If you like your sounds distorted, degraded and loaded with lo-fi character, then the humble bitcrusher is your friend.

By reducing the bit depth and sample rate of a signal, this audio effect produces crunchy textures, gritty timbres and artifacts reminiscent of vintage digital gear: it’s a powerful tool for creative sound design, capable of achieving everything from subtle fuzz to total sonic destruction.

Many DAWs have a stock bitcrusher onboard, like Ableton Live’s Redux or Logic Pro’s Bitcrusher, but these tend to be on the simpler side. Bit Layer, a new plugin from RiverFlux Audio, takes things to a different level, allowing you to precisely target your digital degradation with a multiband architecture, mid/side routing and tonal/transient processing. This adds up to more versatility than many paid-for bitcrusher plugins, and it’s totally free.

Bit Layer can dial in up to eight independent layers of processing, each with dedicated controls for bit depth, sample rate and jitter (all three can be reordered in the signal path) along with mute, solo, gain and dry/wet mix.

The plugin’s multiband functionality makes it possible to apply lo-fi texture in varying degrees and styles across the frequency spectrum, and this can be seriously useful for surgical sound design. You could crunch up the hi-hats in a drum loop while leaving the kick drum untouched, for example, or add some ear-catching grit to the high-end of a vocal without distorting the mids and lows.

The plugin’s targeting abilities extend beyond the frequency spectrum and into the stereo field, too: all three modules across each band have mid/side routing, so you’re able to apply the effect independently across mid (the sum of the left and right channels) or side (the difference between the two) channels.

There’s also tonal/transient splitting across each band, meaning that you can treat the transient (attack) portion of a signal independently to its sustained tonal content, once again opening up new possibilities for fine-tuned signal corruption.

All in all, this is a respectable amount of flexibility for a free plugin. If you’re looking for an upgrade to your DAW’s stock crusher but you’re not already in possession of one of the more full-featured paid-for options on the market, Bit Layer looks like a capable alternative.

RiverFlux Audio Bit Layer is available now for Windows and Linux in VST3/CLAP formats, with AU support on macOS.

Head over to Gumroad to download the plugin.

Fred Again has shared his thoughts on the use of generative AI tools in music creation, joining the increasing numbers of well-known musicians and producers that have spoken out against the technology in recent months.

The British electronic artist and DJ shared a series of Instagram stories on 25 September containing notes he had made on the subject "close to a year ago".

"I've been thinking for a while, the opposite of AI music maybe isn't human music. It's making music," the story reads.

"The process is the magic," Fred continues. "Anyone who's been lucky enough to make music, or make anything, has been able to feel this in different ways since forever."

Fred says that he has felt "no pull whatsoever to even try" AI-powered musical tools: "I place so so so much of my identity in that process, and I haven't found that to be a negative place to put it."

"I have really no desire to do less of that bit. Because that bit is kind of where I find myself most clearly, and it's also my meditation, daily compass. Giving the process bit to a machine would be intrinsically contrary to what I love about the whole thing."

"The clumsy dedicated tumbling towards an idea is the thing we are most lucky to get to do," he concludes. "The hours and hours and years and years of endlessly trying to make the thing you wish could exist. There's lot [sic] of things I'm worried about AI threatening, but that will never be one."

Fred Again's comments arrive as growing numbers of artists are speaking out against the use of AI in the creative process. Earlier this month, guitarist Jason Isbell led a group of musicians in filing a class action lawsuit against AI music platform Suno, claiming that the company used their identities without permission to produce music that imitates their styles.

In May, Grammy-winning producer Jack Antonoff shared his thoughts on AI music, echoing Fred Again's argument that the creative process isn't something that needs to be optimized or replaced.

"The idea of optimizing what we do is a complete miss of the entire point of what compels us in the first place," Antonoff wrote in an Instagram post.

"We (myself, the band and everyone I know frankly) have never been looking for this work to become quicker and easier. We were never frustrated by the randomness and magic it takes. We do it for that exact reason - and without the process itself... nothingness."

"So to everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff. We're genuinely happy to see you go."

Fred Again recently dropped Sexy Magic, a PinkPantheress collaboration that's set to feature on the official soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto VI. Made up of 34 original tracks written for the long-awaited video game, the GTA VI compilation album also features music from Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Travis Scott and Rauw Alejandro.

