Welcome to Audio Anecdotes

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: May 28, 2009

Three VolumesAudio Anecdotes is the title of a community contributed Audio Cookbook in the spirit of Andrew Glassner‘s classic Graphics Gems series.

Please read our article solicitation, and topics list, to get a better idea of what is coming and how you can help.

If you are interested in contributing articles (see author’s guide), have questions or suggestions please contact me, Ken Greenebaum!

Sound is such an important part of our lives, and should get more attention in the computer space (in user interfaces, games, data mining, etc.) This book fills a wonderful void in providing a lot of small, introductory articles, useful for anyone interested in computational sound.
—Perry R. Cook, author of Real Sound Synthesis

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AudioAnecdotes CDROM images

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: November 6, 2022

I have been busy but haven’t forgotten the apparently missing CDROMs. Still have not heard back from Taylor & Francis, and am consequently posting the images for the CDROMs that originally accompanied the book here; at least temporarily.

Please be respectful of the publisher, and our authors, by not further distributing, or uploading these images elsewhere.

If you happen upon these images, find them interesting (or even useful) then please consider purchasing your own copy of the book(s) now in paperback and ebook.

Legalisms

Unless otherwise specified, the contents of the CD-ROM images are protected by the BSD license, and the reader may use the source code provided for any purpose as long as the following statement is prominently displayed:

This product includes code from Audio Anecdotes: Tools, Tips, and Techniques for Digital Audio, edited by Ken Greenebaum and Ronen Barzel, published by A K Peters, Ltd.

The contents of these CD-ROM images are to be used at your own risk: Ken Greenebaum, Ronen Barzel, and A K Peters make no claim regarding the suitability of this material for any use.

Lastly

Also know that the installation scheme, which includes running a web-server to execute the demos, is likely not secure, nor a particularly viable approach in 2022, consequently please use these images to access the code, executables, and media.

That said I do welcome suggestions, and support regarding modernizing the code and installer, and always enjoy your feedback.

AudioAnecdotesV1.iso

271.53 MB

AudioAnecdotesV2.iso

252.00 MB

AudioAnecdotesV3.iso

513.95 MB

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Books and CD-ROMs (what are those?)

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: October 23, 2022
CD-ROM

Missing Disks?

Matthijs Hollemans, fellow audio enthusiast and author (check out his recently published book: Code your own Synth Plug-Ins) kindly informed me that he didn’t receive the CDROM with his second printing of Audio Anecdotes Volume 2. This is frustrating since my contributors and I worked so hard to make the algorithms and concepts experiential, going so far as to make the code cross-compile on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

I have reached out, but not yet heard back from our new publisher, Taylor and Francis‘ CRC Press.

In the mean time I will try to provide CD-ROM images to download (look for a new posting soon), and will examine the state of the AudioAnecdotes GitHub repository.

Longer term I will try to rethink the online material as the CD-ROM as well as it’s web server approach is at best dated.

Please reach out if you, too, are missing the CD-ROM, or would like to help rethink how best to share and then present the code and media in the era of the eBook!

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Have been away so long…

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: December 20, 2021

Well, not technically away, but between Pandemic’ng, releasing Pro Display XDR (based on my EDR technology), Apple Silicon based Macs, introducing EDR to the World at WWDC, and some other things I can’t talk about quite yet, I haven’t had time to share things audio here 🙁

However there is news to belatedly announce!

AudioAnecdotes is finally available in more affordable Kindle, and PaperPack versions!

Please share with those who might find inspiration or a spark of joy in these pages.

All the best for the Holidays and New Year! Please be safe, I think we are in for a bumpy ride.

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Great Visualization of Fourier Transform

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: January 29, 2018

Grant Sanderson AKA 3blue1brown posted a great video visualization of the Fourier Transform. I would have loved to have encountered this when I first began exploring its mysteries in the 1980’s (when I could only find droll texts on the subject)!

Grant visually explores decomposition, winding, motivations for use of the complex plane, and the inverse transformation (however was a little disappointed that they chose not to mention the original thermodynamic motivations).

I plan to share Grant’s videos with my 7 year old to lay the groundwork for new ways to examine the world.

I am also excited to explore manim, the author’s python based animation library used to create the graphics in this and other of his videos.

