Apple on Tuesday released iTunes 9.2.1, the latest installment of one of the most ventured venues for entreatment in the universe. The new version fix a couple of issue and administer, usual for Apple, a reapplication of security, stability and performance. The update is made available through the built-in Software Update feature of your Mac and the installed version of iTunes on you PC as well as at apple.com.

• Disables older versions of some incompatible third-party plug-ins
  - Addresses minor issues with dragging and dropping items
  - Addresses a performance issue when first syncing to some devices with iTunes 9.2
  - Addresses an issue upgrading to iOS 4 on an iPhone or iPod touch with encrypted back-ups
  - Addresses other issues that improve stability and performance

Bayerische Motoren Werke, more commonly know as BMW, has announced that they will be fully utilizing the new iPod-out feature of iOS 4 in their automobiles. This allows for iOS users to physically integrate their multimedia content on their iPods within their driving experience. CNET did a follow up on the announcement providing some detailed information on what this means for iPod owners who are potentially in the future likely to be BMW owners.

“This feature allows a connected iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, or iPod Touch (second or third generation) to output and display an iPod interface on a connected device’s external screen. That device, in this case, would be a future BMW or Mini vehicle.

Rather than displaying BMW or Mini’s iPod interface, the connected vehicle would display Apple’s own interface, which will be controllable with the vehicle’s controls. Users will be able to control the iPod’s music playback and browse their music catalog, playlists, podcasts, and Genius mixes.”

Back in 2008, Apple submitted an application to the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) that illustrated the ability for a user to “push” the UI to a connected device’s display. The feature would then allow the user complete control of their content in a more familiar and native environment. The patent has made it’s way to the new iOS rendition which BMW is the first automaker to take full advantage of it.

There has been information given that has led many to believe that Apple is going to be implementing the iPhone OS in to the Apple TV device. Not only that, the software will be able to stream wirelessly 1080p resolution content and the software will be powered by Apple’s own built Apple A4 SoC processor. Apple has even been speculated to offer all this a $99.

Engadget has received word from a tip that was later confirmed by someone who is “close to Apple” that the aforementioned features would be included in the refresh of the Apple TV. I’m addition to the hardware and software update, the source also stated that the device would incorporate 16GB of flash memory for local storage. The software will enable people to stream content from a remote storage source to the device, making movies, music, pictures, etcetera stateless on the device.

“Not only will this be priced to sell (like hotcakes), it seems that Apple is moving away from the model of local storage and will be focusing the new ATV on cloud-based storage (not unlike Amazon’s streaming scheme, though we’re talking instant-on 1080P, a la Microsoft),” the report said. “For those still interested in keeping their content close, there will be an option to utilize a Time Capsule as an external storage component, but the main course will be about streaming.”

The new make of the Apple TV is said to be small with only a power cable and a video-out. Most people familiar with the situation have described it as an “iPhone without a screen.” There hasn’t been any word yet on whether the speculated new Apple TV will run iPhone applications on it’s new platform. However, Joshua Topolsky of Engadget has stated that “it makes sense given the shared platform.” The new device, according to Engadget, will not be announced this year at WWDC, but the project by Apple is currently “full steam ahead” and has the green light to push forward.

Apple has had the project under development long before Google announced their own TV lovechild to compete with the boys south of them in Cupertino. The Google TV will utilize their created Android operating system and stream Internet video as well give support to the applications from the Android Marketplace. Google is set to roll that product out sometime this fall and offer it as a set-top box and integrated into Sony televisions.

Apple TV currently costs $229 and come with a 160GB storage. Apple use to provide a 40GB option, but eventually decided to discontinue that version of it. Apple’s latest update to the Apple TV software made improvements to the menu for faster navigating and it enabled the ability to watch iTunes LP and iTunes Extra content on the device. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray some time ago envisioned Apple implementing Apple TV software into a HDTV device where the user could get all the same functions of the Apple TV and even fabricated that Apple could implement a TV service subscription where the end user could pay a fee and watch or listen to any content on demand such as movies, TV shows and live events. Gene hypothesized such a software could further solidify Apple in front of the competition.

The first file, dubbed “Recapping Media Content” reveals the details of a software aspect that could continue the play back of an album, movie or television program from where it was halted on a computer, box-top media device (such as Apple TV), mobile media device or any other device at is compatible with the feature. The reading continues in describing the system as being capable of applying the aspect to both stateless (data stored on a volume other than the local device and streamed to that device) and locally stored content. The software would then continue to provide the enduser with a recap of the content they watched before it was paused. The recap is something like you would see a TV show do to help viewers recall the details of the last episode.

The patent states:

“Current media players do not provide a feature for recapping earlier media content according to a recapping control variable, then displaying descriptive information related to the recapped media content. Moreover, current media players do not provide a feature where the descriptive information related to the recapped media content may be text, images, audio or a combination thereof.”

Users could even alter preferences and other aspects to be synced across multiple devices by saving the data that has been set on one device and applying to the devices of the users choice.

In another application submitted, the company describes another cloud-based computing service within a software where users can discover new media on the Net and automatically receive tags to the content and then locate the content on a media purchasing service, such as iTunes, and buy the product accordingly. The patent file, in which they call “Tagging Media Assets, Locations and Advertisements,” declares a variety of media oriented targets such as HD radio, satellite radio, downloaded content and streamed media where material could be tagged and identified in a number of categories, including basic information like URL, artist, album and even the origin where the content was made or oriented in.

Through GPS hardware, a user’s location can be recorded and used for even more in-depth data recovery, such as a DJ playing the song on the radio station in your area, as the patent states.

“A tag associated with the data tag may be used to perform a number of different actions by a number of different systems. For example, a tag may be used to obtain additional information, advertisements, and/or access to (e.g., purchase, receive for free, etc.) media content.”

The content of the filings seems rather interesting, More so, it gives us some in site on what Cupertino is planning to do based on the moves they have made in the present. Both of these aspects seem ideal for the group acquired by Apple through the Lala buyout. Lala is a startup company that primarily deals with the streaming of content. Apple picked up the company for $88 million, which has led masses of experts to believe Apple has another cloud-based brainchild in the works, other than their created Genius feature in iTunes.

What’s even more interesting is that Lala has posted to their website that the service is going to be discontinued on May 31 – just a week before one of Apple’s biggest shows of the year, WWDC. They continue stating that users of the service who have purchased items will be issued iTunes Store credit to compensate them for their item. Probably the most speculated future Apple has for Lala’s talent is using it to incorporate the streaming of content from iTunes, a move that has been stated by Pete Kafka of MediaMemo as “not expected anytime soon” being that Apple has been unable to reach an agreement with the record labels to incorporate the feature in the iTunes software.

