Archive for January, 2005

Cycling ’74 To Distribute Innovative Touchscreen Control Surface

NEW HARDWARE CONTROLLER ALLOWS UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES

NAMM • ANAHEIM, CA • January 20, 2005 – Cycling ’74, a San Francisco-based music software company, and the French company JazzMutant SAS today announced the signing of an exclusive U.S. distribution agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Cycling ’74 will distribute JazzMutant’s Lemur multitouch control surface within the United States. The Lemur is a sleek portable controller for live performance computer music applications featuring a 12″ LCD display and a proprietary touch screen interface that can simultaneously track multiple fingers.

The Lemur communicates with a host computer over 100-baseT Ethernet using the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol developed at UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). OSC is an emerging standard for synthesis control that supports simple configuration, 32-bit data resolution, and low latency. Applications that currently feature OSC support include Cycling ’74′s Max/MSP, Native Instruments’ Reaktor, and Pd, a popular open-source sound synthesis application.

Users configure the Lemur using an editor application that runs on Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Linux. Users drag and drop graphical control objects such as faders, buttons, two-dimensional area controllers, and status monitors to create interfaces. After a collection of interfaces is uploaded to the Lemur, the device sends data to parameters in a sound-generating application when a user touches objects in the display. Performers can flip between interfaces on the Lemur using buttons located above the touch screen.

The Lemur’s interface objects can be customized with JazzMutant’s “physical” properties that include friction, smoothing, and fade-in and fade-out. For example, faders with decreased friction “glide” across the screen and can even “bounce” after hitting zero. Objects can also transmit data based on complex floating-point mathematical formulas, moving far beyond the 0-127 limitations of typical MIDI controllers.

JazzMutant expects to deliver the first Lemurs to customers in April 2005. Cycling ’74 announced a projected US retail price of $2495 and plans to sell the Lemur via its web site and through selected retailers.

About Cycling ’74

Cycling ’74 creates and distributes Mac OS and Windows software for audio, video, and multimedia innovators. Products include the Max/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment, the Pluggo collections of Max/MSP-based audio plug-ins, the Radial loop-based composition and performance system, and the interactive algorithmic composition program M. Cycling ’74 also releases creative musical and multimedia works through their c74 recording label and audio source libraries for musicians, sound designers and media producers through its Cycles series. http://www.cycling74.com

Graphics available online at http://www.cycling74.com/pressimages.

Cycling ’74, 379A Clementina Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, 415-974-1818, info@cycling74.com

Cycling ’74 Announces Hipno Plug-Ins

A NEW SUITE OF EXTRAORDINARY PROCESSORS

NAMM • ANAHEIM, CA • January 20, 2005 – Cycling ’74, a software company based in San Francisco, today announced HIPNO 1.0, a new suite of over forty effects and instrument VST plug-ins for VST, Audio Units and RTAS Mac OS X host applications. Designed by ElectroTap, this package features an irresistible mix of granular, spectral, and filter/delay-based plug-ins featuring the unique Hipnoscope user interface. Also included in the package is an amazing set of processors that utilize live video input as a control source, and a new set of modulator plug-ins sure to captivate both the novice and long-time users of Cycling ’74′s Pluggo and Mode plug-in collections.

Some highlights of the HIPNO collection include:

  • Morphulescence: a cascaded bank of LFO-modulated morphing filters ready for eruption.
  • Vsynth: a plug-in that uses a live video feed as the spectral source for synth inspirations.
  • Deluge: a quartet of granular processing engines wrapped into one glittering package.
  • Shypht: a pitch-shifting effects system enlivened by pitch quantization, filtering, and feedback looping.
  • VcolorTrack and Modulator Vmotion: a pair of modulator plug-ins to morph and control Hipno, Mode, or Pluggo plug-ins using video color or motion tracking.

In addition to the host-sync capabilities and the ability to use Cycling ’74′s modulator plug-ins for control, many of the HIPNO plug-ins offer the unique Hipnoscope interface to create, control, and explore complex preset morphs and interpolations with a flick of the wrist. While immensely satisfying on its own, the HIPNO collection also extends the visionary signal processing and instrumental possibilities of the Pluggo and Mode plug-in collections.

Price and Availability

Hipno has a suggested retail price of $199 and is will be available for purchase in the first quarter of 2005 from Cycling ’74 (http://www.cycling74.com) or its retail dealers. A Windows XP version of the Hipno collection will be available later in 2005.

