The Null Device

Music Thing has a feature on how various tiny, ubiquitous sounds and pieces of music were created. The Mac startup sound, for example, was a C Major chord played on a Korg Wavestation, whereas Brian Eno created the Microsoft sound during a creative dry spell.

(via MusicThing) ¶ brian eno mac sound windows 0

Music Thing looks at the important question of why ice cream vans sound the way they do, with a subtext of finding ways of emulating that sound in a studio:

" Early models consisted of a hand tuned Swiss musical movement (like a music box) fitted with a magnetic pick up and the amplifiers used radio-type valves. In 1958 reliable transistors came on to the market and efficient amplifiers were built to work directly of the vehicle's battery."

British vans traditionally use 'Grampian Horn' loudspeakers (which cost about £60), pointed down at the road to disperse the sound.

(via MusicThing) ¶ audio ice cream vans sound tech 0

Linux geekery: A great big list of Linux sound hacking links. Everything from sound processing libraries to revolutionary new DSP APIs to file reading code to MIDI classes for Python and Tcl. Also, CDfs, which lets you mount a CD (including multiple sessions and audio tracks) as a special file system.

¶ linux programming sound 0