It has been two months since I first complained here that iTunes 7 wouldn‘t let you view or delete podcasts located on your first-, second- or third-generation iPod. Since then, Apple has done nothing to remedy the problem, and I‘ve been unable to find any third-party utilities that would do the trick.

In “Trouble in Paradise, Part 1,” I suggested that the only obvious solutions were to reformat your iPod–which I was unwilling to do–or remove iTunes 7 from your computer and reinstall iTunes 6. Weary of waiting for another solution, I decided this morning that the time had come to revert to iTunes 6. As I soon discovered, though, deleting iTunes 7 was easier said than done.

Because Apple doesn‘t provide a utility for removing iTunes 7 from your Mac, you need to manually:

1) Delete iTunes from /Applications.

2) Delete iTunes.pkg, iTunesX.pkg, and iTunesPhoneDriver.pkg from /Library/Receipts.

3) Delete com.apple.iTunes.plist from /Users/[name]/Library/Preferences.

4) Move your iTunes folder from /Users/[name]/Music to another location.

5) Restart your Mac and empty the Trash.

6) Download iTunes 6.0.5 installer from Apple and run the installation.

If you try to install iTunes 6 without taking the prior steps, when you reach the installer‘s Easy Install step, it will say, “You cannot continue. There is nothing to install.” If you choose Customize, all the installation options will be grayed out, and the only action displayed will be Skip.

After iTunes 6 is installed:

7) Run iTunes and connect your iPod to view its contents. (Don‘t worry that iTunes will indicate there‘s no music on your computer‘s hard disk.)
Delete the podcasts from your iPod‘s Music Library (finally!).

9) Quit iTunes and update iTunes to version 7.

10) Replace your iTunes folder back into /Users/[name]/Music.

If you replace your original iTunes folder before you update to iTunes 7, iTunes 6 will say, “The file ‘iTunes Library‘ cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes.” If you don‘t replace it after the update, iTunes will lose track of your music library‘s contents, and rebuilding it could take a very long time.

If someone (preferably Apple) comes up with a more elegant solution, I‘ll be grateful. In the meantime, I‘m unlikely to listen to podcasts on my iPod again, knowing how difficult it will be to remove them. That‘s a real same, because I really preferred listening to podcasts on my iPod to listening to them on my Mac.

As I write this, it‘s late Thursday night, and soon it will be Thursday morning. I‘m on a plane over the Pacific Ocean, fast approaching the International Date Line, typing away on my notebook computer and probably keeping the Brazilian turn-signal salesman sitting beside me awake. My 70-hour visit to Japan has been glorious and all too brief, but I look forward to returning home. I‘ll arrive in Charlotte on Thursday afternoon, of course.

Wednesday was the second and final full day that Korg hosted an international group of MI-industry journalists and distributors, many (including yours truly) visiting Japan for the first time. Japanese companies have a reputation for being very private about how they run their businesses, and Korg has demonstrated genuine corporate bravery by breaking the mold and letting so many outsiders have a protracted peak behind the curtain. I had a chance to bond with product reviewers and editors from the U.K., Italy, China, Australia, and several other countries I can‘t remember at the moment (though I‘ve asked Korg to send me a list). The other two U.S. magazine editors were my friends Ernie Rideout from Keyboard and Craig Anderton from EQ, Harmony Central, et al. The entire group stayed at the Century Hyatt Tokyo, a hotel I can easily recommend if you ever find yourself in the Shinjuku district and in need of comfortable lodging.

After breakfast at the hotel, the group gathered for our second bus ride to Korg HQ. Once back in the presentation room surrounded by top-secret gear, we spent the morning asking questions and getting answers about the wealth of new products Korg will publicly unveil on January 18. Until then, however, we are all sworn to secrecy. Like the previous day, Jerry Kovarsky and John McCubbery led the session (after all, it was those two guys who dreamed up and planned this mass invasion). The only two products I can tell you about right now are the MR-1 and MR-100 1-Bit Mobile Recorders, which made their debut at the AES show in October. The MR-1 has just begun production and is expected to be available in the U.S. in February, with the MR-100 following soon thereafter. I suppose I could also tell you that I wanted to own literally every new product I saw.

Korg‘s original plan was to set up interviews with selected employees immediately after the Q&A. I expected that would be my best opportunity to record conversations I could post on emusician.com as podcasts. I was hoping to interview some instrument-design engineers and members of Korg‘s international synth-voicing team about the product-development cycle–for example, exactly what are the stages leading to a new synthesizer‘s introduction? (And lest you think I‘m hinting that one new product is a synth, I planned the questions before I arrived in Tokyo, and I had no idea what I was going to see.) I had all my questions ready, and I also wanted to learn more about 1-bit recording. Unfortunately, the Q&A ran long, and Korg had planned too many activities to fit into a single day. As soon as the Q&A was over, it was time to get back on the bus and begin a guided tour of Tokyo. Mr. Katoh, the founder of Korg and our illustrious host, joined us on the bus for the remainder of the day.

Our first stop was a lunchtime banquet at an American-themed restaurant serving Japanese food and called, oddly enough, Christmas. Afterwards, we journeyed across town to visit an ancient Buddhist temple called Senso-ji. During the trip, our tour guide pointed out various Tokyo landmarks such as the full-size Japanese version of the Eiffel Tower called Tokyo Tower. And even though the area leading up to the Buddhist temple was full of small shops selling tourist trinkets, the temple itself was pretty cool and I enjoyed taking photos. It was raining and beginning to get dark by the time we reached our next destination, a sprawling and brightly lit shopping district called Electric City. It was just how I‘d always pictured downtown Tokyo from what I‘d seen in movies, like something from Bladerunner but all shiny and new. Every kind of consumer electronics, software, music, and movies were being sold. Our tour guide gave the group an hour to go exploring on our own. I ended up in a store selling new and used MIDI gear, but nothing tempted me to take it home.

