The Listening Museum stores the sounds of mechanical keyboards

Now everyone can experience the sound of iconic keyboards - and even typewriters - at "The Listening Museum".

Here - Augmented Hearing

We've talked a lot about virtual reality and augmented reality, and every time those things have been associated with sight. Now, there's a kickstarter project that wants to do the same sort of thing for audio: the Here Active Listening earbuds.

Google Tone allows you to share Chrome URLs using sound

There are countless ways for people to share a URL between two computers, but now Google decided to old-school and created Google Tone: a Chrome extension that allows you to share URLs using... sound.

Sound recorded through video

A few decades ago, I remember being amazed by movies that showed us spies that were able to record conversations in buildings far away using their high-tech gadgets, such as lasers that could pick up the vibrations on its windows. Now, we see something even more impressive that not even sci-fi writers thought possible: capturing audio from objects caught on video.

SoundWave - Doppler Based Gesture Recognition

Microsoft has already brought us one of the most advanced (and popular) 3D recognition system available today: the Kinect. But that doesn't mean that its research time has stopped exploring new ways to recognize hand gestures made in space... and without even using cameras.

In this SoundWave, a Microsoft Research team decided to use nothing but the devices already available in most computers and laptop: speakers and microphone.

Using sound waves and thanks to the Doppler effect, they're able to detect gestures and movements made in the air - and I envision that with systems using multiple microphones (as it's becoming increasingly popular for noise reduction and multiple user interaction), such a system could have much greater accuracy in the future.

You don't even have to worry about noise, because they're using inaudible frequencies - although that would have to be tested with your pet around to really make sure it wouldn't annoy them! :)

Will it be possible to someday recreate a Kinect like device using nothing but soundwaves? My guess is that you shouldn't bet against it for now...

Nasa Sound Ringtones

If you ever wished you could have your cellphone repeat Armstrong's famous moon landing speech whenever someone calls you... Now you can, and from the official and original source: Nasa itself!

There are dozens of historic sound clips form NASA, not only from the Apollo and Mercury Missions, but including satellite beeps and sounds as well - including Sputink's - and more modern space missions like the Space Shuttle and ISS.

You can get it in both MP3 and M4R (iPhone) formats.

This is one small step for Nasa... One giant leap for your cellphone ringtone! ;)

Spectral Layers - Advanced Sound Editing

Have you ever wondered how much image and video digital editing has evolved - by leaps and bounds - in the past decades, with thing such as seamcarving and patchmatch, while in the sound editing area things have remained largely unchanged?

Wouldn't it be good if we could manipulate audio just like we do with images in image editing programs like Photoshop?

Well, thanks to this amazing Spectral Layers we're certainly a lot closer. Never has spectral sound been as easy and understandable to work with. Just take a look at what you can do with it:


Spectral Layers from DIVIDE FRAME on Vimeo.

Photographing at the Speed of Sound

It sounds a bit strange to talk about sound when photgraph is all about light, but sometimes... sound is the exact trigger we need to capture that exact photo we're looking for.

With a little help from a friend - in this case a trusted Arduino - we can easily create our own sound sensitive high-speed photo trigger that will allow us to capture the exact moment something goes... pop/bang/crash/blam/etc. :)

TechnoBox iPhone - Roland TB-303 TR-808 TR-909 in your Pocket

Want one more reason to get an iPhone?

How about TechnoBox (App Store Link) bya AudioRealism which puts the classics Roland TB-303, TR-808 and TR-909 in your pocket?