About Electrotap

Electrotap L.L.C., based in Kansas City, Missouri, develops, builds, and distributes software and hardware tools to create innovative music and art. They are also the team behind the popular Tap. Tools package of Max/MSP/Jitter objects and abstractions, and the TeaBox high-speed sensor interface. http://www.electrotap.com

About Cycling ’74

Cycling ’74 creates and distributes Mac OS and Windows software for audio, video, and multimedia innovators. Products include the Max/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment, the Pluggo collections of Max/MSP-based audio plug-ins, the Radial loop-based composition and performance system, and the interactive algorithmic composition program M. Cycling ’74 also releases creative musical and multimedia works through their c74 recording label and audio source libraries for musicians, sound designers and media producers through its Cycles series. http://www.cycling74.com

Graphics available online at http://www.cycling74.com/pressimages.

Cycling ’74, 379A Clementina Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, 415-974-1818, info@cycling74.com

Cycling ’74 Releases Pluggo For Windows

POPULAR PLUG-IN PACKAGE NOW AVAILABLE FOR WINDOWS USERS

NAMM • ANAHEIM, CA • January 20, 2005 – Cycling ’74, a software company based in San Francisco, today announced the release of Pluggo for Windows. This popular package of native audio processing plug-ins will be available on Windows XP for host applications supporting the VST and RTAS formats.

Pluggo offers over 100 creative and unusual real-time audio effects and includes the Essential Instruments collection, a set of elegant and immediately effective synthesizers and samplers. Pluggo effects include filtering, delay effects, distortion, granular synthesis, audio routing, sampling and synthesis, reverb, and sound localization. In addition, Pluggo offers modulation, synchronization, and audio and control routing capabilities between plug-ins.

The Windows release improves upon several of the venerable Pluggo effects with audio quality enhancements and efficiency improvements.

Pluggo users who want to build their own plug-ins entirely from scratch can create them using Cycling ’74′s Max/MSP software. Support for effects automation, parameter management, presets, host synchronization, and undo is provided in the development environment. Pluggo is the only way to develop a single plug-in that works in both the RTAS and VST host environments. A free runtime plug-in environment installer will be available from the Cycling ’74 web site.

Price and Availability

Pluggo for Windows has a suggested retail price of $199 and is now available for purchase from Cycling ’74 (http://www.cycling74.com) or its retail dealers.

About Cycling ’74

Cycling ’74 creates and distributes Mac OS and Windows software for audio, video, and multimedia innovators. Products include the Max/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment, the Pluggo collections of Max/MSP-based audio plug-ins, the Radial loop-based composition and performance system, and the interactive algorithmic composition program M. Cycling ’74 also releases creative musical and multimedia works through their c74 recording label and audio source libraries for musicians, sound designers and media producers through its Cycles series. http://www.cycling74.com

Graphics available online at http://www.cycling74.com/pressimages.

Cycling ’74, 379A Clementina Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, 415-974-1818, info@cycling74.com

Cycling ’74 Announces Mode For Windows

POPULAR PLUG-IN PACKAGE TO BE AVAILABLE FOR WINDOWS USERS

NAMM • ANAHEIM, CA • January 20, 2005 – Cycling ’74, a software company based in San Francisco, today announced Mode for Windows. This popular package of native audio processing plug-ins will be available on Windows XP for host applications supporting the VST and RTAS formats. The package features three instruments and two effects units that integrate functions and performance controls typically found in rack-mount and workstation hardware. An additional 18 plug-in “submodules” extend the package with creative effects, parameter modulators and CPU-saving mini-instruments.

The MODE collection’s featured plug-ins include:

  • BANG: A single-voice percussion module that combines sample playback, FM synthesis, and analog modeling drum synthesis for sounds ranging from simple emulation to outrageous percussive hybrids.
  • MONO: A monophonic synthesizer that combines the ease of use and warm filter effects of an analog synthesizer with the control and clarity of an FM engine, for an instrument that is equally at home in the studio or on stage.
  • POLY: A versatile polyphonic synthesizer loosely based on classic DCO synths. POLY uses waveforms sampled from some of the most popular vintage digital and analog instruments and features a unique polyphonic arpeggiator.
  • SPIN: A rhythm-based effects processor that features a state-variable filter, panning effects, rhythmic gating, delay, distortion and bit-reduction for sounds that range from subtle modification to extreme abuse.
  • WASH: A unique new effects processor built around an interconnected network of 6 fully-controllable recirculating delay lines. More than a mere effect, WASH is an instrument in its own rightÑcapable of anything from simple multi-tap delay textures to hour-long walls of morphing feedback.

