instruments

Although the sensitivity and performance of microphones has improved quite a bit since Alexander Graham Bell first patented them, they still have one big drawback that researchers from Carnegie Mellon University may have finally overcome by using a pair of run-of-the-mill video cameras.Put a microphone in a room with a bunch of musicians,and while you’ll capture every last note and nuance of their individual performances, you’ll be left with a single recording with everything all mixed together. But to make that…

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have presented some remarkable audio from a new optical microphone system that uses cameras to see and reconstruct sonic vibrations. Remarkably, it can cleanly separate a single instrument playing in a group.This kind of sonic isolation is extremely difficult even for high-end audio microphones, so to be able to achieve it using nothing but two cameras and a laser? It feels a bit like black magic. But the results, which you can see in the video embedded at the end of this piece,…

Dave Smith’s name may be ubiquitous enough to look almost forgettable on the back of a synthesiser – at least next to the distinctive monikers of his peers such as Oberheim, Moog, Linn and Rossum – but it fits the portrait of Smith painted by those who knew him and his work: that of an unassuming yet brilliant innovator, a quiet kind of genius. He didn’t just create iconic synthesisers, he united electronic instruments everywhere.This week’s announcement of Smith’s death at the age of 72 was met with messages of grief and…

Scott Chipolina / Financial Times: A group of 26 leading computer experts urge US lawmakers to resist crypto lobbying efforts, calling crypto financial instruments “risky, flawed, and unproven” — Computer scientists and academics target US lawmakers in effort to counter well-financed lobbying efforts Scott Chipolina / Financial Times: A group of 26 leading computer experts urge US lawmakers to resist crypto lobbying efforts, calling crypto financial instruments “risky, flawed,…