CAMPING OUT...ISN'T THIS COZY AND FUN?

Well, here we are, camped next to a fire along a rather deserted stretch of gravel road in an obscure and particularly wild portion of the Internet. Just beyond the light and crackle of the fire, we hear the wolves howling, and are grateful for the shotgun at our side.

Here. I brought marshmallows and weenies. Grab a stick and join me for awhile. Hopefully our normal host will soon be performing properly again and we can move back indoors.

Do those look like rain clouds to you? Ulp.

LE BUZZ NOTEBOOK

Oct 22

NEW AUDIO BUZZ! Some pioneering steps were made this week in the realm of BeOS music creation, and we have the exclusive on it, and a sampling of the music that resulted, on this week's Audio Buzz show. Details in a story below.

50 BUZZERS AND COUNTING! See the sidebar for details.

3DSOUND CONTEST UPDATE: We're assuming all contest entries that are going to arrive, have arrived, so the entries will now be going out to our judges and you'll know the winners in one week!

BLIND SPOT: Everybody's got little blind spots. One of mine is apparently the date on the le Buzz Notebook, which I sometimes forget to update when I change the copy in this section. So when you visit, don't assume the site hasn't been updated if that date hasn't changed. Hopefully mentioning it here will help me to remember to change it as I update the site. Sorry if it has confused anybody.

ONE THING MORE: Unlike the regular news items that follow it each day, the le Buzz Notebook's copy gets overwritten each day...so it won't be saved in the archive. Thus, if you see something you want to save, or need, which is located in the notebook, you'll want to print it out for yourself.

FIRST KISS: MIDIOXYGEN44 AND NUENDO

Oct 22
For every relationship, there is that first kiss, and it happened this week when a Virtual DSP engineer introduced his MidiOxygen44 MIDI Beta box to a Beta version of Steinberg's Nuendo audio production software. Was there magic? Did sparks fly? Did they hear music? Answers on this week's Audio Buzz program.

Back for a second visit this week is Virtual DSP's Steve Dame, who describes how he hooked MidiOxygen44 into his computer and MIDI hardware, and how well it fared in communicating with Nuendo.

As for the question, "did they hear music," we answer that one literally, with the first song actually created using MidiOxygen44 and Nuendo. It's all on this week's show.

For newcomers, Audio Buzz is our weekly Internet radio show covering BeOS media. The latest version is just out, and available now for MP3 download or real-time streaming in Real Audio.

RIO STILL NUMERO UNO

Oct 22
The latest Diamond Rio MP3 player, the Rio 500, is reportedly the king of the hill for price/performance, still dominating the field despite many new entries into the portable MP3 player market. Here's a review I found of the new model. Personally, I think the current brood of MP3 players are way too expensive for what they do, however, and they're going to have to come way down in price before I take them too seriously. Get back to me when they're $79.95 or so (don't laugh, it'll probably happen as competition increases, the market gets saturated, and ram prices drop). Until then, there are too many other less-expensive alternatives.

By the way, the Snowblind Alliance has source code available for a Be interface to the Diamond Rio, if you've got one and want to try and interface it to your Be machine. It's at version 1.06 now, which I believe represents an update since the last time we reported about it back in May.

AUDIO TO THE MAX

Oct 21
A while back, I had an idea for a BeOS realtime audio processor system I called, "The Tunnel." It consisted of a graphical interface in which a tunnel represented a pipe through which your audio was being channeled. You'd have various effects represented graphically, and would drop the icons into "The Tunnel" to add effects in real-time. Kinda cool, huh? Now, it looks like something like that could be available from an unexpected source!

I just heard from Dan Horwood, who reported to me on a system called "jMax" which provides an interface similar in concept to what I had imagined. Here's his complete submission to me, which explains it better than I could have possibly done:
"The jMax development team has recently announced their willingness to port their product to BeOS. Unfortunately (for fellow Buzzers) they do not have the resources or time to do the port themselves, but are willing to work with any interested programmers. This is an email from Francois Dechelle:
"> About BeOS, I'd love to have a port of the server part of jMax. > What is to be done is not so complicated and I evaluate the cost > of porting to BeOS to something between one and 2 months. The only > question is to find someone interested: we don't have enough time > here, but we can help of course."

"jMax is a graphical real-time audio processing program, created at IRCAM, and currently runs on SGI workstations and linux (intel) PCs. jMax allows the user to create real-time audio effects by linking configurable processing 'objects' into the audio path via a graphical user interface. (Sounds like "The Tunnel!")
"A basic jMax 'patch' would consist of an audio-input object linked to a low-pass filter object which is in turn linked to an audio-output object. The filter can be controlled in real-time. But this doesn't even begin to hint at its possibilities.
"jMax is based on a client/server architecture. This means that the program actually runs as two distinct parts: the server does all the 'number-crunching' audio processing, and the client is the graphical interface to the server. This design allows for some great possibilties, because as well as being able to run both the server and the client on the one machine, you could have the server running on one machine, with multiple clients running on other machines all connected to the same server.
"The server (known as FTS) is written in native C code for each platform, as it needs to be REALLY fast and efficient, while the client is written in java (swing components) to allow for cross-platform consistency in gui design.
"This means that only the server needs to be ported to BeOS, and I believe strongly that the awesome media performance features of BeOS will deliver extremely low latency real-time user-configurable audio processing.
"Once the server (FTS) port is completed, the client should be happening as soon as we see some stable java support!"
OUR TAKE: A lot of ifs, for now, but the good news is java support does appear to be on its way; and assuming it takes shape well, this is one of the most promising Be implimentations of it I have heard of so far, at least from the viewpoint of a Buzzer...and certainly from the viewpoint of somebody seeking to see something like "The Tunnel" occur.

The client-server nature of this project makes it particularly exciting, as you consider the possibilities for project sharing among rooms in a studio, possibly broadcast network applications, and so on. But you see, that's my background talking. In reality, this project was really intended initially for live performances; concerts, drama, and the like.

So, any takers out there who want to investigate this as a project? You can find out more about it by visiting this web site.

Thanks to Dan for doing a great job in putting this information together for us!