The patent for the software is credited to Windy Chien, Robert Kondrk, Gary Stewart (for “Recapping Media Content”), Eric Oliver, Lawrence G. Bolton, Emily Clark Schubert, Jesse Lee Dorogusker and Donald J. Novotney (for “Tagging Media Assets, Locations and Advertisements”)

However, sources have been snooping around for any sign of a clue that happens to show itself peeking above Apple’s wall of secrecy. Many have even looked into clues on the details the site provide on its closing of shop. For example, many people see the group being integrated into Apple’s iTunes service in some fashion based on…:

1. Lala is a company who’s primary business is the streaming of content
2. Lala states on their website the users of the service who have credit with Lala can choose to use the credit until the service is discontinued, by which time their credit will be transferred to the iTunes Store.

[Click or Tap the Image for Larger View]

Some new information has been published by Macsimum stating that Cupertino will introduce the streaming of content at Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) schedule to kick off in early June. Whether Apple has come to an agreement with record labels, movie studios and other organizations that distribute product through iTunes into letting users stream and/or download content for a subscribed fee is still not determined. Former CEO of mp3.com Michael Robertson says that he believes Apple will implement an “online locker” of content for users, allowing them to stream content they have purchased from the service on demand anytime and anywhere they want.

Still, evidence and clues remain to show themselves, but nothing solid has been developed to provide, as Apple is notoriously known for keeping the lid tight on new developments, despite the entire fourth generation iPhone leakage incidents recently. The sold-out WWDC event is schedule to take place from Monday, June 7^th to Friday, June 11^th at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

Then the good folks over at Mac OS X Hints found out what the culprit was before I could find it. Apparently, MOSH (Mac OS X Hints) discovered that the issue arises because iTunes continuously changes the conversion date of the songs that have been already converted after you play them. Good news is, if you are experiencing the same issue that me and my circle is having, you don’t have to wait for Apple to issue an update through Software Update. In fact, you can download it right now.

First, to know whether or not you are having (if you haven’t already noticed) or are going to have this problem when you choose to convert your songs to conserve space on your device, do the following…

• Open iTunes…

• Go to the Menu Bar and select “About iTunes”

• When the About iTunes panel appears, check for the version and the build number. If your version is “iTunes 9.1.1 (11),” you have the iTunes firmware that doesn’t have that wrinkled ironed out yet.

To get the iTunes update that has that issue resolved, do the following…

• Go to apple.com/itunes

• Click on the “free download” button and download the iTunes software from the site.

• Install the software…

…and you’re done!

This version of iTunes doesn’t reveal itself in Mac OS X’s Software Update, for some odd reason. However, once you download it, sync your iDevice to you Mac or PC and then you should notice the reconversion error no longer shows its face. Your back to the zippy sync sessions that iTunes usually puts out. We here at MacApper just thought that we should fill you guys in on that. Enjoy!

Currently Showcased On Lala Website

If you are unfamiliar with the Lala service, the group is a five-year-old startup company who offered the ability to stream a vast array of musical content over an IP (Internet Protocol). The group’s musical catalog contained a little over seven million songs in which users could stream any one of the content chosen, much in likeness to Internet radio. The web software also gave users the ability to purchase the rights to a selected song for $.10 and allowed the user to stream the given content on demand an unlimited amount of times. To permanently download the song to the user’s storage, the content would reach in the range of traditional music purchases as seen on iTunes or other music purchasing mediums.

Email Lala Sent To Users

It’s been the speculation of observers that Apple is planning to incorporate a cloud-based service into iTunes allowing users to stream music along with the rest of Apple’s iTunes content catalog. However, delving deeper into the situation, industry resources are saying that a move like from Apple wouldn’t be immediate given the nature of the record labels

Sources tell me that in the past few weeks, Apple has started signaling to the labels that it’s interested in a Web-based version of iTunes, its dominant music retail platform. But those conversations are preliminary at best.

Music label execs have not accepted Apple’s idea to develop a cloud-based technology into the iTunes software. With the tech implemented, users can stream content from Apple’s iTunes media library anywhere in the world on demand, making their multimedia content stateless with the option to download the content to their system’s storage if they choose. However, the majority of the music industry believes that they should have a bigger share of the revenues and more pricing power, a notion that both Apple and users of the iTunes software would more than likely not fully appreciate.

People have given an angle for argument for Apple to pursue in order to help them implant the cloud-computing technology into their iTunes software. One widely agreed argument shared among consumers and experts is that Apple could imply that people have the legal and natural right to stream content they have purchased anywhere, anytime and anyway they see fit. However, it has been also mentioned that such debate could hinder Apple’s interests into bettering deals for benefit of the consumer in other forms of multimedia content they have business in, such as with television networks and motion picture studios.

Experts, both technological and financial, have stated that the utilization of cloud-computing in iTunes will undoubtedly take the software to higher levels and more than likely increase it’s dominance as the premier vendor to purchase digital multimedia content.

Simply Being, a paid application by Meditation Oasis helps you to relax in any setting, which is why it’s a great application to have on your iPhone. It features a calm, female speaker to guide you through your meditation and the option of music as well. The music is a great way to incorporate daily meditation in your commuting routine (provided you aren’t driving) and the volume controls for each allow you to determine how big of a role the music should play. The application costs $0.99 and is definitely worth the price. Many, according to their Web site and application, also use the longer meditation to fall asleep or unwind after a long day.

Here are some images:

As you can see, the volume can be changed for both the voice and music when the with music feature is selected. Additionally, the music will continue for a few seconds after the application has stopped the guided meditation in order to allow you to come out of your meditation slowly and safely.

The Web site also features a podcast that you can download and a course on meditation if you are interested. Additionally the podcast is available as it’s own paid application, for $2.99.

Deceptively simple, DJ Jones will play a song from somewhere in the middle of the track and you’ll have to guess which song it is from 5 multiple choice possibilities.  Both the song and the possibilities will come from your own iPod music library, so the game can’t possibly throw you any curveballs.  When you fail a song, DJ Jones kicks you out of the game and into it’s own music player, letting you enjoy the rest of the tune to better get to know your collection.

The gameplay doesn’t offer much beyond those basics.  Scoring is based on how long it takes you to answer, and the game ends after you get a wrong answer — it’s as simple as that.  Since version 2.0 was released back in October, DJ Jones has been Plus+ enabled.   This means you can earn achievements and compete for high score against other music junkie friends with ease.  And if you’re looking to test friends and family on your musical tastes, you can create your own custom playlists to put their ears to the test.

Once you’re in the app’s music player, a number of smart on-screen controls will let you cruise through your music collection with ease.  Swiping left will take you back a tune, swiping right will move you a head.  Swiping near the top of the screen will adjust the volume.  It’s the sort of simple, intuitive controls that you can’t help but wish the native iPod music player offered.

If you’re going to complain about the bare bones gameplay in DJ Jones, you’re probably missing the point.  DJ Jones is less about being a game and more about helping you to rediscover the music you didn’t know you have.  If you’ve ever been the kind of person who built a playlist out of tunes you hardly know just to see what’s worth keeping, DJ Jones just found a way to make that adventure fun.

