2005 March

Sony is known legendary for introducing media formats that are technically superior but locked down to the point where they fall flat on their face. UMD, the format used for commerical game and movie releases for PSP is no exception. Sony’s getting way too much flack for releasing a proprietary format this time around, considering […]

While we all buy our HDTV screens for the amazing picture quality of High Definition broadcasts, the majority of available programming through satellite and cable providers is still in plain old standard definition. Most of the HDTV vendors don’t show you what standard definition programming looks like on your screen before you buy it, so […]

Free Nero Digital will be available as a free download beginning of April 2005 at nero.com. Users will be able to download and try out all the features of Nero Digital, the world’s premiere MPEG-4 solution. To put it in perspective, with the Nero Digital codec, you can fit the entire audio and video contents […]

Bruce Springsteen’s new album Devils & Dust is not due out until April 26, but only AOL Music has the title track before it goes to radio. After successfully debuting the first four singles from Springsteen’s 2002 release The Rising, AOL Music will premiere “Devils & Dust,” exclusively on Monday, March 28th as part of […]

Worth a Listen focuses exclusively on independent artists and songwriters whose music has emotional impact regardless of recording or production quality.
David Simpkins’s Long Story Short is pure Americana., but reminiscent of Canada’s Neil Young and groups like Poco and Crazy Horse. Don’t let this sway you too much, though–Simpkins is able to blend Americana, country, […]

Whether you record voice audio using the $5 Labtec microphone that shipped with your PC or a classic Neumann U67, protecting your vocal tracks from plosive bursts of ‘P’ and ‘B’ sounds can be the difference from using a raw track with no editing and spending hours cleaning out vocal pops from an otherwise perfect […]

The Songwriters Workshop at Southbrook (SWS), The Dayton/Cincinnati Chapter of The Nashville Songwriters Association International(NSAI), presents the SWS Songwriters Showcase at the Historic Clermont Inn in Batavia, Ohio, 8pm Friday, March 25, 2005. $3.00 admission at the door. All proceeds benefit SWS.

Worth a Listen focuses exclusively on independent artists and songwriters whose music has emotional impact regardless of recording or production quality.
Dan Cunningham’s second CD, I Think Of Home is getting a lot of attention, and rightfully so. “Deep Forest Journey” was a monthly finalist in the Song of the Year contest and recently, “The […]

Another podcasting setup weighs in at almost $400 in hardware. Carl Franklin outlines his podcast setup and includes a video on connecting everything to make it work. To see what Carl is using, check out his podcasting kit.

I posted recently about a very simple way to dip your toe in the podcast publishing pool. The tutorial provided step-by-step guidance to record a podcast with absolutely no financial investment. Going the no-budget route is great when you start out. Eventually you realize making the whole thing sound better is a good idea, so […]

Old MP3 players don’t need to die. When the parts on your portable media player wear out, instead of throwing it in the trash or banishing it to a shoebox under your bed, the drive in your media player may still be a great addition to your home computing configuration. I got an Archos Multimedia […]

2-Gigabyte SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Offers Extraordinary Mechanical Strength, Style, and Encryption Software to Safeguard Important Data.
SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) has announced the addition of a 2-gigabyte Cruzer Titanium to its award-winning line of portable flash drives. Cruzer Titanium is a sleek, USB 2.0 hi-speed flash storage drive that is virtually indestructible and designed to physically protect […]

Ever been to the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville? A songwriters showcase? Anywhere that features live, original music? If so, you have already had the pleasure of hearing new songs straight from the writers. If not, then you are missing out on a truly unique musical experience. Either way, you will find some of the best […]

New high- megapixel Olympus and Fuji cameras spark demand for high-capacity xD-picture cards.
SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) has doubled the capacity of its xD-Picture Card and introduced a one gigabyte version (Type M) of the popular flash memory card. The announcement was made at the annual CeBIT show where SanDisk is demonstrating products in Hall 1, Stand […]

Bluetooth is one of the many mini technologies supposed to set the world on fire, but never really achieving the kind of traction hoped for by so many. At best, it’s become a wireless solution for eliminating the wire between your cellphone and headset. I recently discovered a two other uses that don’t make Bluetooth […]

Today, Sony released a new lineup of cheaper Walkman portable music
players in another attempt to gain more sales, since the iPod is the
leader in mp3 sales currently. The prices of the new Walkman will be
under US$200.00 and will come with a 256-megabyte flash memory chip.
via Yahoo! News:

The recent surge of interest over podcasting is creating a renewed interest in PC-based audio editing. The process of actually recording audio with your PC is fairly straightforward once you have everything in place.
Getting to the point where your system is ready for recording is a whole different story.
A number of steps are required […]

There are a variety of DVD recording options available from PC solutions to consumer electronics VCR/DVD combo units. Determining exactly which option fits your recording preferences can be tricky.
In response to a recent subscriber inquiry, I break down some of the available options and point out strengths and weaknesses for each of the alternatives. […]

Worth a Listen focuses exclusively on independent artists and songwriters whose music has emotional impact regardless of recording or production quality.
Paul Reece is a lucky guy for having such singing/songwriting/storytelling talent. And that makes the title of his second release, Lucky Guy that much more appropriate. His instrumental skills on the guitar, coupled with creative […]

Sleek new multifunction LCD features built-in TV tuner, FM radio, and multiple video inputs creating the ultimate multimedia monitor.
Samsung, the world’s leading manufacturer of computer monitors, takes multimedia to the next level with the introduction of its new SyncMaster 930mp display. The all-in-one SyncMaster 930mp is a high-end 19-inch LCD computer monitor, a full-featured stand-alone […]