Tab Toolkit – iPhone App

TabToolkit is an incredibly powerful guitar tablature and music notation viewer, including an audio synthesis engineer, tempo playback controls, metronome and built-in tab upload and download manager.  Definitely worth checking out.

Agile Partners Website

The tech behind U2's record-smashing tour

PASADENA, Calif.–If you were one of the 96,000 people packed into the Rose Bowl Sunday night for the U2 concert–said to be the largest concert ever held here–you were sharing the experience with at least a few other fans off-site.

There’s no way to know yet how many exactly, but it’s safe to say millions of people around the world were also watching the concert live on YouTube, a potentially server-crashing Webcast that may have been the biggest live-stream yet.

For months, the band has been on tour with its U2 360 concerts. And to top off the grand claims, it has been called the biggest rock tour in history, at least as measured by the size and cost of its infrastructure–more than $750,000 per show, according to Rolling Stone.

Only days ago, the band announced that it would share the Rose Bowl concert live, with fans across the globe. Just before the band came on stage, a roadie calling himself Rocco got up in front of the crowd of 96,000 and said, “Tonight, you are the ones making history,” shouting out that those in attendance would be joined by viewers in “North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica.” [read]

The tech behind U2's record-smashing tour

PASADENA, Calif.–If you were one of the 96,000 people packed into the Rose Bowl Sunday night for the U2 concert–said to be the largest concert ever held here–you were sharing the experience with at least a few other fans off-site.

There’s no way to know yet how many exactly, but it’s safe to say millions of people around the world were also watching the concert live on YouTube, a potentially server-crashing Webcast that may have been the biggest live-stream yet.

For months, the band has been on tour with its U2 360 concerts. And to top off the grand claims, it has been called the biggest rock tour in history, at least as measured by the size and cost of its infrastructure–more than $750,000 per show, according to Rolling Stone.

Only days ago, the band announced that it would share the Rose Bowl concert live, with fans across the globe. Just before the band came on stage, a roadie calling himself Rocco got up in front of the crowd of 96,000 and said, “Tonight, you are the ones making history,” shouting out that those in attendance would be joined by viewers in “North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica.” [read]

The tech behind U2′s record-smashing tour

PASADENA, Calif.–If you were one of the 96,000 people packed into the Rose Bowl Sunday night for the U2 concert–said to be the largest concert ever held here–you were sharing the experience with at least a few other fans off-site.

There’s no way to know yet how many exactly, but it’s safe to say millions of people around the world were also watching the concert live on YouTube, a potentially server-crashing Webcast that may have been the biggest live-stream yet.

For months, the band has been on tour with its U2 360 concerts. And to top off the grand claims, it has been called the biggest rock tour in history, at least as measured by the size and cost of its infrastructure–more than $750,000 per show, according to Rolling Stone.

Only days ago, the band announced that it would share the Rose Bowl concert live, with fans across the globe. Just before the band came on stage, a roadie calling himself Rocco got up in front of the crowd of 96,000 and said, “Tonight, you are the ones making history,” shouting out that those in attendance would be joined by viewers in “North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica.” [read]

Native Instruments Introduces SCARBEE MM-BASS and SCARBEE PRE-BASS Amped

Berlin, Germany /Music Industry Newswire/ — Native Instruments today introduced SCARBEE MM-BASS, a new software instrument that provides an authentic rendition of the distinctive Musicman Sterling electric bass. MM-BASS is based on the acclaimed Scarbee Black Bass library, and is the latest release in the partnership between Native Instruments and sampling expert Thomas Hansen Skarbye.

Powered by the industry-leading KONTAKT engine and playable both via the free KONTAKT PLAYER or the full KONTAKT sampler, SCARBEE MM-BASS recreates the full sonic spectrum of the Sterling bass guitar, a modern classic whose characteristic tone has become a mainstay for funk, hip-hop, disco and similar groove-oriented genres. The instrument was created with assistance from seminal producer Nile Rodgers, and is available in two separate versions that address different musical applications and production requirements. [read]

iTunes 9.0.2 update blocks Palm Pre syncing, again

This just in: Apple’s iTunes 9.0.2 update not only allows Palm Pre syncing, it embraces it wholeheartedly, offering to let you transfer all of your content to one of Palm’s devices to make it easy to switch to the rival handset and ditch your iPho—oh, whoops; apparently, I started reading my Bizarro World RSS news feed this morning.

No, in a far less surprising development, iTunes 9.0.2 once again blocks Palm’s attempt to ride on Apple’s coattails. The cat-and-mouse game between the two companies reminds me of some of my favorite classic John Le Carré Cold War espionage dramas—you know, if Cold War espionage dramas had been really boring and primarily revolved around arcane details of software development.