Tidy Songs is an Adobe Air app that loads to a simple welcome screen which lets you get started pretty quickly. There’s no setup to do. Just click Start and you’re whisked off to the Main Menu where you select from 4 options: Add Album Art, Find Duplicates, Fix Your Songs, and Organize Genres. They’re all pretty self explanatory, so let’s get right into it.

Add Album Art works like a charm. It looks up the songs in a selected playlist (you can choose to scan your entire library as well) and checks them against it’s sources (I’m assuming one of them to be Amazon). When a discrepancy is detected, it presents its findings to you and you can choose to keep the current artwork, add the new artwork, or input your own URL where the correct artwork is located, and it will download it for you.

Find Duplicates worked well in my tests as well. There is the option to automatically delete these duplicates according to bit rate and song length, however this one you’ll probably need to manually approve each change, especially if you have a lot of live albums where song titles are exactly the same.

Fixing songs themselves proved to be a little tricky for me. To test this functionality, I made some changes to my song titles and documented each change. All of my semi-popular music was recognized and fixed without a hitch. However, my problems arose when summoning information on more obscure bands, and if you have a lot of this kind of music, you may have to use the Manual mode here as well. I don’t fault Tidy Songs for this, as I would think this is a problem with the tracklist and information in the public database it is querying. However, if you’ve got a lot of well to semi-well-known artists in your library, Tidy Songs should have no problem clearing up any weird titles and information. Speed-wise, if you’re going to let it do its thing automatically, and depending on how many songs you have, I’d let it go overnight. In my own library of a few thousand songs, it took quite a few hours to complete its scans and fixes. Also, you can’t listen to music through iTunes while it’s cleaning, so either do it while you won’t be home, or fire up Pandora and check out some new music while you wait.

Probably the feature I found the least use for was Organize Genres. It simply allows you to change all of the variations on a genre to one. For example, I have varying genres of Rock in my library such as Alternative-Rock, Alt-punk, Indie, Indie-Pop, Rock/Pop, Indie Rock…you get the picture. It offers to take all of these and combine them into one category of its or your choosing.

While fixing, you can tell Tidy Songs to skip songs with certain words as well, giving you an added “Don’t touch” filter. All in all, the app works great. Compared to TuneUp, my experience was above and beyond what I ever expected it to be, and that experience comes with a price tag. $39 to be exact. Worth it? I’d say yes. Especially if your library is big and in rough shape. You could spend days retagging and reorganizing a large iTunes library- let Tidy Songs do it for you.

The UI is different, to put it simply. The default display is a CoverFlow-esque view of all your music in alphabetical order by artist then by album, just like in iTunes. To view tracks on a particular album, double click the album, and a track list slides out to the right.

I do appreciate what the developers tried to do with it, but it felt a little counter-intuitive at first. There is a slight learning curve associated with using the app to it’s fullest potential.

Also, there’s no way to view just a tracklist of all your music- your only option is the CoverFlow-like view. So if you rip your music from CD and don’t bother with the artwork, you might end up with something like this:

Full Screen mode could also use some improvement. Now, I realize this is a compact media player, so it’s not supposed to be ripe with features, but there’s a few that should be there to begin with. First of all in Full Screen, there’s no way to navigate your music other than scrolling through the album artwork. No quick-find, no search. If you have a lot of music, you’ll understand where this gets frustrating quickly. Also, within full-screen mode, there’s no way to do anything else, really- save navigating, sorting, playing and pausing. Along with a search box(at minimum), I’d like to see an on-screen volume slider, and a few control buttons: play/pause, forward and previous track.

One of Everplay’s biggest advantages is that it taps right into your iTunes library. No need to organize or reorganize your digital media files. If it’s the way you want it in iTunes, you’re all set. However, this could also be it’s biggest DIS-advantage, as there’s no way to add, delete, or reorganize media whatsoever. You can indeed play your movies and videos in Everplay, but be warned. There is no way to play DRM video content at all. This means any movies or TV shows you have in your iTunes library, you will have to play in iTunes. It’s something iTunes Store lovers will surely be a little disappointed about.

Another major plus in Everplay is its integrated Last.fm features. If you use Last.fm, you’ll be able to scrobble from right within the app, listen to radio, and find similar artists. Also, events from your Last.fm calendar can handily be sent right over to iCal.

Everplay has two modes for playing music, regular track order, and Jukebox Mode. Jukebox mode acts…well like a jukebox. Any track that is double-clicked is put into a queue for immediate play after the currently playing track ends. Great for parties, it’s basically creating an on-the-go playlist, and you can view or clear the upcoming tracks in the Upcoming menu drop-down. Jukebox Mode, however, is Everplay’s only playlist creation tool, and won’t save when you exit the app. To create a new playlist to use in Everplay, you’d have to do it in iTunes.

To sum things up, this app, like most of its competition excluding iTunes, is a great idea, but its execution is lacking nearly everywhere. It’s compact for sure, but there’s just too much missing. Were some of the missing features implemented in further releases, I’d fully recommend this software, but for now, stick with iTunes. Everplay is free to try, and $19.95 for a license from Snarb.tk

Ever since Guitar Hero hit the home console scene back in 2005, music games have been all the rage amongst gamers and music enthusiasts alike.  Tracing the iPhone’s roots back to the music-only iPods of yore, it seems only natural that the genre would eventually make its way to the iTunes App Store.  We take a look at two of this season’s most popular music games for the iPhone and let you know which one we think is the real deal.

Tap Tap Revenge 3: As the leading music game franchise on the iPhone since the platform’s launch, Tap Tap Revenge is the name to beat if you want to get anywhere in iPhone rhythm gaming.  While we’ve seen a number of licensed entries on the market over the past year (Tap Tap Coldplay, Lady Gaga Revenge) TTR3 marks the third real revision to the series formula.  This time out it brings a wealth of new changes while still maintaining everything we know and love about the franchise.

If you’re new to the series, here’s the quick rundown; Tap Tap Revenge is a music game that, like most other music games, is about tapping out notes in rhythm to the music.  Unlike other series, TTR uses a 3-note system that seems to be a perfect fit for the iPhone.  Players can wrap their hands around the device and put two thumbs on the screen, darting one of those over to the middle track when necessary.  The gameplay is easy to pick up and well-suited for the device, but the coolest feature you’re going to find here isn’t in how you play but in how you play with a friend.  Local multiplayer can be tackled via split-screen on the same iPhone, with one player holding the top of the device and one holding the bottom.  Online multiplayer is also available in a cool score-battle mode that pits you against a room full of strangers that you can chat with between rounds.

