If you think of yourself as a musician, or just like making crazy sounds, the Tindie “Sound” section is a treasure trove of creative hardware to add to your setup. There you’ll find all manner (around 170 items at this writing) of electronic music devices for sound creation and manipulation.
If you’re looking for something specific, the section is further divided up into “Amplifiers,” “MIDI,” and “Synth.” As you might suspect, there are some really unique sound controllers in the MIDI section (like “ARPIE“, the MIDI arpeggiator Shane wrote about last week), and the Synth section has unique items as well ranging from less than ten dollars to hundreds of dollars.
The stompbox shown above is a guitar pedal that could be describe as an audio computer for your feet. Inside is the Teensy 3.2 and audio shield which runs a full featured audio manipulation library. You can build custom effects and pre-load them into the box — each is dialed up by tapping the buttons with your feet and the OLED screen in the center will display your current settings.
What might be fascinating to those more interested in making really high quality sound than general experimentation is the Amplifiers section. The DIY headphone amplifier kit pictured above is a great example of the kind of thing you might find there. It’s packed with carefully selected components to make your portable audio sound much better. I get the impression, however, that equipping yourself with really high-quality audio equipment is a journey that only ends when your wallet is empty. Still, it’s worth a try, right?
