In DAWs, there are the familiar names – MOTU DP, Pro Tools, SONAR, Ableton Live, Cubase, Apple Logic. All have functionality to recommend them – hence their longevity. But then, there’s one upstart that continues to win over fans: Reaper. Its developers actually advertise that its upgrades are evolutionary, not revolutionary – which may come as a comfort to pro users easily jangled by radical UI changes.

But evolutionary as it may be, Reaper 4 has some highlights I think could significantly broaden its appeal. The changelog is utterly, terrifyingly long, so let me pull out some of the big points. (See also the preview we ran in December.)

A new, customizable user interface. Various DAWs keep trying this, but Reaper has a nice take: easily drag and float or dock windows and toolbars, then customize navigating them with mouse modifiers. There’s also the ability to make your own layouts.

Multichannel and surround. Multichannel track metering, plus a 3D panning ReaSurround plug-in with “rotations, transformations, and diffusions,” make this a serious offering for people working with multichannel diffusions. (Incidentally, that appears to look nice enough for people doing configurations other than conventional surround, too.)

Improved STEREOPHONIC SOUND. Okay, so you’re not quite ready for this 3D speaker diffusion surround business? There’s still some goodness for you. Track pan improvements give you additional control over stereo width – and you can even set stereo width to envelopes for some serious headphone ear candy. You can also set track pan to one of several modes: “balance, stereo pan (L/R + width), dual pan, and classic (3.x) balance.”

Batch capabilities. New batch conversion and rendering options let you easily send batches to folders and files, and use customizable wildcards for more control. You can also save render presets. Translation: people working on complex projects like games are going to love this. (I wonder if the collaboration with Rock Band developer Harmonix might bear fruit here.)

A Project Bay collects media and effects and lets you organize lists of assets for different projects. The Project Bay also manages comps directly – usually comps, multiple takes, are handled only within tracks; seeing them in project management is an interesting new idea. These things you really have to try out in practice over some big projects, but I’m encouraged by the addition.

MIDI musical manipulation: Interestingly, the project management magic also includes the ability to pool and edit and share MIDI data, which is something I’ve never seen before. I imagine you could develop some elaborate compositional workflow based on this, with patterns you modify all at once for … generative techno? Micro-edited ambient? You figure it out! There are also new MIDI constrain features that let you create MIDI patterns based on chords or scales. For the first time, Reaper is looking like a contender as a tool for imagining new musical ideas with MIDI.

Envelope editing lets you customize envelope segments with the mouse. New pitch shift envelopes let you mangle and modify the pitch of sounds.

Did we mention that Reaper costs as little as US$60 for a non-commercial license, and with that or the $225 license, you get upgrades through Reaper 5.99? Mac + Windows (+ Linux, via WINE).

Check out the full, new feature set:
Reaper 4 Changelog
Version 4.0 discussion at the forums
http://reaper.fm/

Thanks to Jeffrey James and everyone who sent this in!

As an addendum to the last story, Ivica Ico Bukvic sends along an example of the [myu] Max/MSP + Unity game engine combination in action. Here’s the surprise: Unity isn’t generating visuals. Instead, Unity simulates ripples created by movement in the space, and builds physical models that are sonified and spatialized by Max/MSP.

Speaking of work involving art museums and the combination of Max and Unity, VJ Anomolee notes in comments his own work with the pairing. Lightbent Synth is an in-progress piece with alternative controllers and sensors that produces sound with a novel visual representation (sound’s very quiet in this preview — more hopefully once it progresses):

Lightbent Synth from VJ Anomolee on Vimeo.

Ivica explains the top work:

This past fall [myu] had seen its first real-world implementation in an exhibit that was a part of the grand opening of the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, VA (http://www.taubmanmuseum.org/). The exhibit utilized [myu] as part of an interactive aural installation titled "elemental." An online tech
demo video of the installation, including written synopsis is available also via Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA-9BOgc1gk. Below is a brief synopsis of the installation:

"elemental" interactive communal soundscape premiered in November 2008 as part of the Revo:oveR collection commissioned for the grand opening of the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, VA. The Youtube video focuses primarily on the technical aspects of the installation. Using Max/MSP/Jitter, a homebrew IR webcam with fish eye lens and a LED-based IR spotlights, entire 24×36-foot exhibit space is converted into an aural sandbox giving visitors an opportunity to generate and shape the
ensuing soundscape. Positional data of up to 20 visitors is forwarded to Unity3d using [myu] Max-Unity interoperability toolkit developed at DISIS (http://disis.music.vt.edu). Unity is used for physical simulation of ensuing ripples and the resulting data is sent back to Max for spatialization across a 12-channel (4×3) ceiling-mounted speaker array. Driven by communal interaction, virtual ripples refract from each other spawning an algorithmically generated aural fireworks. The exhibit ran non-stop for approximately 5 months until March 2009.