Tap Tap Revenge 3 changes things up in a few noticeable ways.  A new single player campaign mode exists where you’ll need to level up RPG-style to unlock songs.  The game now offers a customizable avatar, which can be dressed and armed via coins earned during in-game play.  And biggest of all — TTR3 now offers in-game downloads of paid content.  This means that — in addition to the 200 or so free songs available — new content from major artists will be made available for purchase every week.  Duran Duran, LCD Soundsystem, The Killers — it’s astounding the depth and range of content that’s already available.  Everything from Marilyn Manson to New Kids on the Block is in the store.  Many of these purchases have their own skin for the in-game presentation.  Oh — and did we mention you can import songs from previous premium versions of the game?  Yeah, this thing is pretty much made of win.  A+

Rock Band: Bringing a massive 4-instrument multiplayer experience to the iPhone is a hefty concept, and for what it’s worth EA Mobile handled the transition fairly well.  Rock Band has always been about that living room experience, and so long as you’re hanging out with other iPhone rockers you’ll be able to get the band back together flawlessly.  The game supports 4-person local multiplayer over bluetooth and wifi with each iPhone playing a different instrument in sync with the rest of the group.  Online multiplayer exists too, but it comes off feeling pretty pointless.  I challenge anyone to notice a difference between single player and online multi — the experiences are identical.

When playing in single player you’ll have the opportunity to jam on whichever instrument you choose, with each having it’s own individual note tracking just as Harmonix intended.  The gameplay itself isn’t without its flaws, though.  Each instrument offers up four tracks, unlike Tap Tap Revenge’s three.  This makes for tough times for the larger fingered among us, as trying to hit two notes side-by-side can just as easily spill over into the next note column.  It’s not a game-crippling issue, but it becomes pretty apparent that 4 note tracks is just too many for an iPhone music game.

The instruments themselves don’t vary as much as they do in the console version.  Removing concepts like the kick pedal and the whammy bar means that, despite different note tracking, each instrument feels pretty much identical to play.  The biggest disappointment here had to be the vocals, which — instead of offering up SingStar fanatics an opportunity to bust out our karaoke chops — just offered a vertical variation on note tracking.  Going vertical actually made the 4 tracks more user friendly than the other instruments, but I wanted to sing, dammit!  I can understand that requiring the mic to sing would have limited the available market for the game (1st gen Touch’s have no audio input), but it doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us to cripple the experience across the board.

We were also a little bummed to see that Rock Band didn’t take advantage of the franchise’s massive pre-existing music store, instead opting for an iPhone specific store that (as of this writing) offers only 11 downloadable tracks.  At least the 20 included tracks rock the casbah, offering a much better “big name” selection than TTR3.  Besides — any game that offers Freezepop’s Super Sprode as a downloadable track is a winner in my books.  B+

Winner: Tap Tap Revenge 3.

While the general vibe of the franchise is still in tact, there were simply far too many missed opportunities here to whole-heartedly recommend Rock Band over the competition.  Tap Tap has known what it’s doing since day one, and the experience is only getting better.  And to think — we made this decision without even beginning to factor the price disparity between the two into the mix!

Download Tap Tap Revenge 3 for free by clicking here, or buy Rock Band for $6.99 by clicking here.

Like the traditional Rock Band experience, you’ll get to select between four instruments — vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Each will feature it’s own authentic experience for every song in the game, and when played with friends should sync up flawlessly.  Note our use of the word “should.”  This game has been in development for more than a year now, so we’d like to think that they’ve worked all the kinks out.  But until we get a room full of band geeks jamming out on their portables, we’ll never really know how well the game will sync via Bluetooth.  At the end of the day, this will likely make or break the experience.  Knowing the top notch quality of previous Rock Band efforts, we’re inclined to believe that Rock Band iPhone should pull this off without a hitch.

Touch Arcade were given a hands-on preview of the game, and are reporting that the following 20 songs will make up the initial set list;

30 Seconds To Mars – “Attack”
AFI – “Girls Not Grey”
All American Rejects – “Move Along”
Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”
Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”
Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone”
Foo Fighters – “Learn To Fly”
Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
George Thorogood & the Destroyers – “Bad to The Bone”
Jethro Tull – “Hymn 43″
Joan Jett – “Hymn 43″
Lynard Skynard – “Simple Man”
Motorhead – “Ace of Spades ‘08″
Pixies – “Debaser”
Presidents of The United States of America – “Ladybug”
Rise Against – “Give It All”
Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Cherub Rock”
Steve Miller Band – “Take The Money and Run”
The Go Go’s – “We Got The Beat”

The one disappointing thing we gleamed from the Touch Arcade preview was that “every instrument has its own track that you tap along with.”  If true, that means that vocals have replaced actual singing with yet another instrument track.  It’s understandable (not all App Store shoppers have access to a mic), but still disappointing.  We would have loved to learn that iPhone rockers could belt out the hits into their microphones.  Doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.

We’re also very glad to see that this release have gone in a very different direction than Rock Band’s other recent portable incarnation, Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP.  The PSP version had players attempting to keep all four instruments in play at the same time in a frantic, mad balancing act.  It was not unlike Harmonix’s breakthrough PS2 game Frequency, but it just didn’t seem to be a great fit for the portable player in our opinion.  Keeping things streamlined and as close the original experience as possible, much as EA Mobile seems to have done here, is really the best way to bring this to the portable market.

No word on price yet, but a number of sources are reporting that this has already been submitted to Apple for approval.  Hopefully this means we’ll be seeing it in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, enjoy every second of Tap Tap Revenge you can.  Once Rock Band hits, something tells me Tap Tap won’t carry the weight it once did in the court of public opinion.

A recent study by the market research group NPD showed that digital music purchases continued their steady rise to market dominance during the first half of 2009.  While that fact in and of itself isn’t all that surprising, what share of the overall music market iTunes now makes up is enough to knock the socks off even the most passionate Apple devotee: 25%.

That’s not 25% of the digital market — that’s 25% of the total market.  This makes them the largest music seller in the US, beating out their closest competitor Wal-Mart, currently sitting at 14% of total music sales, by a whopping 11 points.

Other figures are just as impressive.  In the digital arena iTunes isn’t only #1 — it’s blasted away the competition.  In terms of digital music sales iTunes now represents 69% of the market.  It’s closest competitor AmazonMP3 comes in at only 8%.  This runaway lead in the digital music market is in stark contrast with the relatively balanced sales in physical music.  The four leaders of CD sales — Wal-mart, Best Buy, Target and Amazon are all within a few points of each other, covering 20%, 16%, 10% and 10% of the CD market respectively.

How could one market showcase such a distinct leader while another seems to offer up a balanced competition?  Brand recognition?  Strong hardware support?

AmazonMP3 has attempted to buck the trend, offering up DRM-free music and better prices and a host of other options.  When Apple saw that the service was gaining traction it went ahead and changed its feature set to offer up the things that were making AmazonMP3 so popular.   What can a company like Amazon do to climb past 8% of the market, or more accurately, bring iTunes down from 69%?

What is iTunes doing right that everyone else is doing wrong?  What, if anything, could competitors do to level the playing field?

Apple isn’t the first company to get involved in live streaming of musical performances, but they are the first to try and put it in your pocket. This past Saturday the UK electronic group Underworld performed a concert live from Oakland, California, and for the first time ever you were able to watch this streamed live to your iPhone.

