LectroFan Kinder – Review

LectroFan Kinder Adaptive Sound Technologies Inc. $79.95 The LectroFan Kinder is a sound and light machine for children. Using an iOS or Android app,

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JBL Flip – Review

JBL has been trying to get into the market of portable wireless speakers with several different types of products. These products include ones like the Micro Wireless and the Flip Wireless Speaker. The JBL Flip gets its name from its unique design to either be set horizontally or vertically in a small package while packing enormous, clear sound.

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Ivory II from Synthogy

Ivory II Grand Pianos Review

Ivory II is a Virtual Instrument (vi) – a large set of sophisticated high-quality sound samples of the concert piano. It can be used as a standalone application, which has a sophisticated yet easy-to-use single window interface; this was custom built with its own DSP engine and worked extremely well during testing. The piano samples in Ivory II also function as a bespoke plugin soundset for sequencers, DAWs and notation software such as Sibelius 7. The latter was concentrated on during this evaluation.

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Headphones Comparison: V-Moda Remix Remote vs. Arctic E461-BM

One of the greatest assets to any iOS device is the ability to listen to your favorite music, audiobooks, or your favorite apps. There is nothing more annoying than trying to do so with earphones that simply ruin the experience with their shoddy qualities. Most of us aren’t in the market for expensive earphones that can cost over $200, so what’s out there for those of us who want to find a balance between sound quality and cost? V-Moda and Arctic each have earphones in their lineups that try to reach such a balance. How do they compare?

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Solo Strings

Vienna Symphonic Library Solo Strings Review

Virtual Instruments (VIs) allow you to work with lifelike sounds in sequencers and Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) like Apple’s Logic and notation packages like Avid’s Sibelius. (Avid has just announced Sibelius 7: watch for a review here shortly.)

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Transcribe! – Review

Transcribe! claims to be the “world’s leading” tool to help musicians extract music from recordings. It can also be used to transcribe speech and even allow musicians to play along. Does British firm, Seventh String, get credit for trying what’s difficult to do well but really end up as little more than an “also ran”? Or do they have a winner that works in almost every way?

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Sibelius 6 from Avid

Sibelius 6 – Review

Sibelius is a music notation package. Although its output is music, it’s neither a sequencer nor a synthesizer nor Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). It’s a package that allows music composition as a score following the conventions of “engraving” music – in much the same way as a word processor allows a novel or play to be written as text. But Sibelius’ power extends far beyond that of even the most complex and sophisticated DTP software.

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Ubercaster
Review

Ubercaster is very different from GarageBand in one important way. The program does many of the things needed to do in GarageBand in post-production all within Ubercaster’s workflow BEFORE you begin recording. It has a unique layout that is reminiscent of most good Mac software, drag and drop. There are four layers to the program and each is well structured for making podcasts.

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