Upgrading to Personal Monitoring Systems

Last year in the pages of Pro Audio Review, I started a series on managing SPL levels for this, the “Worship Audio” column. I addressed the reasoning involved in the process and suggested methods for isolating guitar amplifiers, drums and other “loud” acoustic instruments. I also addressed acoustical considerations when the instrumentation of your house-of-worship (HOW) has surpassed the capabilities of its physical design. This all led up to this month’s installment of the biggest barrier to manageable SPL level: the presence of stage monitors.

Hear Technologies Hear Back personal monitor mixer

At my church, we set out to address this problem 10 years ago when we did a full redesign of our AV systems. One of the keys to getting more manageable levels back then is the same as it is today: the incorporation of personal monitoring systems featuring in-ear or headphone-based monitoring. Granted, the technology has experienced some significant advancements (not to mention that we have made some real-world adjustments because what works on paper does not always translate to live worship), but overall the concept is the same: Eliminate anything on stage that lends to a muddier, louder sound.

Lessons Learned

Making the move to a personal monitoring system is not an inexpensive option, and sometimes it can be hard to explain the benefits to the non-technical or to convince your musicians and worship leader that this would be beneficial to all involved. One approach to encourage open-mindedness toward the personal monitoring concept is to communicate with other HOW that have made the plunge, then get and share their feedback with your HOW.

Radial Engineering SGI Studio Guitar Interface

I know I’m not the only person around who has tried the old 100-foot guitar cable trick: You know, the one where you run the really long cable from the guitar player in the control room to the live room (or iso booth) where the amp is. Like me, you’ve probably noticed that it doesn’t work very well; you get lots of hum and other noise or the guitar player remarks on the “dead” feeling of his normally lively rig. Enter the Radial Studio Guitar Interface (SGI) system ($300 list).

Features

The SGI is a two-part solution comprising the SGI-TX transmitter and the SGI-RX receiver. Built to Radial’s extremely high quality standards, both are very heavy yellow boxes, like steel bricks. The SGI-TX requires power from the included wall wart adapter, and, like some of the other Radial guitar-oriented boxes, there’s the somewhat-enigmatic Drag control. Don’t worry, you won’t be wearing a skirt if you turn it up; instead you’ll notice some pleasing tonal variations that allow you to darken the tone and change the “feeling” of the guitar/amp interface through some impedance-matching mojo. The passive SGI-RX has an essential ground lift button.

In Use

Operation couldn’t be easier. Plug into the TX’s input from your guitar (or bass) with a standard 1/4-inch instrument cable, connect an XLR microphone cable between the TX and the RX, find your signal in perfect condition at the output of the RX, and plug into your amp — done. For this review, I used a 50-foot Gotham GAC-3 mic cable and the excellent Vovox Link Protect A (5- meter length) for the instrument cable. [read]

This Is The First USB 3.0 Motherboard

Intel might be dicking around on USB 3.0, but Asus ain’t. The Xtreme Design P7P55D-E is apparently the very first USB 3.0 motherboard. It’s an Intel P55-based mobo that uses a third-party USB 3.0 controller for a pair of ports.

It has 10 USB 2.0 orifices too. Personally, I’d just wait for a full USB 3.0 board, where every port’s USB 3.0. Otherwise, you’re just gonna feel cramped and then dumb, when you have to buy another board. If you must have the 3.0 now this slab supports CrossFire and SLI with a pair of PCIe x 16 slots, a pair of Gigabit ethernet ports, and eSATA. Of course, there’s no price or date for this thing yet, which makes it a little less exciting, perhaps. As exciting as gimped USB 3.0 motherboards can get, anyway. [read]

How to Carry Your Office on a Stick (USB Flash Drive)

As USB flash drives continue to get faster and provide increasing amounts of storage capacity, you can use them for more than just backing up files and documents. You can actually run a ton of applications right from your flash drive, which can come in handy when you’re on the road outside your office or home. There are some popular suites of flash drive apps, such as PortableApps, which we’ve covered before. There recently announced freeware portable apps for popular packages such as Google Chrome, Skype and even uTorrent. However, PortableApps is not the only game in town these days.

NirLauncher

NirLauncher is another impressive suite of portable apps that are easy to launch from your USB flash drive. It includes the entire collection of useful Systernals troubleshooting tools. The author makes the process of setting up all of these apps easy, with a file named systernals.nlp that you simply copy to the Systernals folder. [read]