Live concert streaming seems to be gaining a lot of traction in 2009, and this is just the latest attempt to incorporate that into an already successful platform.  Back in June, for example, Hulu brought its users a live performance by the Dave Matthews Band.

While nothing has been confirmed regarding future concerts on either the iPhone or Hulu, I find it hard to believe this is the last stop.  There’s a lot of potential for both platforms to shape an experience that’s unique to what they’re offering.  It’s not inconcievable to think that we might see a “Concert Series” subscription come to iTunes, or some brilliant behind-the-scenes NBC performances live on Hulu.  Who wouldn’t want to live stream the rehearsal’s of Saturday Night Live musical guests?

The idea of streaming a concert over the internet is far from new.  A number of performers have attempted to stream concert footage dating all the way back to 1998, when John Tesh performed an intimate concert online by opening up whopping 100 phone line connections.  When you realize how many millions upon millions of people will tune in tonight, it’s kind of quaint and awe-inspiring when you think about the lengths Tesh had to go to perform to 60 people in the dial-up era.

It seems kind of strange that this Underworld streaming was announced so last minute (the news broke Saturday morning), yet there seems to be a general consensus amongst a number of blogs on why this information was held back.  The folks at NewTeeVee are suggesting that AT&T held onto the announcement for fear of their network being overloaded, which certainly doesn’t seem too far fetched a possibility.  Despite the delay in announcement, I’m sure the AT&T network went through a real stress-test Saturday night.

And yet things weren’t necesarily as “live” as advertised.  TechRadar is reporting that the concert itself actually took place the night before.  While the event was likely recorded in its entirety, and the broadcast still went out live, there’s definitely a difference between live and live-to-tape.  Regardless, multiple sites are reporting the event was executed flawlessly, with high quality video and audio broadcast to the masses with nary a stumbling block in sight.

To our readers who were lucky enough to hear about the event on Saturday, did you check it out?  How did you find the quality?  Was the stream as flawless as everyone is saying?

Ecoute has a small main windows that feels a lot like an iPod. You can browse your music just as you would on an iPod or iPhone. When you play a song the window will shrink and display the album artwork for the song. Hover your mouse over the album artwork you can easly play, pause, and skip back or forward in the track. The bottom of the screen displays the time that is left in the track and you can click the search icon to search songs. Clicking the album artwork will display the song lyrics (if available).

Ecoute also has many features that iTunes lacks. You can add a small controller to your desktop. This will display the album artwork, song title, artist, and album. You can also use it to play/pause, and skip ahead or back. You don’t need to have Ecoute’s icon in the dock. It can be in the menu bar instead. Ecoute even has Last.fm scrobbling. If you don’t know what Last.fm is, it let’s you track and share what music you listen to.

Ecoute is a very basic app. While it would be nice if it included some more features, like playlist creation and the ability to tell if a playlist is new or not, it is a great application to listen to music and watch videos without opening iTunes. You can download a free trial of Ecoute from PixiApps and a license costs $10.

The Easy Way

Naturally the easiest way to keep your Palm Pre syncing with iTunes is to download an older version of iTunes, or refuse to upgrade to the new 8.2.1 release. This limits you to the features (and security) of the older version, and isn’t very practical. Although, if you have multiple machines, it could be just as easy to leave iTunes at 8.2 on an older machine. Click here to download iTunes 8.2 from Version Tracker.

The Other Easy Way

A few months back we previewed the doubleTwist software released by famous DVD encryption cracker DVD Jon and his small team. The concept of the software is simple: sync your all devices from one piece of software, without all of the hassle. doubleTwist is still fairly new, but it offers support for a few hundred smartphones, Mp3 players, the Sony PSP. Recently added to that mix is the Palm Pre. A note for Palm Pre PC users: the doubleTwist is available for Windows as well on the company’s website.

1) Download and install the doubleTwist software from the company’s website, and launch the app.

2) Sign up for an account with the company in the dialogue box that appears at your first launch.

3) Once loaded, you should be able to see tabs for your music, photos, and videos from your iTunes or iPhoto libraries.

4) Connect your Palm Pre (or other smartphone/device) with the USB cable to your machine.

5) Your device will show up in the column under the “Devices” section. This should look remarkably familiar for iTunes users. Then syncing both ways works the same way as it would in iTunes. Select the music you want to transfer to your device, and drag and drop it onto the device in the sidebar. When transferring video, doubleTwist will automatically convert the video for the right format of your device.

doubleTwist’s interface is attractive, yet sparse. It’s merely a sync manager,
you’ll still want to use iTunes for content management.

It’s as simple as that. While normally I would think it’s a hassle to have yet another step to sync to my phone, I find doubleTwist a friendly, simple, and intuitive solution.

This video is a company demo of how doubleTwist syncs content from an Android phone (or similar phone).

There was something magical about it.  The small of the vinyl and cardboard.  Grabbing a record by the edges so as not to scratch it.  Dropping the needle.  And of course, picking up a 45 in anticipation of an albums release.  Now Apple wants to recreate this experience with Digital 45’s, virtual reproductions of classic singles on the iTunes Store.

At a glance, this whole thing might sound like a marketing ploy to simply bundle songs together at a discounted price, and should they begin to clutter the Digital 45 Store with new albums together it would be an easy argument to make.  As it stands now though, the Digital 45 Store is offering up reproductions of actual 45’s, complete with the original sleeve art and matching B-side.

In the cases where sleeve art isn’t available, they’ve opted to show the label art from the center of the disc on a vinyl background.  It’s a great look, one that some will actually prefer to the sleeve art.  For those who missed the heydey of 45’s and later, CD singles, the real highlight to these releases always lay in the B-side, which usually featured a song not available on the album.  Adding B-sides to the iTunes catalogue should seriously satisfy the needs of music fans who think they’ve heard everything from their favorite artists.

Click here to check out everything that is currently offered on the Digital 45 Store.

SweetFM is a mash up of sorts, mixing Last.fm streaming with your average iTunes helper app. Like all other iTunes helper apps, SweetFM displays the album artwork of the song your currently listening to and that functionality also works with music you stream from Last.fm. It also has an indescript spot where you are suppose to enter what you want to listen to on Last.fm and an arbitrary arrow button next to it. One would think you could just enter an artist name into the box and get Last.fm to play it but this is not the case. Instead you have to press this arrow button to display a group of addition buttons labeled “Artist”, “Tags”, and etc. You then have to hit one of those buttons and enter further information into the box. For example, if I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd on Last.fm, I would have to open up SweetFM, click the arrow, click artist, and then enter “Pink Floyd” in the box.

In reality all they are really doing with this convoluted process is adding a little tag behind the information you enter into the box. You would think they could automate this or have a little bit of magic happen behind the scenes, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Aside from that the application feels more like a beta than a final release, I’ve encountered multiple bugs in the few days that I’ve been playing with it. The first of which is that what the application shows as playing and what is actually playing in iTunes don’t match from time to time, even though SweetFM says the right info in it’s menu in the menu bar. Also, the progress indicator, which allows you to scrub through songs, occasionally does not work.

