor the victim experimentee know anything about the two stimuli, or even if they are different. The listener is simply asked to tell whether or not the two sounds were different. That way, neither the listener nor the experimenter can be influenced by whether some high-dollar gear made a difference or not: all that matters is whether it actually makes a discernible difference.
There’s this problem called confirmation bias, and it simply means that we tend to continue believing what we already believe. So in this case, if you just dropped almost 7500 large on some speaker cables, it’s probably because you believe that they will make your system sound better. So you throw out those “ghetto” Monster Cables and drop in these incredible Pear Audio cables. And what a difference they make! For that kind of money, they better, right?
So the problem is that for the normal audiophile, these (apparently) audible differences are usually subject to confirmation bias. The audiophile wants to hear a difference, and so he does. The science of audio perception is well aware that our hearing is very susceptible to this kind of bias.
Double-blind (so-called ABX) tests have shown, for instance, that even trained audio “golden ears” can’t tell the difference between fancy speaker cables and 16-gauge zip cord (lamp cord from the hardware store).
Some closing thoughts:
- If an audiophile friend says that double-blind studies somehow invalidate listening trials or some such, call shenanigans immediately. He’s probably not lying; more likely, he’s repeating something he’s heard. But if it can’t be discerned in a double-blind test, it can’t be discerned. Period.
- The James Randi Educational Foundation has offered $1 million to anyone who, in a double-blind test, can tell the Pear Audio cables from ordinary speaker cables. So if you can hear the difference, collect your money.
- If you have a budget for audio equipment, spend most of you money on your speakers. The most audible differences you can hear will be due to speakers. Next, spend money on a good amplifier, and lastly, buy some decent, but reasonably priced cables (Radio Shack blister pack will work just fine).
Happy listening!
Like many young musicians, I formed my first band months before I owned an instrument. Actually, none of us in the band had instruments. Nonetheless, we knew exactly who was going to play what. It was just a matter of time until we could each save up enough money to buy our axes; then we were going to be famous. And, like any self respecting junior high band that doesn’t have instruments yet, we immediately started on the ever-so-important task of selecting a band name… and then a band logo… and the name of our first album… and the name of our second album… and the album art for those albums… and how we would pose in the band photos… and what we would wear in those photos. I think we had even named a few of the songs on the first album (mind you we still didn’t know how to play, much less write a song). Those were some great times. Rocking out in my parents basement. Pissing off the neighbors (who had a newborn at the time). So don’t get me wrong, the junior high rock band was a huge part of my musical experience, but…
I’ve been thinking lately that the idea of “my band” is not good for musicians. It’s not the band itself. Playing consistently with the same group of musicians can be really good for creating music. The problem is, it seems like a lot of musicians, especially early on, feel that they can only play with their band. The idea of playing with other musicians feels something akin to committing adultery. In music, this attitude is stifling. A huge part of the fun of music is creating something new and different. Playing with lots of different musicians expands your musical vocabulary. Playing different styles of music makes you reach outside your standard bag of licks and come up with something new.
So to recap, being exclusive in relationships = good. Being exclusive in music = bad.
We’re really excited about the next release of AudioOrchard. We’re working hard on some pretty cool features. Here are a few of the bigger ones that we think you’re going to like
- Ability to create “private” songs (i.e. only visible to you and people you invite)
- Effects (Reverb, Delay, and EQ)
- Visualization of the audio waveform (lets you “see” the music)
- Ability to trim the beginning and ending of recorded tracks
- Ability to manually position recorded tracks (i.e. drag it to the left or right)
The goal is to have this next version live by mid to late September. But, we are looking for people who would be interested in being part of the early beta testing program. If you’re interested, let us know in the comments below. Beta testers will have early access to these new features. Plus, just to sweeten the deal, we’ll give beta testers a free one year “Premium” membership (more on this later).
Oh, and here’s a little sneak peak at some of the progress on these new features. What do you think?
I was introduced to another drummer this past Sunday and, like many musicians I know, we instantly started talking about gear. “What kind of kit do you play? What kind of sticks? Who are your influences? Yada, yada, yada.” After a few minutes of this I guess we each decided the other was all right. But then he made a great observation. Talking about gear is sort of the musicians equivalent to dogs smelling each others butts. It’s how we say “hi”. Too funny.
Edward Bass over at Audio Silver Lining was gracious enough to do an interview about AudioOrchard.com. Audio Silver Lining is a blog dedicated to online audio tools. He’s covered a lot of the tools in the space and it sounds like he’s got some great interviews lined up this month. Definitely check out his site.
The interview is here…
http://audiosilverlining.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/interview-audio-orchard/
Ok, this week we’ve got another set of videos. I do have a couple of things I really want to write about soon, but today is my birthday and who has time to write on their birthday? 
Peter Erskine has an incredible groove to his playing. These are some short videos on his thoughts about developing your feel. They’re demostrated on the drums, but these ideas really apply to any instrument and any style of music. Check ‘em out!
