Apple doesn’t always make things easy. Especially when it comes to audio. However with a little bit of searching, you might find that all
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JBL Flip – Review
JBL has been trying to get into the market of portable wireless speakers with several different types of products. These products include ones like the Micro Wireless and the Flip Wireless Speaker. The JBL Flip gets its name from its unique design to either be set horizontally or vertically in a small package while packing enormous, clear sound.
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Vienna Symphonic LIbrary’s MIR Pro – Review
Digital Audio Workstations (DAW’s) and notation software like Finale and Sibelius have made great progress towards realism in recent years. But they still need to reach into the real acoustic world in two long and deep ways in order to pass muster.
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Olympus LS-10 Linear PCM Recorder Review
For most of us who are fans of iOS devices, the recording features in GarageBand for iOS or the built-in Voice Memos App suits our needs just fine. There are some people for whom the quality of recorded audio needs to be at a level that exceeds the capabilities of your favorite Apple gear. One possible solution lies with the Olympus LS-10 Linear PCM recorder. The quality of recorded audio is beyond CD-quality, all in a portable handheld form factor.
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iStreamer for iPod, iPhone, iPad
Review
iStreamer Company: HRT Price: $199.99 I must admit it, I am a big cynic. I have seen so many advertising and marketing claims about
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Ivory II Grand Pianos Review
Ivory II is a Virtual Instrument (vi) – a large set of sophisticated high-quality sound samples of the concert piano. It can be used as a standalone application, which has a sophisticated yet easy-to-use single window interface; this was custom built with its own DSP engine and worked extremely well during testing. The piano samples in Ivory II also function as a bespoke plugin soundset for sequencers, DAWs and notation software such as Sibelius 7. The latter was concentrated on during this evaluation.
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Sibelius 7 – Review
When Sibelius 7 was released recently, its appearance was sufficiently different from that of Sibelius 6 to have thrown some (long-time) users. Avid was criticized on those listservs and forums which do such a sterling job of supporting Sibelius owners and prospective owners. Since so many creative professionals and enthusiasts have so much invested in a piece of software which they use for extended periods each day and to the ways of which their muscle memories had become fully used, change seemed particularly hard.
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Vienna Symphonic Library Solo Strings Review
Virtual Instruments (VIs) allow you to work with lifelike sounds in sequencers and Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) like Apple’s Logic and notation packages like Avid’s Sibelius. (Avid has just announced Sibelius 7: watch for a review here shortly.)
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Transcribe! – Review
Transcribe! claims to be the “world’s leading” tool to help musicians extract music from recordings. It can also be used to transcribe speech and even allow musicians to play along. Does British firm, Seventh String, get credit for trying what’s difficult to do well but really end up as little more than an “also ran”? Or do they have a winner that works in almost every way?
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Groove 3 video, MIDI Orchestration Explained Review
Although an older technology and simple in conception, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) can be complicated to implement and make the most of; and particularly challenging to use in effective music making. But the clear explanations and expert perception of Eli Krantzberg and the Groove 3 team are well up to the task of making MIDI orchestration both plainer and pleasurable for users.
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XCE: Xsample Chamber Ensemble audio instrument library
It has to be said immediately that this is an excellent collection, worked flawlessly in testing and – although expensive (aren’t they all?) – would make a prized addition to any musician or composer’s set of original audio resources.
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Groove 3 Video, Logic Score Editor Explained
The first thing you’re likely to be struck by is Doug Zangar’s clear, authoritative yet approachable manner and style in delivering material with which he’s obviously extremely familiar and about which re-assuringly knowledgeable. Not to mention understandably enthusiastic, for Logic’s Score Editor is indeed very powerful.
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Sibelius 6 – Review
Sibelius is a music notation package. Although its output is music, it’s neither a sequencer nor a synthesizer nor Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). It’s a package that allows music composition as a score following the conventions of “engraving” music – in much the same way as a word processor allows a novel or play to be written as text. But Sibelius’ power extends far beyond that of even the most complex and sophisticated DTP software.
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Olympus LS-7 PCM Pocket Recorder – Review
If you want more functionality, capacity and quality for your on-the-move sound recordings than are offered by the several (excellent) “memo” systems available on your iPhone, yet do not want to stretch to the hi-fi quality of a unit like the Edirol R-09HR, which is almost in a class of its own, Olympus has a number of offerings. The new LS-7 “Pocket” Linear PCM recorder may well fit the bill.It’s compact, was reliable in testing and has a lot of easy-to-use features, offering better-than-average quality.
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Logic Notation Guide – Book Review
The LNG is a comb-bound softcover book with over 200 pages of closely-packed (yet never unreadable) guidance on making the most of Logic’s Score Editor. Strictly-speaking, its substance, examples and concepts apply to the last major version of the software, Logic 8.
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Toast 11
Roxio’s Toast began as a simple way to burn optical media, CDs then DVDs; it slowly became the preferred way to do so until Apple built more reliable such functionality into its operating systems. Then, for a number of its iterations, Toast somewhat lost its way; it failed to offer features compelling enough that all but the most demanding (and loyal) users to choose it over Apple’s way of doing things and that of a clutch of decent shareware apps which met most people’s needs.
Read MoreUbercaster
Review
Ubercaster is very different from GarageBand in one important way. The program does many of the things needed to do in GarageBand in post-production all within Ubercaster’s workflow BEFORE you begin recording. It has a unique layout that is reminiscent of most good Mac software, drag and drop. There are four layers to the program and each is well structured for making podcasts.
Read MoreHarmonyAudio
Review Review
Looking for a way to get the audio from a 1/4-inch input jack into your Macintosh? The HarmonyAudio may just be the firewire ticket you have been waiting for. Guy Serle reviews.
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