Bonus video below: an early prototype that did include visuals. After days of looking at emulated knobs and faders, it certainly does speak to some of the possibilities for musical interface and expression.

Let’s start with the important bit: the Traveler really is a mobile interface. It weighs under four pounds and fits into a backpack; it’s actually a little lighter and more compact than a typical 15” laptop. Now, if your input and output needs are limited (a mic in, headphone out, and stereo out do suit a lot of folks just fine), your options are obviously many. But the Traveler manages to be this small and pack an absurd amount of I/O and functionality into that small space.

Audio interfaces tend not to get a whole lot of updates, but MOTU has been steadily upgrading the Traveler. New in mk3:

• Digital I/O expanded for a total of 28 simultaneous ins and 30 outs (including digital I/O), on top of the (existing) four XLR/TRS mic ins. Digital up to 96kHz and analog up to 192kHz – all eight.
• True high-impedance guitar ins
• Hardware limiter on the pre, plus a “soft clip” feature that “engages just before clipping occurs and helps reduce perceptible distortion.” (That’s “soft” as in the clip prevention – the process takes place in hardware. I inaccurately described this as being similar to a compressor; it’s not – it’s a different process, and combined with hardware limiting makes this ideal for live mic input.)
• 1 dB trim increments on all analog ins
• MIDI Time Code support
• Optical I/O: choose 16 channels ADAT, 8 channels of SMUX, or two pairs of TOSLink, or mix and match
• New software: CueMix FX software, which turns the Traveler into a mixer with compression, a modeled version of the Teletronix optical leveling amp, and real-time signal analysis
• … and you can access these features from the front panel

… just to name a few improvements. And lest you think FireWire is dead, have a good look at the Traveler. The whole package is powered by the FireWire bus, or you can add a field battery pack. On the Mac side, this is yet another reason not to get a non-Pro MacBook.

New CueMix FX software, which is also available for MOTU’s other interfaces.

A lot of these features are nice, but to my mind, the major draw is still that you get a ton of I/O in a nice, mobile box, now with four mic ins. For anyone doing surround, you also get front-panel monitoring controls, and enough actual outs to pull off various surround setups, with different setups nicely supported in the software. On Mac and Windows, you get full ASIO, WDM, Core Audio, and Core MIDI support. (Linux has been maturing as far as FireWire audio support, though I don’t know off-hand how this will do.)

MOTU isn’t shipping the new Traveler until Q1, but they promise the same pricing as the current model, which has a street around US$850.

MOTU Traveler mk 3 [Product page, which goes into some of the rather lovely effects in there]

If you own another MOTU unit, you’ll be relieved to know the CueMix software features will be available for download on other FireWire audio interfaces.

Bet this would look fantastic as a pillow, too.

Mark Nelson didn’t manage to make this his fifth portable flash recorder review in Hawaii, but he made up for it in depth. His review of the Zoom H2 is almost 5,000 words and contains surround-sound links galore as well as some nifty audio examples.

What’s especially cool was that it became a collaborative review after I asked readers what features they wanted us to test when the H2 finally shipped. They piled on with questions, driving my blog to #1 on the whole O’Reilly Network. At last count, I had close to 300 comments. One reader even wrote a Mac plugin to convert the H2′s quad recordings to 5.1.

So, there you have it: mobile recording geekery can have mass appeal!

Review

Pre-discussion

Kirsty Komuso is documenting a class project to use Wii gaming controllers to manipulate sound. The secret: feed the students pizza. (Hey, low blood sugar is most definitely not helpful when working with interactive projects.)

It is amazing what you can achieve with a class of advanced interaction design students, fuelled [sic] by 12 pizzas and a couple of toys (Wii Bluetooth remote controllers). In our class, students are designing spatial interaction projects that can take the form of art installation, informative sonification/visualisation or augmented hyper-instrument design (gesture performance interface)

Wii spatial sound control [Sonic Yoshi]

I like their approach: take the Mac-based aka.wiiremote object for Max/MSP, hook up lots of stuff, and see what happens!

Kristy also points to something I hadn’t seen before: Simon Morris has a sound project that uses skateboards as wireless sensing controllers for music. The result: the skateboarder becomes a “composer.” (And, as in traditional composition, you wipe out and fall on your ass a lot.)

Musique Concrete: Transforming Space, Sound, and the City Through Skateboarding [Project Page]
Skate/Sound Presentation at Kolin Koulu Middle School [The Real Simon Blog]

Skateboards? Nintendo? Pizza? I’m sure we’ve got the kids interested by now. Darnit, I’m hungry and want to play Zelda.