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‘Here’ no evil

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: November 16, 2017

I am very disappointed to learn of the dissolution of Doppler Labs and the discontinuation of their Dubs passive hearing protectors and highly innovative active Here One bluetooth ear buds.

Doppler created a new product category for a consumer product designed to augment normal people’s hearing. To pull this off requires solving many audio engineering challenges including providing ultra low latencies, beam forming microphone arrays, active noise cancelation, etc.

They further successfully petitioned for legislation to dramatically open the hearing-aid market to over the counter device sales.

I am most disappointed by the loss of products that might have been.

There have been a number of article written about Doppler’s Fall, including a message Doppler posted to their customers.

It is perhaps telling that apparently acquisition talks stalled and there is no buyer for the company, products, employees, or IP.

My best wishes for future innovation from Doppler staff, hope they land well, and for Doppler customers who took a bet on the future and get to experience an imperfect early whisper.

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Schlieman Flow Visualization of actual sound waves

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: July 16, 2017

We have all seen sound waves visualized on oscilloscope or even spectrum analyzer screens, but how often have we seen actual photographs, or even better video, of the three dimensional compression and rarefaction that is sound propagating in the real world?

NPR’s skunk bear has a great video both demonstrating and explaining Schlieman flow visualization of actual sound waves as captured by high speed camera. You can see the tremendous compression caused by a stack of books falling or the much weaker wave caused by a hand clap.

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Entrainment (for the New Year)

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: December 31, 2016

I just saw Ikeguchi Lab’s awesome demonstration of 100 metronomes becoming synchronized via mutual entrainment (the metronomes are arrayed on a hanging platform to facilitate) and thought this was just the thing to share as we say farewell to 2016 and look forward to 2017. Let’s collectively make 2017 a healthy, happy, safe, and prosperous year!

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Had a good if commercial Maker Faire

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: May 22, 2016

I have a bit of an odd relationship with Maker Faire. I love the great people behind the Faire at Make Magazine/O’Reilly (and hope their recent troubles have been overcome), and the Makers themselves; am amazed by the tremendous community support as countless thousands attend Maker events, now around the world, with their children, the next generation of Maker, in tow. However I can’t help but be more than a little sad as the event has steadily retreated from the bastion of hard core independent geeks of the earliest event(s) to first become a little theatrical with burning man performance art and related trappings of steampunk and the like, followed by a shift toward children and education (but who can complain about that?), and most recently a huge shift from independent Makers presenting their research and project to corporations, and startups selling their brands or wares.

Over the years many fascinating Makers have either stopped returning or have dumbed down what they have brought. I am somewhat at fault myself having not hosted a booth for a second (third?) year after bringing one audio related interaction or another for the preceding three.

Complaints aside I did come away with a lot of new ideas, easily making the entry fee a great value even if I wasn’t able to see the entire show having spent half the day enjoying the Faire through my daugter’s fresh eyes.

Next postings will be about interesting  people, companies, products or discoveries from Maker Faire 2016.

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Maker Faire 2016

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: May 19, 2016

Regretfully I won’t be hosting a booth again this year at Bay Area Maker Faire 2016 but I will be attending and would to see and hear from you all. Let me know where you will be and what you are most excited about!

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Bluetooth over MIDI

By Ken Greenebaum | Published: May 16, 2016

The Moog Model 15 Modular Synthesizer app has me looking for a Bluetooth over MIDI solution (Apple incorporates native MIDI over Bluetooth LE support in iOS9: spec, tech note for app developers). I want to skip over the kludgey USB-MIDI-Camera Connection dongle stack to interface my old Roland keyboard to the iPad (replacing the ancient Yamaha CBX-T3 General MIDI Synth I have used forever).

Considering the mi.1 produced by quicco sound, a Japanese startup seems to be composed of old hands from Roland and Yamaha who introduced the mi.1 as their first product in a successful IndieGoGo campaign a while back. Like the size and self powered operation but am concerned about latency (the mi.1 FAQ states an additional 8.4ms latency over wired MIDI; not insignificant (see Derek DiFilippo‘s Audio Anecdotes Vol 1 article on perceptual audio latency) especially when added to the base wired MIDI latency, latency of the synth app, and latency of the app/coreAudio audio output.

From the original current loop interface, through MIDI over Ethernet, to now wireless MIDI over Bluetooth, MIDI is the standard that refuses to go away!

What are your experiences with MIDI over Bluetooth?

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