Tag: audio

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BarCampMadison: My Vegan Girlfriend

While waiting for BarCampMadison3 to start we captured this conversation between myself and my vegan girlfriend. We had quite the talk about the farmer’s market, vitamins, religion, Morrissey, and of course, Veganism.

(Try this link: https://www.archive.org/download/MyVeganGirlfriend/)

OK, this is actually a conversation between myself and Vegan Soundboard, an iPhone app that was being controlled by Matt Gauger. We recorded it on the Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder.

I ended up using Convo Droid to record a number of sessions at BarCampMadison3, but I figured I’d get this out first, as it was actually recorded before the official start of the event. Also, it’s funny.

Vegan Soundboard

You’ll probably love this so much you’ll want to download an MP3. (And for our freedom loving friends, enjoy an Ogg file.)

Also, if you want to get all of the audio automagically downloaded podcasting style, subscribe to the feed. I’ll add in the BarCamp sessions as I get them edited and published.

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Convo Droid

Convo Droid

I’m not sold on the name “Convo Droid” but this thing is a friend of Time Lapse Bot that will be used to capture audio at BarCampMadison.

It consists of a mic stand and a Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder which can be used to capture a full day of audio. The idea here is, we put this in session rooms and let it record the discussions so that we can publish them later. It is battery powered, but in order to get a full day of use, we’ll probably need to go with AC power.

(And if you have a better name than “Convo Droid” please let me know!)

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Milwaukee Traffic at Night

Recorded near Alterra Foundry on 1st Street, this captures some of the sounds of traffic on an August night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

You are free to use the file under the Creative Commons Attribution License. You can find it at Ourmedia.org or Archive.org, or download it directly.

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The Meowing

Here for your enjoyment (or not) is the sound of a lonely kitten meowing.

It was recorded with a Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder.

You are free to use the file under the Creative Commons Attribution License. You can find it at Ourmedia.org or Archive.org, or download it directly.

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FireWire Audio Headache

February is the month of the RPM Challenge. You know, record an album in a month… I’ve done it before, and was going to do it again, and to do it, I use a Behringer FCA202 FireWire audio interface.

Of course I also decided to upgrade to Snow Leopard this month, and for some odd reason, that rendered the FCA202 useless. It just wouldn’t show up anymore in the System Preferences as an audio input/output device. It did show up as a FireWire device though, so that was odd.

I ended up trying to replace the AppleFWAudio.kext kernel extension, zapped the PRAM, deleted cache files, removed audio units, different cables, using the power supply, tried logging in as another user, and on and on… I rebooted from my 10.5.8 backup and it showed up, so it must have been something specific to 10.6. I tried it on my MacBook Pro (10.6) and… it didn’t show up! Ugh, over to the Mac mini (10.6) and it showed up fine. I gave up for the night, convinced it was a 10.6 issue. The next day I tried it on a Mac Pro and MacBook Pro (both 10.6) and it worked, and then tried again on my MacBook Pro and it worked… so now it seemed that it was just the iMac I normally use to record to that wasn’t working. (I blame the “not working” on my MacBook Pro the night before to being tried/frustrated/bad cabling.)

I was pretty fed up by now, and sick of searching for possible solutions… I did find a post somewhere about the CoreAudio SDK and how it may install/updated the needed audio extensions to fix FireWire audio issues. One problem though, the CoreAudio SDK was last updated in 2005! But, the answer to that one was to install Xcode. I did that and like a little bit of magic, it worked.

System Preferences - Sound

So now I should be back in business, with the Behringer FCA202 showing up and selectable as an audio input/output device.

I wanted to blame Behringer for this weirdness, but honestly, it was something weird with my own Mac. I’m still not sure what it was, but I really should consider doing a clean install next time. My system has probably built up way too much cruft over the years.

Oh, and just a note… I’m not convinced this is the end of the issue. I left the Mac up and running last night, and this morning the Behringer disappeared again. But I’ve read that is can happen, and a quick unplug/replug of the unit fixes it. So… as long as that doesn’t happen while I’m recording, I may be ok. (This problem I’m more tempted to blame on Behringer…)