To a lot of bands and labels, the idea of an UPC is pretty mysterious. Here to break it down are the bar code professionals at barcodeisland.com.

UPC-A Symbology & EAN-13 Description

DownloadSquad.com recently talked about how the Conficker Worm’s latest variant is to be release within a week from today. The worm can and has affected Microsoft Windows machines from Windows 2000 and up.

To make sure you are clear of the Conficker Worm, visit Bit Defender’s website on it HERE.

The MP3HD standard now boasts such features as:

• Backwards compatibility with current MP3 file formats
  • This means that any media player that can play mp3 files can also play MP3HD files without any conversion
• Lossless Audio
• It’s compression process keeps all the information needed to recreate a “.wav”s original code

Some of the features do have a shortfall however for audiophiles,

“However, rather than throw away the inaudible details during the encoding process, the MP3HD encoder saves them in the ID3 Tag, the part of an MP3 file used to store track details such as album and artist names. Existing MP3 players will read only the standard MP3 information; only MP3HD players will benefit from the additional lossless information stored in the file.” – Peter Sayer: IDG News Service

What do you think of the new format and its possible impact on consumers who care more about how many songs instead of less songs with better quality?

Mix Online recently reported on Vintage King adding some new features to their website, so I went over to www.Vintageking.com and checked it out for myself.

Some of the new website features they added include an audio samples section, multiple buyer guides, and a section where producers and engineers rave about their favorite gear and signal chains. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been helping out at Cuyahoga Community College’s Recording Arts and Technology department since my graduation and have found myself alone with my PC in a world of Mac computers.  90% of our computer labs are outfitted with completely brand new Mac G5 Pros and only one of the small labs consists of Core 2 Duo PCs.  Also, almost all of the instructors and any student with a laptop are carrying around shiny new Macs, while I carry my Core 2 Duo (Thanks MusicXPC) PC.  It has been quite a struggle to crossover any large amount of information from my PC to everyone elses’ Mac.

I know there is a huge OS war on the ‘internets’ but I will leave that for much more educated (read non-educated) people to fight that out.  However,  I am a firm believer that an operating system choice should be made by deciding what applications you will be working with.  I feel that applications strongly define how an operating system feels to a user.  An OS choice also depends on what is standard in the particular field you are looking to use your computer in.  This brings me to why it is difficult for me at times to collaborate with my PC and everyones Mac.

If I have a PC, I can’t readily, out of the box, read or write to any Mac formatted (HFS+) drive.  With a Mac, I can read but not write to a Windows formatted (NTFS) out of the box.  Over the last few years with Macs becoming much  more popular in both the public and in artistic fields, a lot of development has gone into crossing the two platforms.  Unfortunately the speed at which these two platforms are groing is quicker than the development of crossing applications.  As soon as someone has figured out a way to link the two devices together, that platform releases something completely new and unsupported.  For example, newer Leopard Macs now feature an optional and brand new file system developed by Sun Microsystems.  I can’t imagine that someone has already thought of a way for PCs to read this file structer for customers right now.

As of right now, there are a few ways to work around this cross platform dilema:

Read on for the work arounds…

Read the rest of this entry »