The World's Largest Sound Library is Now Made Public, Online!

From an article on VideoAndFilmmaker.com I came across this amazing piece of news!

The Macaulay Library, with over 150,000 recordings of 9,000 species is now digitised and has been uploaded to an online searchable database.

The library, housed at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, has made available over ten terabytes of recordings, with a runtime of 7513 hours of natural sounds.

Visit the page and take a listen to the amazing library that represents the tremendous effort of a multitude of passionate professionals, spanning lifetimes of effort and dedication.

Spectrasonics Announces Omnisphere 2!

Spectrasonics has outdone themselves with Omnisphere 2! 

Here's a quick run through of some of the features we can look forward to!


Introducing Omnisphere 2 from Spectrasonics on Vimeo.

Watch out for release dates!

PS:
Great news! Spectrasonics has announced that new owners of Omnisphere 1 will be entitled a free upgrade to Omnisphere 2 when it releases on April 30 2015.

New MIDI HD Protocol has Reached a Milestone

Here's an exciting article from Synthopia I have just read: New MIDI HD Protocol has Reached a Milestone.

Dave Smith, the man who proposed the MIDI standard

Dave Smith again

I'm a huge supporter of the MIDI format. It is really matured and reliable technology. Being still relevant after more than 30 years has proven it to be a really well designed protocol.

Without devices that connect to computers through MIDI via an affordable computer with an affordable soundcard, I would never have had the chance to started my journey into music.

While being a solid and reliable, our demand for more data, more channels and increased control over our devices has prompted the MIDI Manufacturer’s Association (MMA) to come up with an additional set of standards to guide the implementation of additional feature and information that allows MIDI compatible devices to share information with each other.

Taking information from the Synthtopia artiicle, new capabilities of the standard will feature:

- Backward compatibility with MIDI 1.0 to ensure wide-spread adoption

- Plug and Play network connectivity over USB and Ethernet for easy integration

- Thousands of Channels for handling large complex systems

- A massive number of high resolution Controllers and Parameters for channels, groups and even individual notes, for unrivalled precision and adaptability to new controller technologies

- Precise Pitch Control and Articulation messages for expanded expressivity

- Time Stamped messaging for accurate timing and tight real-time performance

- Plenty of room for future expansion to eliminate obsolescence

The MIDI Manufacturer’s Association (MMA) will host an open discussion at the 2015 NAMM Show about this "HD” version of the MIDI standard.

I look forward to hearing more details about this.

Merry Christmas to All!

Here' greetings and well wishes for the season, to all of you fantastic people who have been following my blog and the random posts :)

I pray peace and joy to one and all, and all your families and friends.

This has been a year of change for me, and a big change at that. I moved from involving myself in training and full 3D animated episodic to doing full-time TV commercial production and local Singapore films. This is something I have never done.

The hours are something that I'm still trying to get used it. I have always respected people who have worked on TV commercials. now I have even more respect for them. They toil day and night and many times putting in many over-time hours to get their content out on time, and meeting high standards of expectation in terms of quality, and meeting client's requirements, all at the same time.

However working in a post-production facility also sharpens my "hacking" skills like never before. We constantly need to think on our feet and re-invent our workflows to get around obstacles, sometimes using different software working together, or sometimes using software in unconventional ways.

In the same period I was challenged to pick up Unity3D (I also took up coding in C#, that came with learning Unity). The company has also entrusted me with the responsibility of working with unconventional input devices and testing sensors to work with Unity too.

In the music side, I registered a company with a partner, with a focus on creating more music (instrumentals for now) and trying to create our own brand for it. I hope to do more with the company in the new year, and I will update about the company when I can.

I also had the chance to collaborate with a vocalist Marlie from Soundcloud.com. It was a refreshing experience working with fellow musicians, and I look forward to more collaborations.

All in all I was stretched but I felt that I have accomplished a lot in many directions all at once.

I thank God for giving me an eventful year.

Here's to a better new year filled with meaning, and love for our fellow men. Lets make this world a better place, one smile at a time.

I pray God's peace and favour be with you.

Patrick

Softube Saturation Knob - Free to All

On 17 Dec 2014, Softube announced (see article) that their Saturation Knob audio plugin would become a free download.

Being previously available only to Protools and Presonus One users. However the Saturation Knob plugin is now available to every DAW that supports the VST, AAX or Audio Units plugin format.

Propellerheads Reason users can get it from the Propellerheads store.

For me I had access to the Saturation Knob through Cakewalk Sonar, as one of the components available in her ProChannel strip.

It is great to see this plugin become available when I work off other DAWs like FL Studio and recently, Reaper.