microphone

IK Multimedia iRig MIDI and iRig Cast (Good for OWS?)

IK Multimedia has introduced a few new items in their iRig line. These are appealing for those of us who use “i-Thingies” (i.e., iPhone and iPad).

The iRig Cast is a tiny microphone. You can see the scale compared to the kitty in the above picture. For those who have used the Square card reader for iOS, it’s about the same size and shape. IK Multimedia suggests that this would be a device well suited for voice recordings, podcasting, interviews and such. So I am thinking this would be a useful accessory for those who are doing live streams from Occupy Wall Street protests!

The microphone will join the already available iRig MIDI interface.

The iRig in some ways seems better than a dock for live performance, particularly if one wants to pick up the iPad and move it around (though that is not what was being done in the demos). It is bidirectional and thus will be useful both for use as a controller (the primary direction in the live performance situation) and as a synthesizer receiving control data from DAW (in a studio setting).

Weekend Cat Blogging: Preparing for next week’s performance

Today I had a rehearsal for next week’s Pmocatat Ensemble performance at the Luggage Store Gallery. Pmocatat stands for “prerecorded music on cds and tapes and things”, and among the prerecorded sounds I plan to use this time are some recordings of Luna:

The name of the microphone I used this morning to record her is also called Luna. It is a pretty decent microphone, though recording a cat is going to be challenging with any equipment. Here is a recording of her purring:

You can hear a recording here.

I also used the audio from Luna’s chattering videos.

For those “in the business,” I would like to mention that using Pro Tools (my default option) to extract the sounds from the video did not work at all – it was difficult to do and produced really noisy results – while using Final Cut Pro plus the free program Audacity worked great.

All this preparation work got us rather tired, so time for a nap:

Weekend Cat Blogging #235 will be hosted by Kashim, who stepped in at the last minute.

And don’t forget that Carnival of Cats will be hosted tomorrow right here at CatSynth! To participate, please submit your post here.