Call me a curmudgeon if you must, but I am wary of any app that replicates a physical object with its UI. Isn't a large part of the power of computing come from the fact that programmers can transcend the limitations of the real world and offer up better ways of doing things?

In this frame of mind I started looking at TapeDeck, a new $25 Leopard only recording app from SuperMegaUltraGroovy and Toastycode. As the name suggests it looks like a cassette recorder of old, but it does offer up some improvements. Each recording is saved on a new 'tape' automatically, so you never have to record over a previous file (TapeDeck records audio in the AAC format, so the files are small, but you can make them even smaller by lowering the recording quality). It also allows you to annotate your tapes and then search your recording library using that information, and you can send your audio to iTunes if you prefer to organize your files that way.

The real question is: does the UI help or hinder TapeDeck? I'll have to spend more time using TapeDeck to fairly answer that, but at first blush this app is great fun to use (especially if you remember using tape recorders like these).

Aaron Besson of MyTriniPhone posted this morning about a new iPhone video recorder. Unlike previous entries into this realm, this updated version from DreamCatcher records both sound and video.

I download a copy and gave it a try. The interface is a little on the prototype side but it recorded without a hitch. I was able to copy the resulting mp4 video onto my Mac and play it back. It was grainy (as expected, given the low quality of the iPhone camera) but the audio was clear. Playback on the iPhone itself simply did not work for me.

Apparently this code is based on ffmpeg and there's a lively little discussion about this over at the Hackint0sh forums, if you care to check that out. You must pay to register if you'd like to record more than 30 seconds at a time or if you simply like the program and want to support the developer. Deets are in the program. Just tap Settings > About > Buynow.

We here at TUAW have expressed our love of VisualHub, Techspansion's great video encoding app, time and again. But what if those crazy folks at Techspansion decided to take the video part out of VisualHub? The resulting app would be very much like AudialHub, an audio converter that takes many UI and functionality cues from VisualHub.

Read on for our full review.

Update: I mistakenly quoted the special VisualHub cross-upgrade promotional price as the full price for AudialHub. This error has been corrected.

This was going to happen eventually. Altec Lansing has produced the first fully iPhone-compatible speaker docking system. The descriptively named t612 features 60 Watts of power RMS (120 Watts Peak), and connects to your iPhone's dock port.

There are four speakers, enhanced bass, a wireless remote and, best of all, it's immune to that annoying GSM interference noise while the iPhone is docked and not in Airplane Mode.

All this convenience comes at a price -- $199.95US, to be exact. At the time of this posting, no shipping information was available.

We use Skype for the TUAW Talkcast and recently, our host and podcasting guru (OK, not guru, but he is the host and we like him), Michael Rose, has been looking at possibly using Ecamm's Call Recorder 2 plugin as an option for recording our weekly talkcasts. I actually have used it to record both audio and video chat for the Squadcast and really think that it is a fantastic, fantastic add-on.

For anyone unfamiliar, Call Recorder is a great little tool that adds a recording window to Skype. This makes it easy to record incoming and outgoing calls (audio and video). The files are saved in the QuickTime format and they can be converted to MP3 or split into separate tracks.

With the release of the latest version of Skype for the Mac, Ecamm has updated Call Recorder as well. In addition to the latest Skype compatibility, Call Recorder 2.3 also includes a new two-track video recording option (so that you can have a separate stream from each side of the conversation) and enhanced video recording quality.

Call Recorder 2 is $14.95 (for $7 more, you can also get Conference Recorder, which adds the same functionality to iChat, and unlike the built in iChat recorder, doesn't require both users to have Leopard) and a free demo is available if you want to try out the tool.

If you want a simple, hassle free way to record Skype conversations, give Call Recorder a shot!

One of my favorite Apple products ever has got to be the Aiport Express. I know it isn't sexy, but AirTunes (that's what Apple calls the technology that lets you stream your music from iTunes to a stereo connected to an Airport Express) is one of the best tech inventions ever. AirTunes, despite my unholy love for it, has some drawbacks: it only works in iTunes, and it only works for audio files.

Enter Airfoil, which just hit version 3. Airfoil allows you to stream audio from any program on your Mac to an Airport Express (or multiple Airport Expresses) and keep all those streams in sync. That's not all, version 3 lets you stream audio from one Mac to another Mac that is running Airfoil Speakers (a mini app that comes with Airfoil), one upping Apple's solution. Airfoil also includes a new video player that allows you to stream audio from most video formats to Airport Expresses (or other Macs) which will make watching some of those HD trailers a much better experience.

