One of the more entertaining things I’ve read, here’s a great bit of legal smack-down served upon purveyors of audio-cable snake oil, Monster Cable, Inc.™.

I’ll assume most people who visit this site are well aware of what complete assholes Monster Cable, Inc.™ are. You know, aside from technical/marketing claims that are exaggerated at best, and that they sue like they were the first company to use the word monster. And now they tried to put the legal hurt on the wrong guy, Kurt Denke, who runs an independent a/v cabling company, Blue Jeans Cable.

I’m cynical, so I just assume most corporations abuse the legal system, but Monster Cable, Inc. ™ are just so blatant and egregious. So, it’s good to see someone with the balls to slap back.

Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.

I applaud you. It may seem a little dry, but a great read it is.

Further, if any of these patents or trademarks has been licensed to any entity, please provide me with copies of the licensing agreements. I assume that Monster Cable International, Ltd., in Bermuda, listed on these patents, is an IP holding company and that Monster Cable’s principal US entity pays licensing fees to the Bermuda corporation in order to shift income out of the United States and thereby avoid paying United States federal income tax on those portions of its income; my request for these licensing agreements is specifically intended to include any licensing agreements, including those with closely related or sham entities, within or without the Monster Cable “family,” and without regard to whether those licensing agreements are sham transactions for tax shelter purposes only or whether they are bona fide arm’s-length transactions.

Here’s something cool and unexpected.

Our heroes over at Soniccouture.com have gone and whipped up another product that makes you wonder why no one had thought of it sooner.

Scriptorium.

Rather than just produce another of their fine sample instrument libraries, Soniccouture have tucked into the guts of Kontakt and give us a toolkit for taking Kontakt to the next level. One of my favorite things in the Soniccouture libraries is giving us access to the hidden goodies that help power their masterful sound design. And now they’ve really gone to town and programmed up a whole 35 Kontakt scripts that range from “You’re fucking kidding me, right? Awesome!” (Group Sequencer) to, “Huh. Interesting…” (Morse Code). A few are borrowed/upgraded from some of their other product, so I can attest to their quality. And I’m damn excited to try the others: if you’ve ever hunted for useful Kontakt scripts on the web you know what a score this is.

So, if you haven’t played around with scripts in your copy of Kontakt you’re missing a whole lot of time-wasting fun. They’re dead easy to work, really; if a dilettante such as myself can use them then certainly most others can. And these look to open up a whole world of possibilities. Plus there are 60 instruments included to get you started, along with 3 demo 4 tutorial videos.

I have a great idea for re-building a certain discontinued softsynth that I missed out on buying, and this is just the ticket to get me started.

And, although this is both version 2 and version 3 compatible, it’s perhaps another argument as to why NI should allow for other upgrade options.

From what I hear, these don’t retain their settings between sessions… I’m sure there’s a joke to be found somewhere in there.

Gentlemen, the KammerlAudio Plugins.

Oh yeah, I guess I should mention, NSFW, if black and white cheesecake shots with animal heads digitally graphed on is something that offends you or your co-workers.

(more…)

This has to be the best licensing agreement I’ve read.

For The sounds found project:

You are free to do with them whatever you desire. Authorship is void here. Too many declarations of property are made by people who simply pressed a record button, this project exists to encourage a different path.

How can you not love any project that has samples of “20021217: Scissors, like any room, Heidelberg” or
“20020922: Mad violinist, bathroom, St. Wendel”?

I’m not sure how one goes about submitting but there seems to be a very cool community working over at http://www.intelligentmachinery.net. Grab your field recorder and explore the ambiance of your life.

Coming soon: The bucolic soundscapes of Pawtucket.

Sweetwater’s patented Superficial Appearance Demarcation (SAD) technology…