Sony bring out new NW-A100TPS Walkman

Sony NW-A100TPS Walkman

Sony has released a new ‘Walkman’ to mark the 40th anniversary of its iconic portable cassette player.

If you had mobile music before you had a smartphone, it was probably a Walkman. The sound quality was fantastic but you needed to carry around a bag of tapes. So what are Sony up to?

The new model sounds terrific with a good range and solid, enjoyable bass. It has a special soft case and because it is a cassette player it has a little plastic window so you can see the tape and cogs rotating slowly inside. When you open the case your thoughts are confirmed, it is a real cassette player … but, just tap the tape and the trick is revealed.

In fact it is a touchscreen with a perfect video representation of tape. As you tap it, the cassette is replaced by a modern interface, with album art, track details and play / pause functionality. How clever are Sony!

The storage isn’t huge at 16GB and it costs a whopping £400, comes with a 3.6-inch HD display, USB-C charging and a 26 hour battery life. but hey, it sure is a cool idea.

Music Beyond Airports

This book doesn’t try to provide an in-depth analysis or a comprehensive history of the last 40 years of ambient music. Rather it provides a series of ‘provocations, observations and reflections’. Best of all is that it can be obtained as a free PDF download (see below) making it accessible so that more of us can read and consider its contents, and perhaps discuss them.

Music Beyond Airports is a collection of essays, developed from papers given at the Ambient@40 International Conference held in February 2018 at the University of Huddersfield.

As suggested by the title, the essayists don’t focus on the original Brian Eno recording but consider the development of the genre, how it has permeated our wider musical culture, and what the role of such music is today.

The pieces in the volume vary widely in terms of scope, subject, and voice, and – I think – sketch out a lot of useful topics for personal reflection and public discussion.

Here is a summary of the chapters:

• David Toop: How Much World Do You Want? Ambient Listening And Its Questions

• Ambrose Field: Space In The Ambience: Is Ambient Music Socially Relevant?

• Ulf Holbrook: A Question Of Background: Sites Of Listening

• Richard Talbot: Three Manifestations Of Spatiality In Ambient Music

• Simon Cummings: The Steady State Theory: Recalibrating The Quiddity Of Ambient Music

• Monty Adkins: Fragility, Noise, And Atmosphere In Ambient Music

• Lisa Colton: Channelling The Ecstasy Of Hildegard Von Bingen: “O Euchari” Remixed

• Justin Morey: Ambient House: “Little Fluffy Clouds” And The Sampler As Time Machine

• Axel Berndt: Adaptive Game Scoring With Ambient Music

Published by The University of Huddersfield Press, the book is available as both a print edition (£30 from Gazelle Book Services and Amazon; currently only £26.70 from Wordery) and a free ebook download (PDF/EPUB/MOBI) from the Huddersfield University website

Fabfilter Pro-R Review

FabFilter, who by consensus can seem to do no wrong with their plugins, are now offering Pro-R, the company’s first ever reverb plugin. And it's beautiful. Bedroom Producers Blog have a review of here

Fabfilter Pro-R

TDR Nova

I love Tokyo Dawn plugins. They give quality sounds and the introductory versions are free. The new NOVA is no exception to the rule.

Nova is a parallel dynamic equalizer. Appearing in the familiar layout of a parametric equalizer, each band also includes a full featured dynamics section allowing the processor to cover an impressively wide range of applications.

A user friendly WYSIWYG drag and drop display paired with a classic 'knob' interface gives quick and smooth access to the various parameters driving NOVA’s powerful processing capabilities. With its four dynamic EQ bands and additional high-pass and low-pass filter sections, NOVA can meet the most exotic demand. Intuitive equal loudness functions help finding the optimal setting without getting distracted by loudness differences.

In practice, the processor covers a whole bucket of tasks:

• Parametric equalization

• Dynamic equalization

• Frequency selective compression/expansion

• Multi-band compression/expansion

• Wideband compression

Of course NOVA features all helpers and workflow enhancements you've come to expect in a TDR plugin: A preset manager, undo/redo, A/B, detailed documentation, copy & paste, and much more.

You can get your hands on Nova here