In the realm of photo-sharing, we’ve got it made. There’s Imgur, Minus and others than allow stupidly easy drag-and-drop-with-no-account-required to upload and share. I had mentioned SoundCloud recently, and that’s a good audio-sharing site. Truly. My thought was, "Well, it can’t get any easier than this, right?" Wrong. There is...

Over the years there’s been several attempts to get people hooked on internet audio, so to speak. I’m not talking about listening but rather publishing. In the early-to-mid 2000s there were several attempts by companies to tie blogging into audio, but it just never worked. SoundCloud, on the other hand, does work; they are basically the only game in...

In-ear stereo headphones, a.k.a. "earbuds" have been around for a long time. Most people associate earbuds with portable music players like the iPod or for those that listen to music from their smartphone, however there are good solid reasons you should use them on the desktop as well. 1. Better sound on the cheap If you haven’t used earbuds in...

Stone is a material that’s been considered a luxury item ever since man learned how to carve it. In today’s modern world it’s still considered a luxury item. People to this day still pay good money to get a marble countertop in their kitchen, so you know stone will most likely always be the "in" thing. In the tech world there’s...

There are a ton of new motherboards sold that have a Realtek HD sound card built in, and chances are pretty good if you have a recent motherboard, you have a Realtek HD audio card in it. Generally speaking it’s a pretty good card as far as in-built sound goes – assuming you’re running the latest driver set. Some quick notes about upgrading...

When it comes to desktop computer audio speakers, there are basically three major types. Pods, small towers and small towers with subwoofer. Pods are little speakers and are powered by USB and/or battery. Example of pod-type speakers. Pods go by many names. Sometimes "cubes" (with rounded edges), sometimes "eggs", sometimes...

Microphone inputs on PCs are more or less treated as an afterthought more than a a serious piece of audio hardware. In fact, the hardware that goes into making a MIC input even on the most expensive sound cards is quite chintzy. Be that as it may, if you do use a headset with a microphone (usually for gaming), it’s not a bad idea to have two headsets; one...

You may have heard about the web site SimplyNoise; a site that literally plays noise albeit the kind you want to hear. In the audio world, there’s white, pink and brown noise. White sounds like TV static, pink sounds somewhat similar to a waterfall and brown sounds hollow-like, such as a heating vent or your car’s vents. (In the video I said I...

Foobar2000 is something that’s actually been around a very long time (since 2002!), but for whatever reason I never heard about it until very recently. The foobar2000 program is an audio player for Windows. Just audio, meaning no video. And that’s just fine because there are some of us out there that appreciate dedicated audio player programs, yours...

The Blu-ray optical format is one of those things that consumers didn’t exactly embrace. Maybe they looked at the HD DVD debacle and said, "I was fooled by thinking HD DVD would stick around and won’t be fooled again!" If that’s the way you feel about it, I don’t blame you. However Blu-ray now has tenure in the marketplace. The...

A true radio station is one that actually broadcasts over the air and isn’t just internet-only. Sure, you can find internet radio stations aplenty, but it’s the true ones that we want to hear the most. True radio on the internet has had its legal troubles over the years. At first they were sprouting up like weeds – which was good – but...

I’ve been in the self-publishing game for a few years now and can honestly say it’s come a long way, with the biggest advantage being that you can now get your book(s) on Amazon without the need for an ISBN. The two major players for those who want to self-publish are Lulu and CreateSpace. Both of them are fairly straightforward in the way they...

An interesting little program I came across which allows you to view just about any information on your media files is MediaInfo. From their description: MediaInfo supplies technical and tag information about a video or audio file. Simply put, that is what it does. You can extract just about any information you can think of from vitually any audio or video file...

I do operate a personal YouTube channel where I periodically post videos of me playing guitar or synthesizer. Each music style attracts distinctly different audiences. The guitar folk are expecting a certain type of music while the synth folk are expecting something totally different. Here are some example personal videos of mine (I need to show by example so I...

The "transmitted" sound is the human voice that sounds as if it were being broadcasted on an old radio. To this day, Hollywood still uses this trick in movies for phone conversations and anything else where the voice is supposed to sound "old", "old tech" or "distant" (like in war movies). If you’re into making your...

To those who have ever used Skype, Yahoo! Messenger voice chat, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak or any other over-the-internet method of peer-to-peer voice communication, you’ve noticed the quality of sound is far superior to land-line and wireless/cell phones. Why is this? There are actually a few good reasons. First, some explanation.VoIP is Voice over Internet...

You may have a disc, be it music or data, that is scratched and will not read in your optical disc drive no matter what you do to it. Can it be saved? Possibly. There are a few things you can try to save that disc. Hardware method: It could be just the drive you’re using If the disc won’t read in your optical drive, try another one that’s...

For our readers that are audiophiles, you’re probably already aware that arguably the best radio (as in AM/FM with CD player) is the Bose Wave Music System, formerly known as the Wave Radio. Yes, it’s wickedly expensive however there is absolutely nothing that sounds better in such a small package. Those who have heard it know exactly what I’m...

The sound card on your desktop computer has 1/8th-inch ports on the rear to accept other types of audio input (blue for line in, pink for mic in). If you have a custom-build computer you may have these ports also routed to the front as well. If you record audio at all with these ports, be it via a microphone built-in to a headset or having a mixing board fed a...

The best way to record live audio (for those of us without huge budgets) on a computer is via USB. It’s a much "cleaner" sound compared to using the "Mic" or "Line in" on your sound card. Bear in mind when referring to USB on computers you don’t have to worry about data transfer, so even if a device is only 1.1...