Awesome Sound

Led by artist Tim Wakefield, Soundwaves Art Foundation creates dynamic prints based on audio waveforms from popular music. The non-profit collaborates with musicians to sign the works, then donates 100% of the profits to charities supporting refugee rights, social justice, music education, and COVID relief worldwide.

For as groundbreaking as the CGI animated visuals were in the original Toy Story, Gary Rydstrom’s sound design was every bit as important in conveying the stories of Woody, Buzz, and company. The Royal Ocean Film Society invites us to listen to some of the sound effects that helped bring the Toy Story universe to life.

This unique MIDI keyboard uses a matrix of 280 velocity-sensitive hexagonal keys to provide musicians with an impressive amount of control over sounds. Each button is programmable, both in terms of the sound and expressions it controls, as well as its color. It also has 10 buttons for quickly switching between presets.

Magnetic Games loves to build complex sculptures out of magnetic spheres and rods. Not only are these fun to look at, but the sound they make when they click together is quite satisfying. It’s just as entertaining to watch them crumble, and the noises are equally ASMR, so put on your headphones and enjoy.

Sound doesn’t travel all that far in the air or on the surface of the Earth. So how is it possible the sound of explosives detonated off the coast of Australia traveled half-way around the globe to be heard in Bermuda? MinuteEarth dives into the physics that allow sound to travel so much further at the bottom of the ocean.

Next time you’re throwing a party, kick out the biggest and best audio with JBL’s oversize Bluetooth sound system. It cranks out a massive wall of sound via its two 6.5″ woofers and three 2.25″ tweeters, and can run for up to 18 hours on battery. It’s also got mic and guitar inputs, and you can pair two together for true wireless stereo.

Sander Joon’s cacophonous animated short film is best experienced with headphones or nice loud speakers. As its vignettes play out, each object on screen makes a familiar, but very different sound than you’d expect it to make. It turns out that mushrooms are especially noisy little dudes.

While some of us are quite content to work from home, we’re sure many of you miss being in the office with your friends and colleagues. To help satisfy that longing, Kids Creative Agency put together I Miss the Office, an online plaything which emulates the ambient sounds you might hear in an office with up to 10 co-workers.

We’ve seen other footage of empty cities, but Dayne Hudson’s short film takes a different approach, focusing not just on the stark visuals, but capturing the eerily quiet audio around Sydney, Australia during the 2020 pandemic. We’d be remiss not to mention sound designer and editor Mark Parry for his work on the piece.

Procnias albus – aka the white bellbird – has a call that sounds more like a fire alarm than something that should come out if its beak. The dove-sized bird can belt out a noise that registers up to 124.5 decibels. That’s nine decibels louder than the previous record holder, the screaming piha, and roughly as loud as a pile driver.

Ever wonder what the quietest and loudest sounds in the universe might be? With the help of their imaginary robot Noisy, and Microsoft’s anechoic chamber, Bright Side digs into this question, and some of the science behind the way sounds travel and how our hearing works.

In a just barely Halloween-themed episode, musical expert 12tone walks us through the complexities of distortion, and what it is about such sounds that make them more creepy and off-putting than others – sort of like the way he draws from right to left across the page.

Anker teamed up with Amazon to create a 2.1 channel soundbar that has Fire TV and Alexa technology built in. It supports full 4K UHD content with Dolby Vision and HDR10+, while it cranks out 100 watts of sound and has built-in dual subwoofers for cinematic sound. Drops 11/21/19.

THX has taken wraps off an all-new version of its iconic “Deep Note” trailer, created by the team at American Meme. It’s packed with vibrant CG animations, and a wonderful array of dynamic, spatial sounds to put any audio system through its paces. Sounds especially great on headphones. Go behind the scenes with its creators here.

Kick out the jams at your next party with Sony’s jumbo-size party speaker. It has a colorful 360º party light, Bluetooth support, a CD player, gesture-based DJ controls, karaoke mode, microphone and guitar inputs, and more. You can even chain multiple devices together for bigger spaces, and it has wheels for transport.

The THX sound, the Mac and Windows startup tones, the Nokia ringtone, and the Intel Inside music are all immediately recognizable. Two sound experts explain the psychology and conceptual approach behind such memorable auditory cues, and why they’re so important to brands.

These days, you can’t go more than a few hours without encountering some gadget with a human-sounding voice. The Science Elf provides a concise look at the history of machine-made speech, from early mechanical devices through modern voice assistants like Siri and Alexa.

Artblox can take the waveform from a musical passage, words, or any other short sound, and etch it onto a block of clear acrylic. They can be personalized with your choice of color scheme, and an optional QR code which lets you play back the recorded sound via a mobile device.

Musician Steve “SamuraiGuitarist” Onotera presents a hyperbolic short film about an itch he’s been wanting to scratch – stringing together all 37 of his stomp boxes, to hear what it sounds like when he routes his guitar through them all. That Miku stomp box is hilarious.

During most of his concerts, musician Rob Scallon performs Rain, a tune that relies heavily on a delay effect pedal. But he recently decided to see if he could replicate the sound through a combination of room acoustics and enlisting the help of two other guitar players.

This electromechanical sound maker uses moving turntable arms to select and play grooves carved into an enormous cylinder. The positions of the arms and sounds played correspond to the positions of 27,000 pieces of space junk drifting about over our heads.

Do you fart $100 bills and dig slow jams? Grab the BeoLab 50 Speakers ASAP, then. The deluxe speaker delivers 2100w via seven drivers and seven 300w amps, and Active Room Compensation measures room acoustics and creates custom filters for it. (Thanks Todd!)

Like all Bose SoundLink speakers, the Micro is exceptionally loud and clear for its size. It also has a flexible strap and a durable silicone rubber case. It’s water-resistant up to 3.3ft and lasts up to 6h per charge. The biggest downside? No 3.5mm input.

Dr. T ASMR sends a pleasant tingle down our spines as he opens up a LEGO Star Wars kit and makes as many crinkly, crunchy, tappy, and whispery noises as possible. As with all ASMR videos, it’s best enjoyed with headphones on.

Film Radar explores how effective sound design, sound editing, foley work, and sound effects serve to elevate scenes to a level of intensity and immersion that even the best visuals alone could never achieve on their own.

You’ll want to put your headphones on and go full-screen to get the most out of Stereokroma’s hypnotic video, featuring super crisp macro photography of frozen fruits and veggies being thawed, accompanied by appropriate, if not exactly realistic ASMR sound effects.