But the most disappointing part of this application is it’s user interface. Even though they are touting the fact that you can design skins for this app using HTML and CSS, a well built one should still come bundled with the app. Fibre, the included skin, is an overly glossy, distracting waste of desktop space. Personally, I like my iTunes helpers to be pinned to the desktop and just meld with everything else their but Fibre is just not capable of doing that (the melding at least). Silly things like having the horizontal volume slider bumped right up to the “Scrobbling” button for Last.fm makes it seem as though the slider has something to do with “Scrobbling” when in fact it does not. The semi-transparent background in particular is my least favorite part, why does it need to be there? Take a page from the designers doing skins for Bowtie and just get rid of the app background all together, it works so much better with the desktop. Luckily choco moko has a skins directory on their website but at the moment it only has one additional theme, which seems only like a slight redesign to Fibre and nothing more.

If your at all interested in helper apps for iTunes, I would recommend you stay away from SweetFM. Although if your a fan of Last.fm it is worth checking out. It is available from choco moko for $29. If you are just looking for an iTunes helper, check out the free Bowtie.

Ringer is a very basic application. The sidebar on the left lets you browse your iTunes library and the rest of the window is for creating ringtones. You can browse many different sections of iTunes including artists, movies, and TV shows. You can also search for the specific clip.

The ringtone creator is very similar to the one built into iTunes. It has the same features and tools. You simply drag a box around the portion of the song you’d like to use, and hit preview. You can also set the gap in between loops and have the audio fade in and out. When you click create the ringtone is instantly placed under “Ringtones” in iTunes and you will be able to sync them with your iPhone.

Ringer is a great app for creating simple ringtones, but it doesn’t have many advanced features. For some ringtones it might be useful to have a few simple audio effects. There is also no way to control the length of the audio fade. Ringer doesn’t have many features, but it does just what it should. It’s an easy way to create new ringtones in a few short seconds. Ringer is available for $15 from Pixel Research Labs.

Songbird’s interface look familiar? A ghost from iTunes Past?

The most interesting thing about Songbird is the open-source code it’s built off of: Firefox. That’s right! The folks over at Pioneers for the Inevitable have built the entire thing on top of Mozilla’s popular browser, which brings me to my biggest complaint: my TI-84 graphic calculator could load my music library faster! Songbird’s Achilles heel seems to be it’s speed. It’s like trying to play streaming video on dial-up. The slow start times and rendering speeds that seem to plague the Mac version of Firefox get even worse in Songbird. I’m relatively impatient when it comes to app responsiveness and loading, but others I’ve spoken to agree: Songbird can be a bit of a clunker.

Songbird integrates Last.fm in a very classy way

Aside from my quips about speed, Songbird can be fun to use. Through extensions and themes (called “Feathers”), it has a number of fantastic features, and room for expansion. iPod support, Last.FM integration, QuickTime FairPlay integration, as well as the benefits of a built-in tabbed-browser (which I’m using right now to post this review). I know I was harsh on the developers earlier for using Firefox because of the speed, but it’s also my biggest compliment; browsing the web with your music elegantly placed in the same window is quite nice. Besides, the built-in web browser allows for easy integration of other Mp3 stores, and easy searching for legal music downloads on the web.

Firefox users will be met with a familiar preferences panel

Other features such as a Mini-Player, the ability to re-order your music window panes, song ratings, easy library search, and organizing features puts Songbird in contention with iTunes. It really is an intuitive program, and such an easy switch from iTunes, that you may not notice the difference (apart from the speed of course). Songbird will even import your iTunes library complete with music, playlists, and playcounts. If there isn’t a feature available built into Songbird check out their add-on’s page, where a number of incredibly useful plugins are available for download.

I do have one last issue to take with Songbird, and it’s video. When I imported my iTunes library, it brought in all of my video podcasts and integrated them into my music library. Songbird doesn’t support video playback, but will play the audio in a video. Putting my library on shuffle, I found it incredibly annoying to have to constantly stop and delete video from the library. Plus because I had Last.fm scrobbling enabled, I had to dig through my recent plays and pull them out. If the software isn’t going to support video, it shouldn’t allow it to import into the library.

All in all, Songbird makes a fantastic attempt at an iTunes replacement, but a number of short comings make it impossible for me to jump ship. If you can handle the slightly sluggish interface and you’re looking for an alternative to iTunes with support for other music stores, and iPod support; Songbird might just be your match.

AirPhones’s interface is plane and simple.  It’s designed to work in the background so that you don’t need to worry about adjusting any settings while the app is active.  AirPhones’s preference window is accessible through its menubar icon.

You can choose to have the app launch every time you log in as well as choose to access the preferences from the dock, the menu bar, or both.  AirPhones will also tell you which devices are paired with the app and allows you to clear it.  Speaking of devices, lets look at the interface on the iPhone and iPod touch.

Launch the app, and this is what you get.  That’s it!  You can control the volume with the supplied slider at the bottom.  AirPhones will work as far as your network will allow.  If your network is bridged across an entire campus, your AirPhones will still be receiving even if you are at the complete opposite side of the area.

You can be watching a movie, listening to iTunes Radio, staying up to date on the latest broadcast web event, etc – anywhere with your mac and an iPhone and iPod Touch.

In terms of performance AirPhones does not disappoint.  Sound quality is great, and the app does not suck up your processor.  Setup is painless and fast.  All you have to do is hit connect in the preference window on the mac and you’re connected.

AirPhones is $4.99 at the iTunes Apps store, and the client on the mac is absolutely free.  AirPhones is available at http://airphonesapp.com/.

How does it work?

Simply put, doubleTwist is constantly updated with drivers and software designed to work with all of the latest gadgets and gear that stores all of your digital media assets.  Because of this, doubleTwist makes it as easy as plugging in your device, and dragging and dropping in your media files to and from your devices.

The Interface

DoubleTwist’s interface makes up a good part of it’s feature list.  DoubleTwist takes after a longtime design principal commonly found in iTunes and iPhoto.  In the right section of the window, you’ll find a sidebar filled with a list of sources where you’ll find your media content.  The sidebar is divided into four sections:  DoubleTwist “aka sharing information with doubleTwists’s own sharing service”, Library “used to access the media on your computer’s hard drive”, Devices “used to access your digital device’s content”, and Friends “which also works with DoubleTwist’s own sharing service”.

The right side of the app is where you view and interact with your content.  This side of the app changes based on what you have selected in the sidebar.  When viewing the “My Feed” section, you get at consecutive list filled with notifications.  Inside of these notifications are thumbnails of pictures, movies, and music which you can view at anytime.

When looking at any of the the Library sections, the right area of the app shows a simple browser interface designed for the one purpose of finding your media, and dragging it onto your device.

Which brings us to the Device section.  Clicking on the device itself shows a progress bar depicting how much storage space you have available.

PSP and Video!

