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olympus ls-10

Artist as Enterpreneur panel: A follow-up

AUSTIN, Texas--Thanks to everybody who came out to hear the Artist as Entrepreneur panel on Wednesday at South by Southwest. I had a great time doing it, and I enjoyed my (too short) interactions with the other panelists and with the audience after the show.

We were pressed for time at the end, so I wanted to share some random thoughts and reactions to some questions that I didn't have time to address.

Touring.Here, I tend to agree with Adam Lewis from Planetary: if you're still opening up on a Tuesday night in your home town, you … Read more

Hands-on with the Olympus LS-10 audio recorder

You know CDs are capable of pristine sound quality, but we've been playing with a digital voice recorder that records audio even higher than CD-quality. Capturing sound in 24-bit 96kHz WAV format with its sensitive stereo microphones, the new Olympus LS-10 allows for serious high-fidelity recordings and we're extremely impressed with it.

In fact, we took it to Pendulum's album launch party last night (no, it won't be on BitTorrent) for "testing" and the results were terrific. The recorder coped with being right at the front of the stage as the amps heaved under … Read more

Fan-funded music

Making a professional-sounding recording can be expensive, particularly for ensembles (like rock bands) who want to capture at least some semblance of a live performance.

Sure, you can get an decent recording with a portable stereo recorder, or a couple of inexpensive mics panned left and right and plugged directly into the mixer, but most artists want their music to sound as good as it possibly can--as good as any other artist played on the radio. That takes an array of microphones and other audio gear and somebody who knows what they're doing. In other words, money.

In the … Read more