Audio
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My Critique of the RGT Start Up Sound
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1 min read
In this video I listen to the sound as it’s used in real life, talk about what the sound is intended to accomplish, and then give it a sound score. And then I try to improve on it. RGT is a great, freemium service that’s fun for cycling indoors. It connects to your bike and…
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Presentation Hardware: Tiny USB Speakers
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1 min read
I’m learning the hard way that presenting concepts may mean giving them to someone else to show on an unknown laptop across the world somewhere. I can control for many factors by simply making a video of my design concept, with voice over. But that laptop won’t get the audio loud enough, and no one…
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A Quantified Value of the iPod Design
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2 min read
This study — Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation System? The case of Apple’s iPod — is one of the best I’ve heard of in a long time. The researchers traced the parts and assembly of the iPod and attributed the value generated by each step by part and by country. A few key…
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Good Crazy and Bad Crazy
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1 min read
My MIG colleague Scott Hirsch recorded a podcast with PodTech and discussed technology-focused startups that drive by the rear-view mirror, open vs. closed networks, and why it’s the crazy-brave people that drive innovation.
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Disruption in home audio
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3 min read
If you’d like to see the process of a disruptive technology take hold before the disruption, look at the home audio industry. In the past year or two home audio has taken some interesting turns. Before you basically had two configurations: simpler, inexpensive all-in-one systems or more flexible and expensive separates. Cambridge Soundworks, then Tivoli,…
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VoIP and personal SLAs
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1 min read
Last night my wife and I realized we both had conference calls from home at the same time. My group wanted to use Skype, so she was free to use our landline, a Vonage (VoIP) connection. This means we were using two different devices to push and pull audio down the same cable modem connection.…
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AAC: music to my ears
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1 min read
If you’re using iTunes/iPod/QuickTime 6 you can start burning music in AAC format, the audio spec for MPEG-4. The encoding is better than MPEG-3 resulting in smaller file sizes (at the same bit rate) and higher quality sound. Mp3s couldn’t match CDs for sound quality because they relied on earlier, imperfect perceptual coding algorithms; AAC…
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Audio Software
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0 min read