One thing everyone always gripes about is video conversion.  Well gripe no more because doubleTwist automatically converts your video for you no matter what device you are using.  This is a big plus for PSP users.  Just drag in the video, and doubleTwist does the rest.  Thumbnail and all!

Sharing Online

Besides integrating with your digital devices, DoubleTwist also integrates with FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube allowing you to share your captured media online.

DoubleTwist also has a sharing service built in.  This allows you to easily share your media with all of your friends.  When you receive a photo, video, or audio file, doubleTwist will automatically update your feed.

Final Thoughts

DoubleTwist is still very new, meaning the compatible device list is a little sparse however, because doubleTwist is an ongoing project, the developers are hard at work making more and more devices compatible.

In terms of performance, doubleTwist does not disappoint.  Depending on how much memory you have as well as the speed of your Intel processor, the time it takes to transfer and convert video will vary, however testing on a 2nd gen aluminum iMac I found that doubleTwist is quite fast and will not disappoint.

DoubleTwist is available for the Mac (Leopard only) and PC at http://www.doubletwist.com/ for the unbeatable price of free.

That’s why Sirius XM has been making some bold choices lately — choices that take the “satellite” out of satellite radio.  Until very recently, you would have needed a satellite radio unit to access any Sirius or XM programming.  Now they’ve changed it so you can have an internet only subscription for $12.95 a month and listen directly through streaming.  Up next?  Sirius XM is looking to conquer your iPhone.

During their recent fourth quarter earnings conference call, Sirius executives David Frear, Mel Karmazin and Jim Meyer announced the expected second-quarter launch of the Sirius XM iPhone app.  The app will allow you to take you Sirius subscription with you on the road without the need for a satellite radio unit.  Like other internet radio options out there, the Sirius XM app will stream the music live from the channel of your choice.

As a fan of Sirius XM programming, it’s hard not to get excited about this.  But on the broader scale, will this really make an impact?  As so many apps already exist to provide internet radio free of charge, will new subscribers really be drawn in by the possibility of sporting Sirius sounds sans satellite device?  Or will it just be another nail in satellite radios coffin?

One of the long-standing iPod rumors has been a model that included an FM tuner. Some people still can’t believe Apple never included that “simple” feature. Now, with the iPhone/iPod Touch being able to stream music from the Internet, I think it’s safe to say there will never be an iPod with a terrestrial radio. And using an app like Slacker Personal Radio, you wonder why anyone would still want one.

There are several streaming music players in the App Store, with Pandora being the most popular. Slacker is very similar to Pandora — choose an artist or song, and Slacker builds a radio station with similar music. There are also several pre-built genre stations to choose from. Slacker doesn’t seem to use the “musical fingerprinting” that Pandora does. Instead, it appears to be based on the genre of the artists. Still, it manages to put together a good playlist.

Slacker has a very diverse music selection of both independent and mainstream artists. To help me really put it to the test, I enlisted my friends on Twitter to suggest music to try. Searching for everything from Irish folk to Viking metal, I was able to find all but a few really obscure bands. I had less luck with song searches. About half the time, the band would be in Slacker, but the particular song I was looking for would not. This isn’t surprising considering how convoluted music licensing is, but it’s still disappointing.

But when it does find a song, Slacker plays that song — not just a similar song, which is what Pandora does. To me, this is a major improvement over Pandora. When you’re in the mood for a particular song, that’s what you want to hear first, not just something from the same genre. On top of that, Slacker gives you some control over what gets played on a station — you can increase how often songs you favorite get played, for example.

Overall, Slacker is an easy application to use. The UI is simple, and if you don’t have an account you can register for one right in the app. One minor issue is with searching: If you click on a search result to listen to the station and then go back, your search results are gone. If you wanted to try something else from your results, you have to search again.

I didn’t have any problems streaming music with Slacker. It took a little longer to start playing when I was on the EDGE network, but once it started playing it sounded smooth and clear.

With a free Slacker account you can skip up to six songs per station and (from the web interface) request a limited number of specific songs be played in a particular station. A paid account gives you unlimited skips and requests. With its large selection and advanced features, Slacker makes an excellent radio for your iPhone or iPod Touch. Slacker is a free download and available in the App Store.

Come January 8, 2009 Boxee will open those floodgates and everyone will have open access to try out Boxee.  Well by everyone they mean only Mac and Ubuntu user’s.  Their closed alpha testing stage generated over 150,000 sign ups, obviously a much larger number than they were ever expecting.  We have been active in testing Boxee since it was announced and things are coming along nicely…for something that’s still in its infancy.

So for those of you who are completely lost as to what Boxee is here you go: Boxee builds upon the widely popular XBMC (Xbox Media Center) by taking the normal media center functions and extending them to online video streaming.  Along with that they have built a social network within the app in which friends can rate and recommend things to watch, amongst other abilities as well.

The most enticing feature of Boxee is it’s ability to stream content from sites like Hulu and Comedy Central, to name a couple.  This is extremely nice as Hulu alone contains thousands of full TV shows and movies.  All this can now be streamed right to your big screen TV which is nice and convenient, granted the quality is only so so.  This can be done from any OSX 10.4 or 10.5 computer, AppleTV, or Ubuntu system. Unfortunately the online video content is only available to people in the US.

Now keep in mind that Boxee is still in the very early stages of development and does have many bugs.  Also some functions of the software are not very intuitive on how to set up, namely the setting up of a networked hard drive that contains your media files.  When Boxee does become open to the public it will still retain it’s Alpha status, but hopefully a beta will follow quickly.

Boxee can be downloaded at the official site.

Unfortunately, I feel as though this application falls flat and only really offers the same features as its free counterparts. Like the AOL Radio application, Radioshift allows you to find all your local radio stations and search for others using an intuitive list of music genres. But unlike the AOL app, Radioshift also allows you to search for your favorite station by name.

As for quality, Radioshift works very well on 3G, Edge, and WiFi. Obviously a stream’s quality varies based upon the bitrate at which it broadcasts, so it would be very helpful if Rouge Amoeba listed that in the station’s description.

I have no doubt that this is a very well-built radio application for your iPhone, I just find it hard to recommend that you go out and spend $9.95 for this app when you could get one of many other radio apps which have the nearly the same functionality for free.

Currently Radioshift Touch is available through the App Store for $9.99.

I then set out to find a Mac application that would allow me to make an attempt at cleaning some of these tracks up. After a little bit of searching, I found a company by the name of Bias Inc., that made an application called SoundSoap which was right up my alley.

SoundSoap doesn’t have a normal OS X interface. The tools for cleaning up your audio are still cleanly laid out and simple to find. Everything you need is right there in front of you; SoundSoap has no preferences pane. To get started, you can drag a sound file onto SoundSoap’s dock icon, onto its window, or find it in the Finder with Command+O.

Once you have a file loaded into SoundSoap, it is very simple to begin removing noise. Pressing the play button at the bottom of the window will play your file “as-is,” and changes are reflected as you change the settings. SoundSoap has 9 different settings that you can alter to try and get your file sounding as clean as possible.