I hadn‘t even finished digesting my lunch when it was time for dinner, the grandest feast of all. Words could barely describe such a cross-cultural culinary experience; suffice it to say that two master chefs were also the entertainment and the servers, thanks in part to their loud shouting and long paddles on which they could balance food and drinks from seven or eight feet away (if anyone is interested, let me know and I‘ll upload some photos and video clips that captured the moment). I‘ll say one thing about the Japanese: they sure know to throw a party and make their guests feel welcome. Many thanks to Korg for showing us all a very good time and patiently answering all our questions about products past, present, and future.

Oh, and about all those new products I can‘t tell you about? Let’s just say that next month’s NAMM show will be particularly exciting for Korg and its customers. I promise to spill the beans about everything on January 18, so stay tuned and don‘t forget to climb back on The Bus.

I‘m writing this from Japan, where 14 journalists and an equal number of musical-instrument distributors from around the world have gathered at the invitation of Korg. We spent yesterday visiting Korg‘s impressive new facility in the outskirts of Tokyo. After a short bus ride and a brief tour of the building (the lower floor of which contains a museum of Korg instruments from the annals of history), we settled down to a full day of new-product presentations, directed by Korg USA‘s Jerry Kovarsky and Korg International‘s John McCubbery. Also taking part in the presentation were Korg USA‘s Jack Hotop, along with additional members of Korg‘s international sound-design team and several in-house developers from Korg Japan. This is the first time Korg has staged an event like this, and it‘s going very well.

I‘m pretty excited about most of these new products, and I‘d like to share news of them with you, but I‘m sworn to secrecy until they are introduced at January‘s NAMM show. Today the journalists will have a chance to do a question-and-answer session with Korg employees. I‘ll be flying back home to Charlotte on Thursday, and you can expect to read (and hear, and see) some of the results of today‘s sessions after I‘ve returned. In the meantime, Korg has us on a tight schedule, so I‘d better be going now.

It‘s a problem that that might affect a few thousand EM readers, concerning a consumer product that no longer works as it should. I‘m talking about a device that many musicians own and love, the Apple iPod, or more specifically, the current software that serves as its computer interface, iTunes 7. If you own an older iPod and you download or subscribe to podcasts, listen up.

As far as I‘ve been able to determine, it’s impossible to view or delete podcasts on your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation iPod using iTunes 7. I thought Apple would certainly address the problem with last week‘s iTunes 7.0.2 update, but no dice. Podcasts simply don’t appear in iTunes when you view your iPod’s Music Library; they’re invisible. You can click on the Podcasts Library to view and delete podcasts that reside on your computer, and you can copy them to your iPod, but you can’t view or delete the Podcasts Library that resides on your iPod unless you have a more recent model.

That means there are only two ways to delete a podcast from your 1G, 2G, or 3G iPod. One is to reformat your iPod, which is unacceptable unless you have a lot of extra time on your hands. The other is to remove iTunes 7 from your computer and reinstall iTunes 6. But what if you like all the new features that were introduced in iTunes 7? Apparently, you‘re out of luck.

Hey, Apple! Early iPod adopters deserve support, too. It‘s been almost two months since iTunes 7 appeared. Could you please hurry up and fix this problem?

Hello, and welcome to the first installment of my corner of the Bus. I‘d like to see this blog become a place to discuss advances in audio technology, to share tips for using the technology that‘s available, and to make comments about what technology works and what technology doesn‘t (and recommendations regarding what can be done about it). Considering that EM authors often get the scoop on new products before our readers do, it will also be a place for news about hardware and software that might not be on your radar.

Let‘s begin with a tip for Mac users. Anyone who knows me knows that although I use Windows XP when no alternative is available (for example, when I want to run Sony Cinescore or Cakewalk Z3TA+), I am an enthusiastic Mac user and have been since I bought my first Macintosh (the original 128K model) a few weeks after its introduction in 1984.

Computer operating systems do so much in 2006, you might not realize your OS has certain capabilities unless someone points it out. Did you know that Mac OS X can handle as many simultaneous audio channels as you have audio interfaces to provide them? Using Core Audio‘s capability to recognize Aggregate Audio Devices, your Mac will work with two or more audio interfaces as if they were a single device.

If you have more than one audio interface and want to combine their inputs and outputs, begin by installing any appropriate drivers and either connecting or installing the interfaces (if they are class-compliant, no drivers will be necessary). Power them up and then open the application Audio MIDI Setup. Click on the Audio Devices tab and pull down the Properties menu for each interface to specify its Audio Input and Audio Output Format (the sampling rate and bit depth). If you‘re going to use more than one device, make sure they have the same bit depth and sampling rate.

Now select Open Aggregate Device Editor from the Audio menu. When you click on the Add (+) button, you‘ll see a list of available audio devices. (Note that one of the listed devices is Built-in Audio, which means that you can add your Mac‘s built-in S/PDIF ports to the mix, if it has them.) Click on the checkboxes next to the devices you want to include, and select one as the master clock source (note that all interfaces must have a selectable clock source). If you hear anything that might indicate clocking problems, you can click on the Resample checkbox; otherwise, leave it alone. In the System Settings near the top of the window, specify your new Aggregate Device as your Default Input and Default Input, and finally, close Audio MIDI Setup. Open your multitrack audio program and specify the Aggregate Device as your audio system, if necessary. When you go to assign audio channels, you‘ll see that you have more choices than you did before.