Contained in the Apple Final Cut Studio 2 announcement is a new version of Apple’s video-savvy sound editor, Soundtrack Pro. Unfortunately, Apple still hasn’t restored the a la carte, Soundtrack-only purchase option — you have to get Final Cut Studio to get Soundtrack Pro 2. But the new release does build on some of the unique interface ideas of the first version, while adding the key capabilities the first version lacked — namely, usefulness for actually creating soundtracks. And look closely at these screen shots, and you just might see something of the next Logic. (Yeah, I know, you wanted solid information, but it wouldn’t have made sense to talk about a music product like Logic at a broadcast production show like NAB, where Final Cut Studio 2 was launched. When Apple’s ready, I’m sure we’ll hear from them.)

The big news here: Apple is certainly making an effort to push how we edit, in terms of spotting for video and interfaces for surround and effects. We’ll have to see if they pulled it off, and if these paradigms can effectively “trickle up” to their flagship DAW — and whether other developers can push even further in the same direction.

New in 2:

1. Easier editing for video: “Rolling” edits and a new multiport video editor are designed to make spotting easier.
2. Better take management for dialog: One nice feature of the first Soundtrack was its integrated takes; the hope was you’d use this for dialog recording, but it wasn’t quite there yet. The new version lets you take bits of different takes to get ADR right for fixing dialog after the fact. (Needless to say, this kind of take management can be used in other situations, as well, not just video. But unless you buy Final Cut Studio …)
3. Automatic conforming, integrating with Final Cut: This sounds promising, but since some of you actually do conforming, and Final Cut Studio 1 botched a lot of the round-trip integration features between Soundtrack and Final Cut, I’m going to sit on my hands for now. Any thoughts, from those of you who know and what you can see in these … uh, product materials? Okay, never mind.
4. Directly edit spectrums, as seen recently in Adobe Soundbooth CS3, which you can buy a la carte, for both Mac and Windows, or get free with the upcoming Adobe production suite.
5. Surround: Noticeably missing in the first version was surround capabilities, and they’re here in Soundtrack Pro 2. The new surround panner looks beautiful aesthetically, at least. And it’s nice to see panners integrated in the track view. And there’s one unique feature:
6. Combined surround and stereo in one project: Delivering to multiple formats? Now you can keep track of both in one project file. Nice.
7. Surround clips: Since Apple is a big fan of giving you lots of pre-built sound effects and beds, these are now in surround. Hint to production people wanting to look professional, though: hire a composer and sound designer.
8. Tape-style scrubbing as seen recently in Peak Pro 5.
9. New Sound Palette for applying effects via a tooth-achingly pretty interface.
10. Lift & Stamp for matching audio via effects. Done before with EQ, but seems to be done differently here; this is one I’ll definitely have to test to understand. (And, while they say matching EQ, did they say you can match other effects, as well? How?)

Soundtrack Pro 2 might be more interesting to the music market if it were available separately. And Windows users are now spoiled for choice in audio editors, with Audition, Sound Forge, WaveLab, and others.

But you might be able to spot some of the direction in Logic 8 in Soundtrack, as I had argued previously. You’ll see a new, layered interface for plug-ins, a lot like what we’ve seen in tools like iPhoto and Motion. And the surround interface (along with some subtler details to the former-Emagic plug-ins in the screen shots) are definitely an upgrade over Logic Pro 7.

Here’s a quick view of what Logic might offer. The effects have at least gotten an eye candy upgrade. The “Fade selector” to me should at least save some time, even if it’s not quite revolutionary. And as a sound design and effect addict, I love the idea of the Sound Palette and Lift & Stamp features, which let you freely apply effects and match EQ and other effects from sound to sound, respectively. Of course, I won’t be using them the way Apple intends. I’ll be trying to create ungodly applications of convolution reverbs that sound like a Javanese gamelan floated out the port airlock.

Consider this a preview. All bets are off until there’s a shrink-wrapped box in my office. More soon. (Soundtrack is shipping: May. Logic: no one knows.)

Apple Soundtrack Pro 2 Product Page (filled with plenty of demo videos … enjoy)

We don’t have to wait for press releases around here; an enthusiastic Apogee employee (not from the sales and marketing end, he says) writes in to brag about Apogee’s support for the new Apple Mac Pro. Not only are drivers available today for using the Apogee Symphony PCI-Express audio card, but Apogee says the combination of Apple and Apogee hardware acheives an unheard-of 2ms latency. From Apogee’s official statement:

Apogee’s new Universal PCI-Express driver, in combination with the powerful Intel processors in the Mac Pro, lowers the latency of the Symphony PCI-Express card by over 50% into the 2ms range. This achievement is a significant increase in performance beyond other native solutions on the market and compares favorably to the latency on other hardware-based systems.