The feature that really makes SoundSoap a great application is the “Learn Noise” button. The “Learn Noise” button lets SoundSoap automatically set the Noise Tuner and Noise Reduction knobs to what it believes will get rid of the noise in the file.

When manually finding settings for the Noise Tuner and Noise Reduction knobs, it is good to understand what is actually happening when you turn them. Now I am no sound engineer, so I think it’s best if I let SoundSoap’s manual do the talking here:

The Noise Tuner knob is essentially a threshold control, and is responsible for determining what is considered to be noise, and what is considered to be the desired audio signal. For example, turning the Noise Tuner knob all the way to the left (counter-clockwise), means setting a very low threshold value. With a very low threshold value, all audio content with an amplitude above this threshold is considered to be part of the desired audio signal that we wish to preserve. On the other hand, setting a higher threshold value with the Noise Tuner means that any of the audio content with an amplitude lower than the threshold level will be eliminated.

There is a little more explanation of the Noise Tuner in SoundSoap’s manual, but this is all you really need to know to get started.

The Noise Reduction knob does exactly what you’d think it would do. Turning it to the right increases the amount of noise reduction being applied, and vice versa. It’s important to first find a comfortable setting with the Noise Tuner first, before setting the Noise Reduction. According to the manual though, if you use the Learn Noise feature, it usually isn’t necessary to alter the Noise Reduction setting.

The little window at the top of SoundSoap’s window isn’t a setting, but rather a helpful indicator. It is referred to as the “Wash Window,” and gives you a visual representation of how the noise reduction process is going. Blue lines represent the audio you want, and red lines represent the noise you are trying to get rid of. The line in the center of the window is the point at which noise reduction is applied. The darker the red or blue line once it has passed the line in the middle of the window, the stronger the representation.

The click and crackle slider controls the click and crackle thresholds simultaneously. Moving the slider upward removes more and more crackles and clicks. As a general rule, you want to use the lowest possible setting you can manage on this slider to get rid of the noise.

The last slider on SoundSoap’s interface is the Enhance slider. Basically, this slider enhances frequencies and tone of degraded media. It is best to leave this slider until you have finished setting all other sliders and knobs. Just like the Click and Crackle slider, the Enhance slider works independent of other controls.

The next few controls in SoundSoap are buttons rather than sliders. The Preserve Voice button filters out any frequencies that are outside the range of human voice. Remove Rumble targets very low frequencies (around 40Hz) which is commonly found in recordings of vinyl records, where the very low frequency noise of the turntable motor can be transferred through the turntable’s needle.

Finally, there are two settings with radio buttons: Broadband and Remove Hum. Broadband lets you choose whether broadband noise reduction is on or in “Noise Only” mode. When you have “on” selected, SoundSoap will process your file according to current broadband tool settings. When you are in “Noise Only” mode, SoundSoap only outputs the noise you are trying to reduce, which can be a useful setting to see how effective a setting is in reducing the noise. The louder the noise is in this mode, the more drastic the change you will hear when you go back to “on” or “off.” With Remove Hum, you can set hum removal to either “50 Hz,” “60Hz,” or “off.”

Once you are happy with how your file sounds, clicking “apply” will apply your settings to your whole file. Then, you just have to click “File>Save As…” to save your document. When saving you can choose your format (MPEG 4, AIFF, WAVE, SDII) and other settings displayed in the screenshot below.

In the end, I was quite pleased with the results that SoundSoap produced. After only a few minutes of tweaking, almost all of the noise that was affecting my files was gone once I ran the file through SoundSoap. SoundSoap also can remove noise from video files, it is not just limited to audio.

SoundSoap is also more than just a stand-alone application. It is also a plug-in for most AU, RTAS/AS, and VST host applications on Mac OS X or WinXP (including GarageBand, BIAS Peak, Apple Logic, MOTU Digital Performer, Digidesign’s Pro Tools, and more). For more serious audiophiles, Peak Pro includes SoundSoap LE (same as SoundSoap, excluding additional host compatibility) and can be an ideal tool for stereo recording, editing, cleaning, mastering, and delivery.

SoundSoap 2 retails for $129 from Bias Inc., though is available through some resellers for $99. $129 (or $99) may seem expensive for an application, but to get something like this done professionally could potentially cost much more.

Aquarius Software’s Playwatch is a handy menu bar iTunes controller which will display the song information of whatever track is playing in a little mini iTunes-esque ticker, right in your menu bar. This provides a quick and easy way to view what song is playing without even having to press any buttons.

However, if you hover your mouse over the display, HUD window pops out with a variety of options. You can play, pause, skip a song or go back to the last one. But in addition to that you can select any other song from the currently playing album to play or go directly to iTunes. Most of these features are new additions in recent versions. What started as a simple ticker display has blossomed into a full-fledged iTunes controller in only a few versions. Personally, this creates a much more full experience and could change the way that you interact with your music.

Playwatch also has a wide array of preferences which let you customize the size, colors, font, and specific information that appears in the ticker. There is also a small progress bar at the bottom of the ticker that indicates how far along in the song you are, and an optional play/pause, rewind, fast forward button that can be displayed in the menu bar.

One of the problems I had with Playwatch was, although it is very customizable in other areas, the lack of options regarding the pop-out menu interface. You can control how many seconds the mouse needs to hover to activate it, but I would prefer to just click and activate it, and perhaps Command + click would give the menu with preferences and other information. Another problem is that the preferences are a completely different application, and don’t seem as polished as they could be, organization-wise. Playwatch has some really cool features, but it’s misses the polish and cleanness that are common among many other iTunes controllers.

Finally, I can’t forget the price. Playwatch costs just under 7€, or just above $13. If Playwatch were freeware, I know it would be a much more attractive solution for many mac users. However, because of it’s fairly high price (at least in dollars) I don’t think it is my preferred controller. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t try it out and see for yourself. There’s a free 30-day trial. Additionally, I feel that Playwatch will improve in the coming versions, seeing how it has matured in only the last few months.

You can download the trial of Playwatch from German website Aquarious Software. The english isn’t great, but that shouldn’t turn you off from this interesting iTunes controller.

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to music. If I need a chord, I’m going to find it with my ears. But ChordMate makes it easy to cheat. Check out my video review to see some of my favorite features.

So as you can see there are some nice features that can come in handy during a songwriting session, music theory training, or just playing around on your First Act guitar. Harmonic Sense did a great job with ChordMate Pro.

My only complaint is that to access the power of ChordMate, you need to purchase the Pro version. If you want the express or the standard version you save some cash at the expense of cool features. Tiered pricing works for power applications, but asking a user to pay more for basic features may mean pricing yourself out of the chord-finding market. Any fan of Creed will tell you that Drop D is as standard tuning as it comes, but you’ll have to buy the “professional” version to play the chorus to “With Arms Wide Open.”

You can pick up a copy of ChordMate Pro at Harmonic Sense for $39.95. Choose the Express version for $14.95 or pick up ChordMate Standard for $29.95.