Airfoil 3 costs $25, but is a $10 upgrade for all Airfoil 2 users (and if you bought Airfoil after July 16th, 2007 you get a free upgrade).

AudioFinder fits a niche that I admittedly don't have a lot of experience in, but I just gave version 4.7 a test run and I'm impressed. OK, so it got me with its not-bad looks to start with, which gave it a leg up on most of the other prosumer-level audio asset managers I've played with. But it quickly lived up to its moniker with Finder-like ease-of-use and powerful features made simple.

I loved that it integrated completely with Finder, and that it provided an interface for viewing audio that was as powerful as anything I've seen for graphics previews. I haven't seen any app at any price do this as simply. A keyboard in the main window lets you pitch sounds in realtime, as well as run them through AudioUnits. It essentially has a full editor built into the "Finder" panel that is powerful without being domineering.

There is a free level (sound browsing only) available if you request an activation code. The list price for full activation is $69.95 and the demo of 4.7 is available for download. At the time of this writing the website still says the download is version 4.6.3, but it's not. I checked, just for you.

Over at the iPod touch fans forum, user Marian reports that he's managed to confirm that the iPod touch audio input pins are active. He modded an old docking cable, connecting the line-in pins to an audio source. He then used my voice recording app to capture the signal. You can see pictures of his setup on his personal blog.

I'd really appreciate it if any of you own an iPod mike (iTalk, MicroMemo, whatever) could test it with VoiceNotes on a touch and see whether these pre-built solutions are also compatible.

Update:Marian writes that he's recorded from audio line in. You can find a sample he recorded here. He's now working on attaching a mike. Unfortunately, since I exclusively record using the voice-optimized AMR codec, the quality is just so-so.

Reader Sebastiaan sends word that Fuzzmeasure Pro 3 is out (and that he designed the icon for it-- very nice). Released on the three-year anniversary of the first version's release, the update has a host of new features, including integration with Leopard's Core Audio, the sweet audio graphs that the app is known for, and even Quicklook and Safari plugins. It's been used to set up concert systems for "...Linkin Park and other big name bands around the world." Cool!

As you may have guessed from reading "Core Audio" and "Quicklook", Fuzzmeasure Pro 3 is Leopard-only (and loving it). You can download it (and eventually buy it for $150US) over on SuperMegaUltraGroovy's website.

We've been eagerly awaiting WireTap Studio, and it has arrived -- available for download and purchase today from the fine folk at Ambrosia. Like Rogue Amoeba's venerable Audio Hijack Pro (friend to podcasters everywhere & used in the production of the TUAW talkcast) and the older Ambrosia versions of WireTap and WireTap Pro, WTS will allow you to record the audio output of any application, line-in or microphone source on your Mac. The new app goes beyond AHP, however, in providing a full 'lossless master' editing environment to allow your audio to shine. You can roll back to your original source at any time, and even hear 'live previews' of your compression settings before putting the squeeze to your files.

A full WTS license is $69 for Tiger or Leopard (universal binary), and WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro users can up/cross-grade for $30. I'm definitely going to check it out, and if you do the same, please let us know what you think.

You never know when instant karma is gonna getcha. Take my playaudio application. Yesterday, I was chatting with some developer buddies about maybe putting together an Internet radio application and discussing the fact that the Celestial iPhone framework is essentially QuickTime repackaged. While talking, I decided to try using my existing playaudio app with a URL rather than a local audio file. So I typed the following at the iPhone command line:

playaudio http://steiner.math.nthu.edu.tw/ne01/tjy/music/06.I%20Just%20Called%20To%20Say%20I%20Love%20You.mp3

And...it worked. Just like that, the instrumental-only cover began to play back through my iPhone speakers. Apparently, Apple has merged the concept of "local file" and "URL" a lot more closely than I'd thought. I haven't had any luck connecting to .pls or any other live radio feed but if you'd like to play back Internet-based files, playaudio works just fine.

Yet another minor Apple product announcement that made it under our radar was a new Jam Pack for GarageBand: Voices. No, it isn't samples of Britney Spears, John Mayer and Adam Duritz - it's a collection of over 1,500 new instruments that fall under the categories of Drum and Percussion Instruments, Choral Ensembles, and Soloists. The focus, of course, is on filling up your tool belt with samples of professional instrumental soloists and choirs covering a wide variety of genres and styles.

