David Schwartz, a digital audio pioneer, will soon be unveiling a new design for a microphone that is aided by lasers to isolate “pure sound.”

Joey Roth, a designer based in San Fransisco, recently unveiled a new design for a pair of ceramic speakers.  The simple form contains 4″ full-range drivers in a white porcelain and cork enclosure.  For curious audiophiles, the speaker system is based on the Tripath 2024 T-amp and include both RCA and 1/8″ connections.  The uncomplicated design is common in Roth’s ultra modern approach and set his products apart from the competition.
Roth built some serious design credibility and got loads of press for his unique, modern teapot design called the Sorapot.  Since that first foray into the professional design world, Roth [...]

A team of engineers at the University of Warwick in the UK have created a revolutionary new kind of audio speaker that has better sound than the traditional variety, and is about as thin as a piece of thick paper.
Warwick news explains:
A groundbreaking new loudspeaker, less than 0.25mm thick, has been developed by University of Warwick engineers, it’s flat, flexible, could be hung on a wall like a picture, and its particular method of sound generation could make public announcements in places like passenger terminals clearer, crisper, and easier to hear.
Lightweight and inexpensive to manufacture, the speakers are slim and [...]

The audio powerhouse, Harman/Kardon, recently unveiled a little web service to pair the route of a roadtrip with the musical selection.  Amplified Journeys maps your trip and creates a custom playlist based on songs tied to the location.  The playlist could be built on songs tied to landmarks along your route or bands that are somehow linked to the places you pass.
Amplified Journey’s uses Google Maps to calculate your trip and will quickly pair songs based on your genre recommendations.  A sample trip from DC to New York kicked off with a song from the Beastie Boy’s album, “To the [...]

In an example of a kind of media synesthesia , John Keston uses Photoshop to process sound. The magic bridge between the audio and visual worlds that makes this possible is a program called Photosounder, which turns images to sound, and viceversa. After making an image file in Photosounder, Keston applies Photoshop filters and then exports the resulting image back out into an audio file.
Keston explains the process:
To test this concept I created a simple pattern with an electric piano patch and opened it in Photosounder. Without changing any settings I immediately saved the sound as a bitmap image. Next [...]

Universal Everything, a commercial studio blending design and art in the UK, has recently installed a beautiful piece in the John Madejski Garden at the Victoria & Albert Museum.  Entitled ‘Forever,’ the installation consists of a large video wall displaying endless animations responding to an ever changing soundtrack.
Floating just above a pond in the middle of the garden, the installation is formed from generative music and generative visuals.  Essentially, the visuals are being created by the music that’s being played and the music that’s being playing is also being influenced by the visuals.  Got that?
What’s interesting about the piece, [...]