sonar

U.S. Navy dolphins find antique torpedo

Unlike Acoustic Kitty, the U.S. military's dolphin program, active since the 1960s, has had quite a bit of success. Dolphins, you see, are capable of producing sonar, and have an aptitude for learning commands, proving to be much more useful than machines for aquatic mine detection.

"Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to man," explains Braden Duryee, operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division. "They can detect mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are acoustically difficult targets to detect."

This time, though, two of the trained bottle-nose dolphins have discovered something much more interesting than mines off the coast of Coronado, Calif: a late 19th century Howell Automobile Torpedo, the first self-propelled torpedo in the U.S. … Read more

ReelSonar Bluetooth bobber finds fish, maybe sea monsters

It seems to me the point of going fishing is to get away from the hustle and bustle and have some quiet time with yourself, a fishing rod, and an implacable expanse of water. There's never a smartphone involved in my imaginary ideal fishing experience. I'm going to have to revise my idea of a good day fishing if ReelSonar reaches its Indiegogo goal.

ReelSonar is a combination of hardware and an Android and iOS app. A Bluetooth Low Energy-equipped bobber sends sonar signals down into the water. The information, including the depth of each fish, is relayed to your smartphone.

The app also lets you map the waterbed and share the location of your fishing hot spot with your buddies, if you're the type who doesn't hoard your secret fishing areas. There's even a bite alarm, which should wake you up if you snooze off with the bobber out on the water.… Read more

Dolphin, Dragon maker partner for Sonar on iPhone

Barely a month after the mobile browser Dolphin debuted Sonar for Android, a feature for browsing by voice command, it has introduced the feature to iPhones without the help of Siri.

Dolphin representative Darren Weiss explained that the Dolphin Sonar (download) partnership arose out of a limitation of developing for the iPhone. "Since there is no native voice API available for iOS, we decided to partner up with Nuance, leaders in the the voice-recognition space." Nuance is best-known for making Dragon Dictate, a PC-based speech recognition program. It also now owns several Android apps including Vlingo and Swype, … Read more

Sonar brings iOS style social discovery to Android

Sonar is riding a wave of social discovery apps that includes Banjo, Glancee and Highlight, but it isn't a newcomer. The New York based startup has made the rounds on iOS for the better part of a year, but today it's available in beta on Android to a handful of lucky readers.

Like others in the field, Sonar enables you to make meaningful connections with people around you -- people you wouldn't otherwise have known. It works by aggregating geolocation data across social networks and then creating relational correlations among individuals based on shared connections. So if … Read more

Dolphin develops Sonar to talk to your browser

Dolphin Sonar is a new built-in feature for the Dolphin Browser (download) that lets you control the browser by voice, the company announced yesterday. The feature is a first for mobile browsers.

Currently available only in the Android version of the browser, Sonar can be used to search the Web, open or close tabs, and perform basic page navigation. Dolphin's head of marketing, Edith Yeung, says that the company has been working on it for more than half a year. "What we want is for people to forget about typing," she said in an interview at CNET'… Read more

Startup Banjo looks to help you connect with folks in real world

Imagine this scenario: You're on a business trip in another city, where you just wrapped up your last meeting of the day in a coffee shop. Since you're a proper digital nomad, you fire off a tweet announcing that you're done for the day and ready to grab a drink.

Meanwhile, an old friend from college updates his Facebook status to say he's just arrived at a bar (a few blocks away) where he's meeting friends. Like your tweet, his status is embedded with a geographic tag (geotag), signaling the location of the message. If … Read more

Track your submissions with Sonar

Anyone trying to seriously make it as a writer knows that the only way to get published is to submit your work--usually over and over again. Sonar is an easy-to-use program that lets you track submissions and responses, and we think it's an invaluable tool if you send a lot of work out and have trouble keeping up with the who, what, where, and when of the process.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive, and it took us no time at all to figure it out. Users first add works to the database; there are fields for … Read more

Which mini-speaker annoys the neighbors most?

The mission is simple: gather three brands of popular mini-speakers and see which is powerful enough to annoy a grumpy building superintendent.

The briefing: I reside in a quiet, courtyard complex in Studio City, Calif. On most Sundays, the residents gather around the pool for a casual barbecue. Such an event recently presented the perfect opportunity to test three mini-speakers: an X-mini Capsule Speaker from ThinkGeek, a Soundmatters foxL Bluetooth Soundbar, and a Cyber Snipa Sonar Portable Mini Speaker to see which could produce enough quality sound to prod our cranky 60-plus-year-old supe to leave his recliner and tell us to knock off the hubbub. Join us, won't you?

To expedite the outstandingly unscientific experiment, I chose Dubstep, which is electronica in the extreme. In fairness, some wouldn't call it music as much as well-organized static. When the uninitiated listen to Dubstep, they're often uncertain if the CD might be skipping. As a bleeding goat will draw the hungry, Dubstep pouring from my iPhone will attract the crotchety handyman if we can get the racket loud enough. … Read more

The Audiophillie Music Award winners write, perform, and record their tunes

Move over "American Idol," the Audiophillie Music Awards for Excellence in Recorded Sound contest winners are way more talented. They don't just sing--they play instruments, write, and record their own tunes.

Zachary LeFeber's band Magnet South entered "Move On," and I'm glad they did. Zach's the drummer and a very talented audio engineer. A nice fella by the name of Matthew Winner handled vocals and guitar. Magnet South has a blog, where you can see how the music takes shape. The band has been together for two and a half years, but they have real jobs so they haven't played around all that much. Zach recorded "Move On" in his house, using a Sonar digital workstation. He considers himself something of an audiophile, so I wasn't surprised to hear he's getting into vinyl.

Alan Carter wasn't planning on entering the contest, but he had just bought a new Woodpecker ribbon microphone and wanted to record something to try it out. He used the new mic to record everything but the lead vocal and guitar on "Georgia," which was written and sung by Phil Palma. Alan's studio partner Jake played electric guitar; Phil was on acoustic guitar; and Alan played bass.

Alan works for Sweetwater Sound and sells equipment to recording studios,--no wonder "Georgia" sounds so fine. The song was recorded to half-inch analog tape, and, obviously, I didn't know that when I first picked it as a winner. Alan feels that even the best digital recordings never sound as sweet as analog. That's not to say he avoids digital completely--"Georgia" was digitally mixed in Pro Tools, before bouncing it back to analog tape. He concedes there's a lot that you can't do in analog, so he takes a hybrid approach.… Read more

Windows 7 improvements to help audio recording

Most of the audio engineers I've met--both home and professional--are Mac people, and Avid's ProTools running on a Mac is often cited as the industry standard. But there are Windows loyalists out there.

In late 2007 I took an introductory audio production class taught by David Huber (who wrote one of the bibles on the subject, "Modern Recording Techniques") and Scott Colburn (who has produced albums by The Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, and Sun City Girls, among many others). Both of them used Nuendo from Steinberg (which is basically the upmarket version of Cubase) as their … Read more