Substrate

Access your Mac's audio devices, control per-app audio, and much more, all from the menu bar.

Just as I’m imagining their environment, their clothes, their gestures, they’re imagining me. We’re making a cocoon where only the two of us live.

AirPods foster a different approach to detachment: Rather than mute the surrounding world altogether, they visually signal the wearer’s choice to perpetually relegate the immediate environment to the background. ​ AirPods, then, express a more complete embrace of our simultaneous existence in physical and digital space, taking for granted that we’re frequently splitting our mental energy between the two. ​ AirPods have externalities — penalizing non-wearers while confining the value they generate to their individual users. ​ Once everyone has earbuds that are always in, physical proximity will no longer confer a social expectation of shared experience. ​ subordinate our in-person sociality to the privatized infrastructure of networked communication ​ Now, the kind of space that suffices instead is a pleasant backdrop for solitary device usage, a relatively blank slate that doesn’t compete with the phone’s foreground — conditions that places like Sweetgreen and Equinox supply. ​ A dominant aural information platform could have a similar effect, fostering a world where we might as well leave our headphones on because there’s nothing around us worth hearing.

The distaste for telephony is especially acute among Millennials, who have come of age in a world of AIM and texting, then gchat and iMessage, but it’s hardly limited to young people. When  asked , people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especi

Recently, I replaced the headphones I've had for a long time with some new ones. I've used Beyerdynamic DT 770 for years (now discontinued). On a...

The typical audio environment for HomePod has many challenges — echo, reverberation, and noise. Unlike Siri on iPhone, which operates close…

“I’m expecting a few days where I have to keep my eyes closed. I’d love your suggestions for audio escapism — podcasts, audiobooks, games, and other non-visual projects that don’t require intense concentration and are easy to lose yourself in.”

Kaitlin is slowly trickling out teasers for her upcoming project

I recently made a video mentioning my new mic setup and got a few questions about it. Instead of making a video that just mentions tons of links, I...