If you want more details on the pack, iCompositions has rummaged through and detailed exactly what you get in this new Jam Pack. Strangely, you get quite a bit more than what Apple advertises - the pack actually contains 1701 loops - and it takes up nearly half the specified hard drive space as well; instead of taking up 3 GB, all those loops only took over a mere 1.7 GB.

As with most other Jam Packs, this new Voices pack is available in the Apple Store for the standard Jam Pack price of $99.00.

As I understand it, there are a lot of new DAPs and music-enabled mobile phones that support A2DP - a technology that allows devices to transmit stereo audio to Bluetooth headphones. It's all the rage with the kids these days, and many fans of cutting cables wherever possible were a bit disappointed when the A2DP acronym didn't make the iPhone's feature list. Thanks to a tip from TUAW reader Earle Davies though, the iPhone apparently does seem to support sending any audio - including music and the audio tracks from your videos - to a Bluetooth headset that isn't even enabled with A2DP - but it aint pretty.

To tinker with this, you of course need to have a Bluetooth headset paired with your iPhone. I personally have an older HS-850, one of the first Motorola models with a microphone that flipped open to toggle the headset on and off. After you've switched your headset on and it's shaken hands with your iPhone, go into the Visual Voicemail screen and tap the Audio button in the upper right (which is otherwise a Speaker button when your headset isn't on and communicating with your phone). You'll receive an audio selection dialog much like the in-call dialog that allows you to chose where to send the iPhone's audio. As you might guess, select the Headset option, then switch over to the iPod and begin playing music or a video. This, unfortunately, is why I had to include 'kinda' in this post's headline - while the iPhone sends audio to both Earle's Motorola H700 headset and my HS-850, it still plays audio though the iPhone's speakers as well. It's a bizarre quirk I can't seem to figure out how to stop, which makes me think this is either an unfinished feature or, perhaps more likely, simply a side effect of some of the iPhone's functionality.

Whether you can use this trick to get the iPhone to send stereo audio to a true set of Bluetooth headphones I couldn't tell you, because I own no such headphones. If you readers tinker with this more and help uncover more of what's going on here, please sound off in the comments.

It's been a while since we've written about Übercaster, the all-in-one tool for recording, editing and publishing podcasts, but that doesn't mean its developer, Eberhard Rensch, hasn't been hard at work on it. Through updates over the last couple of months, Übercaster v1.1.5 has gained a ton of handy new features and polish, such as:

• Delete and Close Gap: Instantly re-join two pieces of a track after cutting out a portion of the middle. A big time saver when editing out the false starts and other mistakes.
• Reset Playhead on Stop: An option to automatically return the playhead to its original starting point. Another huge timesaver when reviewing a specific clip.
• Split All Tracks: Splits every track at the playhead, regardless of which tracks are selection.
• New PleasantConnect version: An update to the Mac OS X kernel extension included with Übercaster that allows for pulling off tricks like recording Skype conversations in separate tracks, with you on one and any caller(s) on another.
• New progress bar in Dock icon: This is great for a real-time yet unobtrusive display of a podcast's upload progress.
• Sparkle integration for automatic updates: Andy Matuschak's popular Sparkle framework has made to Übercaster, providing wonderful automatic software updates that so many apps are enjoying.

This isn't all though; there are far more new features and bug fixes listed in just the last two updates than I can fit in this post, so check out the Übercaster changelog or grab the latest version yourself. If that updated kernel extension can fix my problems and allow me to record multi-track Skype conversations, Rensch will certainly be seeing a $79.95 purchase from me.

Rogue Amoeba, purveyors of all sorts of wonderful audio software, have been releasing details on pending updates for two of their most popular products: Airfoil and Audio Hijack Pro. Both upgrades seem like they're coming sometime soon, with Audio Hijack Pro 3 (a tool allowing you to record any audio from your Mac) sounding like it could land sooner rather than later. Details and screenshots (like the one above) of AHP3 are being posted to this forum thread, including thoughts on whether they'll charge an upgrade fee (though prices for new licenses should remain at $32). If Rogue Amoeba wants my two cents (which they admittedly didn't request), I'm all for developers, especially indies, charging upgrade fees for major point releases. It sure is nice when they don't, but I completely understand that underneath all that code and slick features there's a human being that's just trying to survive (and possibly provide) like the rest of us.