music

Pete is interested in hi-res music. He wants to download FLAC music and convert it to Apple lossless. Leo says you can do that, but remember that the MAC tops out at 96 Khz, but the iPod can't play it because it's not that high, nor does it have the CPU power to process and playback hi-resolution audio. You need special hardware to play back high resolution audio. Leo says that iPods were designed for mp3s, but they can play back Apple's lossless compression at 48K x 24 bit.

Ed uses iTunes Match, has 40GB of music, and his laptop's hard drive has broken. He got a new 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display, and wants to download that music back to his SSD drive. Leo says that because Ed is an iTunes Match subscriber and has it all uploaded, he can download them.

Jay has an iPhone 5s and his new Mac doesn't recognize any photos from before he bought the 5S. Leo says that there are plenty of alternatives including Google+, Microsoft One Drive, DropBox (only 2GB), and Flickr. There's a ton of options and some are free.

Daryl also wants to know about music software and what's the best platform. Leo says that a lot of people use Macs. Logic Pro would take him to another level. Ableton's Live is great for live performances. DJs have taken to the iPad, which has a lot of apps for music. FruityLoops is a good app for DJing. There's also an option for Windows: Cakewalk.

Don has an iPhone that he's jailbroken. But he picked up a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and he wants to be able to move his music over to it. Leo says the key is whether the music is copy protected or not. If they were bought recently, then there should be no issue with copying them over.

Shane has a band called the WeeLollies and they want to do live streaming of rehearsals and concerts. How do they get started? Leo says that free services like UStream and Justin.TV, are a good place to start, as is Google Hangouts. The audio isn't particularly great, but it's a start.

Since Leo was talking about Neil Young's Pono player earlier in the show, Tom wanted to know if Leo had heard about Bob Weir's Tamalpais Research Institute, or "TRI." Bob Weir has built a beautiful state of the art streaming performance studio in Marin County in California. The Greatful Dead have always been huge supporters of high quality audio. They were notorious for having the best stage sound system anywhere. Bob is continuing the tradition by broadcasting live video and audio concerts in high quality. It's at tristudios.com.