Todd Rundgren is a) not afraid to speak his mind and b) not a Taylor Swift fan. We already learned this when, last year, he told MusicRadar "I have yet to be convinced by any song that AI has come up with. Everything sounds like Taylor frickin’ Swift!’”

Now the Bat Out of Hell producer and solo star has risked the wrath of Swift’s army of admirers, telling Vulture that “There’s an argument to be made that Taylor Swift ruined music”, before labelling the world’s most successful songwriter and performer “to me, the apotheosis of mediocrity”.

And Rundgren has a theory about Swift’s apparently baffling success, and it’s all the fault of videogames.

“Back in the ’90s, boys stopped spending money on music and started spending it on videogames, and that left the music market with, ‘Well, where do we go here?’”, said 78-year-old Rundgren.

“And they said, ‘Well, there’s all these young girls and they’ve got their allowances, too. Why don’t we start making music for young girls instead of Pearl Jam or something like that?’”

Not that Rundgren has it in for all female musicians. Just Swift, really. “Lady Gaga, she’s a real musician. She’s a classically trained piano player,” Rundgren allowed.

“Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything particularly great except grow hair. She’s not a great singer. She’s not a great songwriter. She’s not a great dancer.

“She’s a role model for what was a very young generation of women, and now for those women’s daughters as well, because it’s mothers and daughters going to Taylor Swift shows.”

Last night, Taylor Swift collected her 33rd VMA award, to add to her 14 Grammys, 40 AMAs and 49 Billboard Music Awards. Meanwhile, Todd Rundgren is currently on his Damned If I Do tour.

What do you think? Fearless truth-speaking from an artist and producer who knows his stuff, or the misguided ramblings of an ‘experienced’ artist? Let us know below…

In today's edition of SampleRadar, we're taking inspiration not from a particular genre but a specific group: The Prodigy. 

The samples were created around the time of their Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned album, and come bathed in distortion and heavy limiting for some pure audio filth.

What you need to know

The samples are split across three construction kits, each of which contains the likes of drum, bass, guitar, keyboard and synth loops, plus multisamples and single hits. All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use them in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The Prodigy-style kits are supplied as separate zip files, so you'll need to extract them before you can see the samples. Enjoy!

Example loops

Prodigy-style kits: click to download

Prodigy-style kit 115bpm

Prodigy-style kit 125bpm

Prodigy-style kit 126bpm

Prodigy tutorials

How to make a Prodigy Breathe-style bassline

How to make a Prodigy Voodoo People-style lead sound

For more than 95,000 more samples, head to our SampleRadar hub

Antares has announced the release of AutoTune Advanced, a new edition of the vocal tuning plugin based on a ground-up rebuild of the Auto-Mode pitch algorithm and equipped with a newly-developed DVA vibrato detection and preservation engine.

The new flagship product in the AutoTune range for producers working in Auto-Mode, AutoTune Advanced promises to address an issue that has plagued producers and engineers working with pitch correction tools since their inception. When applying tuning to a vocal recording – particularly at tighter or more aggressive settings – a singer’s natural vibrato can often be flattened or altered, taking away from the character of the performance.

Advanced tackles this with DVA, a feature that identifies a vocalist’s vibrato and preserves it so that the natural rise and fall of a singer’s pitch remains intact. Not only preserving vibrato, DVA also gives users the ability to cut it, boost it or generate artificial vibrato using a number of different waveshapes in the Creative Vibrato FX panel, with precise control over timing and expression. There’s also a visualiser onboard to track the vibrato-shaping in real time.

Antares tells us that the work the company has done on its updated tuning algorithm represents the “largest engineering investment” since its introduction, producing the most clear and accurate pitch correction found in an AutoTune product to date. This is complemented by a new Live Mode designed for “ultra-fast” real-time monitoring, which is joined by two more latency modes: High Quality is for final mixes and bounces and Low Latency is suitable for general studio work.

AutoTune Advanced also updates a number of features familiar to existing users. The Formant Designer has been given a refresh, there’s a new workflow for inputting custom scales, and a 78-note Visual Keyboard makes dialling in per-note behaviour more intuitive. The plugin’s MIDI Perform feature gives you hands-on control over tuning and Vibrato FX via your MIDI controller.