The additional 18 “submodule” plug-ins take the effects, performance controls and instrument sections of the five featured devices and provide them as stand-alone plug-ins. This allows for mix-and-match sound creation, modulation, filtering and effects similar to modular synthesis environments. Price and Availability: MODE has a suggested retail price of $199 and will be available for purchase in Q1 2005 from Cycling ’74 (www.cycling74.com) or its retail dealers.

About Cycling ’74

Cycling ’74 creates and distributes Mac OS and Windows software for audio, video, and multimedia innovators. Products include the Max/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment, the Pluggo collections of Max/MSP-based audio plug-ins, the Radial loop-based composition and performance system, and the interactive algorithmic composition program M. Cycling ’74 also releases creative musical and multimedia works through their c74 recording label and audio source libraries for musicians, sound designers and media producers through its Cycles series. http://www.cycling74.com

Graphics available online at http://www.cycling74.com/pressimages.

Cycling ’74, 379A Clementina Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, 415-974-1818, info@cycling74.com

Cycling ’74 and Octiv Demonstrate Octirama

SURROUND DYNAMIC PROCESSOR FOR TDM SYSTEMS SOON TO BE RELEASED

NAMM • ANAHEIM, CA • January 20, 2005 – Cycling ’74, a software company based in San Francisco and Octiv Inc., the Berkeley-based digital audio innovator, today demonstrated Octirama, a Surround Dynamics Processor for Digidesign ProTools Systems at the NAMM Winter Expo in Anaheim, California January 20-23, 2005.

Octirama is the first full-featured, multi-band dynamics processor for 5.1 Surround Mastering for the Digidesign TDM environment. Octirama incorporates sophisticated four- and five-band processing for each of five channels plus sophisticated bass management for precise control of peaks and loudness.

Octirama was designed to provide DSP efficiencies allowing a full-featured processor to run on a single 56000 chip. Functions for each of the 5 Surround channels include an input AGC, four- or five-band dynamics processor, five in-band peak limiters, band mixing, and a final peak limiter. Over 40 simultaneous meters provide detailed information on gain reduction, downward expansion, and output levels. Unlike other multi-channel dynamics processors, Octirama’s processing algorithm preserves the surround image.

Pricing and Availability

Octirama will be available from Cycling ’74 distributors worldwide and directly online from Cycling ’74 in first quarter 2005 for MSRP US$995.

About Octiv

Octiv is improving the digital audio experience with volume management solutions for Internet and desktop media, consumer electronics, computers, and telephones. The Berkeley, California-based Company was founded in 1999, by a group of experienced audio industry professionals. Additional information can be found on the Octiv web site, http://www.octiv.com.

About Cycling ’74

Cycling ’74 creates and distributes Mac OS and Windows software for audio, video, and multimedia innovators. Products include the Max/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment, the Pluggo collections of Max/MSP-based audio plug-ins, the Radial loop-based composition and performance system, and the interactive algorithmic composition program M. Cycling ’74 also releases creative musical and multimedia works through their c74 recording label and audio source libraries for musicians, sound designers and media producers through its Cycles series. http://www.cycling74.com

Graphics available online at http://www.cycling74.com/pressimages.

Cycling ’74, 379A Clementina Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, 415-974-1818, info@cycling74.com

Another reason why you should read the ENTIRE newspaper

Dismembering the morning New York Times and spilling Honey Nut Cheerios all over some random section is one of life’s little pleasures, but it’s always best to take a quick run through the whole paper.

How else would I have found out that the Bush Administration called off the hunt for weapons of mass destruction? It was buried on page 10, a couple of hundread words. On a normal day, the hoopla about the ancient grape varieties of Campania in southern Italy would have completely distracted me.

Pfui. The Washington Post and even CN-bloody-N gave this little number the space it deserved right up front. Even the online Times relegates it to the “other” column on their International page.

Some days, the Gray Lady is looking mighty shabby. At least I can still take solace in Paul Krugman’s bracing work debunking this year’s shell game–the “privatization” of Social Security. Biff! Bap! Pow!

Something that came up….

In the course of a lengthy and wide-ranging discussion with an old friend, we wound up talking about a particular form of anxiety.

Actually, it was a part of that game whereby old friends use some shared experience to chide each other about “aging.” If you don’t do this already, you will. Trust me.The attractor for this particular bit of chiding was my admission that there are parts of some software that I’ve used for years and know reasonably well that have grown and improved in such a way that I no longer am immediately comfortable with them, and–in some cases–that I find my once-familiar tool daunting.

