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Wheels of Steel; Epic demo of rich Web turn table (wheelsofsteel.net)

62 points by dalmaer ↗ HN
Scott Schiller of Flickr created SoundManager, and he has an epic new demo of a rich turntable system using modern audio techniques and CSS/JS too.<p>His walk through article is fantastic:<p>http://www.schillmania.com/content/entries/2011/wheels-of-steel/

12 comments

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mdonahoe
is there a way to scratch the records? thats what i kept trying to do when i saw the turntable.
blutonium
Yeah, there's a subtle link just under the turntable before the tracks to load.
schill
Sorry it isn't more clear - by default, you get "non-scratch mode" until it's determined your GPU (hardware accel in browser) + CPU can handle the extra load. Once you opt in, localstorage remembers that preference until you opt out.

You can force scatch mode via http://wheelsofsteel.net/?scratch=1 - but without hardware accel (hardware + OS + driver support, I recommend Safari 5 or Chrome 12), rendering falls back on CPU use which will skyrocket and that will kill the audio processing bits.

I wrote a small book on the whole process (and performance caveats) on my main site as someone linked below. Numerous pics + videos too. ;)

endgame
Well, it's kinda neat, but epic? No.
aashay
...why not? There's no Flash. I'd say that's pretty epic.
premchai21
Except for the Flash that's necessary in the background for the more advanced audio modes.
endgame
Because that sort of linguistic inflation is going to leave you at a loss for words when you encounter something that's ACTUALLY epic.
forkqueue
Pretty cool, but it needs the ability to pitch up/down to be useful.
jasonkester
I gave up after a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to load a track into the righthand turntable. Was also a bit disappointed that it wouldn't let me manually move the playhead to run the track back & forth. Unless I'm missing something, it's essentially just a media player with a funky interface.

BUT, I voted this up solely for the fact that this turned me on to the new Beastie Boys album, which I wouldn't otherwise have know was out. That's my afternoon ruined in a good way. Observe:

http://soundcloud.com/beastieboys/lee-majors-come-again/