BigBlueLounge Widget 1.0

BigBlueLounge.com today released BigBlueLounge.com Widget 1.0, a collection of tools for musicians and recording engineers in the form of a Mac OS X Dashboard widget. Designed and programmed by the founder of www.bigbluelounge.com and studio manager of the Sydney Opera House Recording Studios, the widget grew out of the needs in real-world sessions over the past two years. BigBlueLounge.com Widget 1.0 provides five separate tools which include "Keyboard," "TapTempo," "MediaCalc," "DigiTool," and "SonicSpeed." The widget is available for free, and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Keyboard

Keyboard is a tiny four-octave keyboard that allows users to hear the note via its built-in Core Audio GM Synthesizer. Users can select between different sounds, Piano, Guitar, Sine Wave, and a click. The widget displays note frequency, MIDI note number, and note name as they are played.

TapTempo

TapTempo is a simple tool allowing users to click the Lounge or tap the space bar to work out a tempo. Users can see the classic tempo marking for that tempo, while a pull-down menu offers note values which show the delay in milliseconds for that value at that tempo.

MediaCalc

With MediaCalc, users quickly ascertain how much disk space a session will use ahead of time. Users enter the number of tracks, duration, sample rate, and bit depth. The widget also displays which removable media the resulting file size will require.

DigiTool

DigiTool calculates the numbers of samples for a given time period, as well as the sample rate in milliseconds. DigiTool is designed for users who need to enter a delay in samples but who only know the time in milliseconds.

SonicSpeed

Users can work out the speed of sound for the given temperature with SonicSpeed, allowing for conversion between metric and imperial scale while offering a propagation time in milliseconds.

by MacNN Staff