DiGiCo SD9

We demo'd the new DiGiCo SD9. And while I know it is a great console, with of lots of nice features, I am obsessed with the 'fire' button, and want it to do something more...

How not to mic a Marshall...

maybe it was the sound they were going for ?

via : Allison, FAIL Blog

Penn State uses SCIENCE to win

Acoustics, special teams, and a good defense win football games.
Mostly a good defense.

"...Next season, the university's athletic department will put into play a new strategy to make its field even louder thanks to a team of acoustic scientists. The goal is to send a deafening wall of sound at the opposing team's offensive line...."

"...But the noise skyrocketed to 110 decibels -- 50 times as loud -- when visiting teams were on offense, drowning out the calls of the quarterback and making last-minute adjustments at the line of scrimmage very difficult..."

"...To take advantage of this acoustic effect, Penn State plans to move the 20,000 seats in its student section squarely into the southern end zone when the entire stadium is reseated for the 2011 season. Barnard's computer model predicts that this relocation will quiet the east side of field slightly but increase the sound on the west side by almost 50 percent -- cutting the range of a quarterback's voice by another six inches and potentially causing more fall starts and penalty opportunities..." 
- InsideScience.org

Octopus and squid can hear.

From BBC Earth News : The Cephalopods Can Hear You 

"The discovery resolves a century-long debate over whether cephalopods, the group of sea creatures that includes octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses, can hear sounds underwater.

They discovered that the octopus can hear sounds between 400Hz and 1000Hz. The squid can hear an wider range of sound from 400Hz to 1500Hz, they report in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A.

"That indicates that squid have a better hearing capability than the octopus," says Yan. "Interestingly though, both species hear best at a frequency of 600Hz."

Sound FX

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Bugs says, "...what are lookin' at ?!?"

Sonoluminescence, Quasars, and the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity

just because i was thinking about sound, light, sonoluminescence, quasars, throat singing, and the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity :

Sound and Light :

Pistol Shrimp

"snaps a specialized claw to create a cavitation wave that generates pressure levels of 218dB, the pressure wave is strong enough to kill small fish, and can also produce Sonoluminescence (the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound....)" ... from Wikipedia

Deadly pistol shrimp that stuns prey with sound as loud as Concorde found in UK waters .... from Mail Online

Light :

Brightest object in the universe

"The brightest object yet observed in the universe has been discovered by a University of Washington astronomer and his colleagues.
The quasar (or quasi-stellar object) is 4 million-billion to 5 million-billion times brighter than the Sun. It is estimated to be more than 10 times brighter than any other quasar, and outshines the brightest galaxy by more than 100 times." ... from EurekAlert!

Kongar-ol Ondar on David Letterman's Late Show
on YouTube

Sound :

How Math Unraveled the 'Hard Day's Night' Mystery

"It took Dalhousie University professor Jason Brown six months and some advanced mathematical analytical techniques to crack the code behind one of the most mysterious sounds in music: the "prraaaaaangg" sound at the beginning of the Beatles' "Hard Day's Night." Guitarists have puzzled over how this chord is played for decades because it contains a note that would be impossible for the Beatles' two guitarists and bassist to play in one take, and experts have concluded that no multitracking was involved in this part of the song. The secret sauce, as it turns out, includes five piano notes apparently played by producer George Martin. Brown made the discovery by disassembling the sampled amplitudes into the original frequencies using Fourier transforms." ... from wired

Sound :

Breaking the Sound Barrier

...interesting condensation clouds that form around jets as they fly at or near the speed of sound, (often called "going through the sound barrier" or "accelerating past the speed of sound"). Under the right conditions, and even at lower speeds, they sometimes cause a vapor cone effect. Understand that these Prandtl-Glauert condensation clouds can also occur at lower speeds, and are not really a visible manifestation of some kind of a sound barrier being broken... from Wilk4