Part of it that uneasiness is, no doubt, simple pride. Part of it is easily curable, if my own internal fictions about myself continue to have some basis in actual fact: I’ll simply make sense of them when I have a good reason to, as I have always done in the past. I think that it was Marvin Minsky who observed that we miss an interesting part of any discussion about whether or not machines can “think” when we don’t ask ourselves how often we think ourselves (the implication being that we only “think” when we must–when our habits fail us, when we are in completely unfamiliar territory, and so on).

But we wound up talking about our own unease instead of those particular fictions, wondering why it was that such a simple moment of anxiety would be so difficult to share with others–especially since talking about the whole business did make us feel a lot better, we agreed.

But here’s where things suddenly took a conversational turn into territory that I am still sitting at my desk ruminating about hours later: The observation that there are specific circumstances where we are provided with another way to deal with this particular form of anxiety–the specific rhetoric of change that some forms of conservatism and the world’s fundamentalisms in general use to create the notion that our unease about the world derives not from our own pride or a moment of hesitation about our own abilities, but in some greater wrong or unease we can correct by returning to an idealized past.

A corollary: If our anxieties about seeing the things we know grow and potentially become unfamilair can be conflated with the larger web of worry about How Things Are Now that drives various fundamentalisms as flights from an uneasy present, is it possible that one could argue against those fundamentalisms by being a little more upfront about our everyday anxieties in conversation with others and, thereby, reclaim just a portion of the emotional territory? I know that it’s probably more efficient to attempt to argue rationally about the non-existence of the idealized past to which fundamentalisms tempt us to return, but that more quotidian worry about how the basic furniture of my world alters a little everday is a far more common part of my life.

Tales of search and seizure

I wasn’t planning on googling drug-smuggling secrets.

A friend and I were talking about the Steven Soderbergh film Traffic. In addition to reportedly featuring our pluggo software in action, there was this bit in the film where Catherine Zeta-Jones inspects some kind of statue which turns out to be molded from cocaine.

I was wondering whether there was much in the way of fact about this detail, went a-googling, and stumbled upon this interesting online chronicle of drug smuggler stash secrets (although it appears not to have been updated recently). THC-laced suckers? Ink cartridges full of heroin? Hollowed-out Princess Di biographies stuffed with blow? Meth with the Ferrari logo? It’s all there.

Winter finally begins. Let’s eat!

Even though J. and I were trapped in The Storm of The Century down in southern Indiana on our way to see my mom in Kentucky for the holidays, we really hadn’t had any snow to speak of here in Madison. That’s odd because because this particular time of year is the period when you lock yourself indoors because it’s normally umptythree degrees below zero with a 20mph wind.

But not this year. It was a rainy (Dutch?) winter until night before last, when we had the first of two nights of a picturesque white fluffy blankety postcard snow. Not the towering grimy urban pyramids of plow-sculpted densepack or grey slurries of meltwater and salty post-snow, but the lovely cover of soft snow that gracefully starts by softening the edge where the lawn meets the walk, then ripens into a driveway and sidewalk-obliterating field of undulating and dazzling white

Of course, I now have to go out and shovel quite a few feet of sidewalk, but hey. I will officially enjoy this for a few more days, and think about great things to eat when it’s cold and you don’t mind staying in and doing a little work in a warm kitchen.

Here is a local favorite–a curried Zucchini soup with coconut that we found in Molly O’Neill’s fantastic year-round cookbook “A Well-Seasoned Appetite”, which is great because it pays attention to the foods that each season delivers to the produce department. You’ll probably like it even if it isn’t as cold as it is here.1 teaspoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric (dried, ground)
Pinch cayenne
1-1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1-1/2 cups chicken broth, homemade, or low-sodium canned broth
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk

herb mixture:
2 teaspoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest

1 teaspoon grated unsweetened coconut

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook for 5 minutes. Add the zucchini and cook for 5 minutes more. Stir in the cumin, turmeric, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Stir in the broth and coconut milk. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the zucchini is soft, about 25 minutes.

Scrape the soup into a blender and process until smooth. Pour into a saucepan and heat over low heat until just hot.

Combine the cilantro, mint, and orange zest in a small bowl. Divide the soup among 4 soup bowls. Sprinkle with the grated coconut and then the herb mixture. Serve immediately and try to eat slowly.

A great question

An amazing part of my breakfast reading was provided by a fascinating article in the New York Times Science section consisting of a dozen or so answers to a single question:

“What do you believe even though you cannot prove it?”

Copyright © 2012 Cycling '74.