AutoTune Advanced arrives with a collection of presets designed by Grammy-winning producers, engineers and artists, including Julian Marley, Ann Mincieli, Jess Jackson, David "Yungin" Kim, and more.

“I've been using AutoTune for over 15 years, so I know it inside and out,” Kim said in a press release. “Advanced feels like a real upgrade. Live mode is crazy fast and keeps the artist locked into the performance. The formant designer gives me more ways to shape a vocal without losing the person behind it, and the modern UI gives an old friend a much needed fresh look."

“Since 1997, the complaint about pitch correction has been the same: it takes the singer out of the singing," adds Jeff Wright, CEO of Antares Audio Technologies. "That's the problem DVA was built to solve. It can tell the difference between a pitch error and a decision the vocalist made, and it leaves the decision alone."

In other AutoTune news, Image-Line recently announced that all FL Studio users will now be able to access AutoTune Go, a stripped-back version of the pitch correction tool that’s bundled with FL Cloud Free.

AutoTune Advanced runs on macOS 13 or higher and Windows 10 and 11 in AAX, AU and VST3 formats. A perpetual licence is $450 USD or $17.50 a month as part of an AutoTune Unlimited subscription. A free trial is available now.

Visit the Antares website to find out more.

If you make electronic music, you’ve probably been there: you’ve got a nice little 8-bar loop going, but you’ve had it on repeat for what feels like hours, fruitlessly tweaking with no clue where to go next.

The process of arrangement – structuring your loops, sketches and ideas into fully-fledged tracks – is one of the most difficult stages of finishing a song, and it’s something that even the most talented artists struggle with.

If that sounds familiar, music education company Color With Live has something that might help. Stencils are empty, colour-coded arrangement maps for Ableton Live based on existing tracks that the company describes as “like a colouring book for Ableton”.

Open up a Stencil in Live and you have a proven structure to work with while writing your own track: all you need to do is fill it with your own material, and the arrangement takes care of itself.

Every element of a song’s structure is mapped out in detail, from builds and drops through to fills and breakdowns. You provide the melodies and chords, the sound design and the effects, but the Stencil helps you mould this material into a coherent layout based on a track that you love.

Color With Live is keen to emphasize that a Stencil is not a recreation of a song or a way to copy another artist’s work. The raw materials are stripped out and what’s left is the structure, a template that you can use to create something that’s entirely your own.

Color With Live recently released a free Stencil Pack that features the arrangements behind Flip It by Levity, Fisher’s rework of World Hold On by Bob Sinclair and Dimension’s Once In A Lifetime.

Also on offer are more than 250 paid Stencils based on songs from artists like Four Tet, Fred Again, Calvin Harris, DJ Seinfeld, Metro Boomin, Skrillex and many more. Each Stencil is priced at £8, and there are discounted bundles available if you want to buy more.

The folks over at Color With Live are a generous bunch: they also have a number of free Ableton Racks available on their site, and a free Extension that can be used to save and organize YouTube tutorials in Live.

"We realized one of the biggest pain points in learning production is arrangement. The advice is always to pick apart your reference tracks, but there's nothing visual to check your work," Color With Live’s co-founder Kevin Rea said in a press release.

"Repetition is what makes learning click. Producers download Serum packs to practice sound design and MIDI packs to practice music theory. We were blown away that nothing like that existed for arrangement. Our mission isn’t for our stencil to be a crutch that you rely on for every song, instead something that you can learn from and then apply to future productions.”

Head over to Color With Live’s website to download the free Stencil Pack.

Loop is the latest addition to Polyend’s growing line of stompboxes. In typically self-explanatory fashion for a brand that has previously released a drum machine named Drums and a synth called Synth, Loop is a loop pedal. Like those instruments before it though, Loop aims to put an innovative spin on the looper format that is less utilitarian than its basic nomenclature might imply.

Pitched as an 'idea machine' for both guitarists and electronic musicians, Loop has four independent looper tracks that can each be either mono or stereo. It can be used for live looping via its stereo input or load pre-recorded loops via a microSD card.

Each track has a maximum recording time of 52 seconds, and can run in either tempo-synced mode – set either internally or via external MIDI – or be free running. There is also a Varispeed mode, where loop speed and pitch will follow changes to the tempo. Loops can also run in forward, reverse and ping-pong playback directions.