Symphony PCI Express Product Page

That’s impressively low latency for native-processed audio, and it makes native software solutions like Logic Pro, DP, and Live all the more appealing. I don’t want to get too overexcited based on marketing materials, though; anyone out there who’s lucky enough to get a Mac Pro and a Symphony card, I’m sure we’ll all be anxious to hear your real-world experiences.

Apogee’s Ensemble FireWire card also has drivers (in beta, but evidently useful) for all Intel Macs, in case you’re using that with a new Mac Pro.

If you imagine these cards are only being used in studios, think again. Via Apogee’s news page, the 16:9 Art Installation at IRCAM/NIME 2006 let visitors spatialize sound on 144 speakers, all using a visual, painterly interface. [Project page] The resulting sounds, using two Symphony cards for 64 channels of audio, include lots of happy gurgles:

happy gurgles

Ed. note: Apogee Digital appear to have crashed their server; I’ll update once it’s back up. Guess those Mac Pro users don’t want to wait for Digidesign and HD? -PK

The latest version of the environment runs in the free Pure Data programming environment, but a fully updated version for Max/MSP is on its way, too. (It’s always nice to me to see folks supporting both — keep it up, gang.) I’ve heard good things about the jimmies, which go back over a decade, and this project in general. I finally have a piece to try them out on, so I’ll report back!

This terrific free project comes to us by way of Canada’s Society for Arts and Technology. It’s enough to make you shout “Go, Canada!” watching the Turino Winter Olympics, eh?

Now you can have one of your very own: Electrotap has announced they’re shipping the Hemisphere speaker array. And forget the odd looks of other speakers for a second: this sounds downright practical. It weighs just 17 lbs., but contains six Polk Audio db525 fullrange drivers. It sits on a surface. Sound fills the space, but it actually comes from the location where you’re playing. And at US$599, many of you can afford it.

Most importantly, with the flat base on the new model, you can finally discourage alien beings attending your gigs from trying to play interdimensional space hockey with it. I get kicked out of more clubs that way . . .

(Don’t miss the history of the device assembled there, with shots like the 1997 model shown below — bless those Princeton sound wizards!)

Xbox 360 is here — and with it has brought major hype, major shortages, and armed robbery of new systems. We’re going to assume that must mean it’s a big deal. Resident gaming expert W. Brent Latta looks at what the Xbox 360 might mean for digital music with a roundup of past coverage. But in short: game systems are a major new platform for music. And that could mean new ways of listening (for better or worse), and greater acceptance of high-definition, surround-sound digital media. Take it away, Brent . . . -PK

By now it is practically old news: Microsoft has launched the Xbox 360. The first round of systems is selling out quickly across the US, and early reports suggest that the system is solid and offers what we’d expect from a next generation system: hi-definition video support, full surround sound, a well-implemented multiplayer and online system, and some solid launch titles.

Gaming sites and bloggers across the web have detailed nearly every aspect of the upcoming system, so I wont bother to reproduce that material here. By almost all accounts, this is a great system and despite the relatively limited number of launch titles, early adopters will not be disappointed – though their wallets will certainly be considerably lighter. Sony and Nintendo will not be offering their competing next-gen systems until Spring of 2006, so Microsoft has a solid head-start on its competitors, and it is making a strong showning out of the gate.

What does this mean for musicians and music-appreciators, you might ask? Well, you may recall a story we did awhile back regarding custom-playlists on the Xbox 360. In a nutshell, Microsoft has stipulated that all Xbox 360 titles must fully support custom playlists, allowing players to import their own audio to the Xbox 360 hard drive in order to replace in-game soundtracks with their own music. Microsoft’s official Xbox site states, “No longer will a developer choose whether to include the feature or not. It’s out of their hands; Xbox 360 does it for you, so listen to whatever you want, when you want, during any part of any game.”. However, some game developers statements seem to oppose this stance, claiming that they, “would not be allowing players to stream their own music as it woul!
d spoi!
l the ambience…” Regardless of my opinion on this functionality (I think the choice should lie with developers), the truth has yet to be seen. In the end, I suspect the decision will be in the hands of the developer, yet most games will likely support the feature.

Of course soundtracks and in-game-music in Xbox 360 games is making great strides. Already a number of high profile titles such as Project Gotham Racing, Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero have been getting high marks for their excellent soundtracks and sound design. The PGR3 soundtrack features a variety of licensed music from such well known acts as Aphex Twin, Chemical Brothers and Covenant (oh yeah!). This is only the beginning, and I’m sure we’ll continue to see and hear more about music on this system as more titles ship.

I haven’t seen any updates on the preloaded visualizer/game that Peter reported on earlier in the year, but I suspect reports will come in soon. Be the first and let us know if you happen to be one of the few who got your hands on a system. It looks like 2006 will be an excellent year for games and game audio. If you have any reports, keep us posted!