Loop goes further than simple looping though, thanks to the inclusion of effect and percussion engines. On the former front, each loop track can have its own independent effect, drawn from a pool of more than 100 effect types, covering reverbs, delays, distortion, modulation effects and more.

For percussion, Loop features a four-track drum machine pre-loaded with over 500 drum kits and 350+ rhythmic patterns. Users can also record drum samples directly into the hardware and create their own patterns using the pedal’s buttons as a step sequencer.

Loop is able to record from line, instrument and dynamic mic sources. It has a pair of 6.3mm jack outputs that can be used for stereo or mono output. Other connectivity includes a USB-C port for bidirectional MIDI, a TRS MIDI port and an expression pedal input.

The pedal allows for unlimited overdubbing, with a single-level undo function for erasing the most recently overdubbed loop. Loop is also able to save and recall up-to 1000 scenes, which store loops, drum patterns, tempo and effect settings.

Loop is available now priced at $599/599€. Head to the Polyend site for more details.

In May, following a turbulent few years of leadership changes, mergers and financial struggles, Native Instruments was acquired by InMusic, joining a roster of brands that already includes the likes of Moog, Akai, Rane and Alesis.

While some longtime users might be wary of the move, it promises to bring stability to a brand responsible for some of the most notable – and widely used – product lines in the music technology space, including Kontakt, Traktor and Maschine.

Against this backdrop Native Instruments is also approaching its 30th anniversary, having released its first software instrument, the Reaktor precursor Generator, back in 1996. To mark the anniversary the company is releasing Maschine 3.7, the platform’s first major update since the InMusic acquisition, as well as three Maschine-focused sound packs. (Maschine 3.6 did land after the announcement, although it focused mostly on compatibility, bug fixes and UI/audio improvements, rather than new features).

The main focus of Maschine 3.7 is a trio of sequencing tools designed to add spontaneity and variation to patterns. The first of these is a random note generator designed to generate patterns based on probability. This can be used to create randomised percussive, melodic or chord patterns. Users also get the option to control the level of velocity randomisation within the notes created.

This is joined by note probability, which lets users dictate a chance level for each note in a sequence. This dictates the level of randomisation for each note every time the sequence cycles. Probability Lock allows users to capture a cycle of randomised notes, offering another way to generate pattern ideas using the randomisation tools.

The third new tool is a Euclidean sequencer, a popular tool in the modular realm that lets users program sequences by distributing events as evenly as possible over a set number of steps. Here, a real time mode lets Maschine users alter the step length, events and rotation in real time to create shifting patterns.

While these are undoubtedly welcome additions to the Maschine toolkit, all three are features already widely available in other majors DAWs and sequencers. It still feels like Maschine is playing catch-up with the industry following the underwhelming rollout of Maschine 3.0.

Native Instruments is clearly aware of the need to reassure longtime users that Maschine hasn’t been forgotten with the move to InMusic, issuing a press release that pitches the update as: “New update. New sounds. Continued support. Maschine is alive and evolving, and this update packs in a host of fresh features.“

Alongside the new features for Maschine 3.7, the company is releasing a trio of new Maschine Expansion packs. The first of these, Thirty, is a compilation of sounds ‘resampled’ from the company’s own back catalogue, drawing on samples from Reaktor, Spotlight Series, Play Series, Massive X and more to create 30 Maschine kits, 89 loops, 291 drum samples and 85 one-shots. Whether you call this a celebration of NI’s legacy or a bundle of repackaged sounds probably depends on how generous you’re feeling towards Native Instruments.

The second pack is named Paris Heat and focuses on the classic French house sound of the ‘90s and early-’00s. This totals 40 Maschine kits, 108 loops, 314 drum samples and 127 one-shots, aiming to capture the crunchy drum machines, filtered samples and warm synth tones that defined the sound.

The final pack is more forward-looking. Titled Rage Circuit, it focuses on the sound of the EDM-adjacent trap sub-genre associated with artists like Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti. The pack is created in collaboration with US producer Snipe Young, who has worked with the likes of Beyonce and Justin Bieber, and has created a variety of other NI and Akai sound packs in the past.

"30 years is a moment worth celebrating. This milestone couldn't be reached without the producers and musicians who took NI's instruments and made history with them," says Tim Adnitt, Senior Director of Product Management at Native Instruments. "Maschine 3.7 gives those producers and musicians new ways to write, sequence, and perform, and with Thirty, Paris Heat, and Rage Circuit arriving together, this is one of the biggest weeks for Maschine sound content we've ever had."

Maschine 3.7 is available now as a free update for Maschine 3 users. The new packs are all available now. Paris Heat and Rage Circuit are $49/49€ each, while Thirty is available for $30/30€. Head to the Native Instruments site for more info.

Swedish gear manufacturer Elektron has banned members from distributing and promoting hacks and modified firmware on the Elektronauts community forums, CDM reports.

Elektronauts has long been a hub for discussion around not only the company’s instruments and gear, but also the craft of electronic music-making more broadly.

Recent months have seen a rise in firmware mods being shared on the site, prompting the company to put its foot down and prohibit the facilitation and promotion of mods and hacks across both Elektronauts and Elektron’s social media channels. The policy applies to currently supported instruments, legacy Elektron machines and even gear from other manufacturers.

In a statement shared September 16 (which you can read in full here) Elektron states that “Elektronauts isn’t the place to be sharing hacks, or facilitating or promoting the modification of firmware… That includes sharing, requesting, or directing people to the files, tools, repositories, or instructions needed to do so.”

Elektron notes that “general discussion” around the topic remains permitted, but that “distributing actionable material or actively encouraging people to install modifications” is not. “Curiosity is understandable,” the statement concludes. “Bricked boxes - as we are sure people will understand - less so.”

In recent months, mods have been shared on Elektronauts for several Elektron machines, including the Monomachine and Octatrack MkII, in what the company is calling a “surge” in custom firmware fuelled by the increasing popularity of AI-assisted coding.

Elektron warns that “insufficiently tested” firmware has the potential to brick its customers’ products, interfere with future updates and affect warranty coverage, while placing the company’s intellectual property at risk.

Prior to this recent uptick, the most notable example of unofficial firmware developed for an Elektron instrument was Machinedrum X. Released in 2021, this alternative firmware for the Machinedrum SPS-1 brought new features and workflow enhancements to a 20-year-old drum machine that hadn’t received an update since 2016.

That project was shared on Elektronauts and ultimately authorized by Elektron; in a statement shared with CDM, the company confirmed that the MDX firmware remains authorized, but notes that other projects will be “considered separately on a case-by-case basis”.

Earlier this year, Elektron was acquired by investment firm Bonnier Capital. Bonnier Capital is the investment arm of Bonnier Group, a family-owned Swedish media group of around 175 companies founded in 1804.

Muse have explained how they’ve had to change their social media handles because Mark Zuckerberg wanted to use the name ‘muse’ for his new AI tool.

Now you’d think – given Matt Bellamy’s penchant for writing about tech dystopias – that this is something they’d quite literally be making a big song and dance over, perhaps pointing out that they had predicted this turn of events decades ago. Not so, it seems. In an interview with iHeartRadio Bellamy has explained that he had been in contact with Zuckerberg about it and it really hadn’t been a big deal.

According to Bellamy, Zuckerberg sent the singer a beta version of the AI tool before adding that the multi-billionaire is “alright.. he’s not too bad."

The interviewer then asked Bellamy to confirm that Meta didn’t just steal the name ‘muse’. “No, no. We had a chat," he replied. "He invited me to meet him, and we had a chat.”

“It’s a trademark thing,” he explained. “So I said, ‘don’t touch music, don’t touch merchandise’, so I can sell Muse AI T-shirts, but I can’t make a Muse AI, basically.”

Those will long memories may well point out that big tech has a proven track record of creeping beyond agreed remits like this. Apple Computers formed in 1976 knowing full well that The Beatles’ Apple Corps was still an active company. Apple sued and, in the settlement in 1981, whilst Apple Computers was allowed to keep its name, it had to pay Apple Corps $80,000 and agree to stay out of the music business. This became a live issue again when Steve Jobs and co developed the iPod and launched Apple Music in the early '00s, thus contravening the agreement.

Anyway, Bellamy’s remarkably relaxed attitude to Meta’s move has meant that their handle on Instagram and Twitter/X from now on will be @Muse to @Musetheband.

Simon Green, the electronic artist better known as Bonobo, released his eighth studio album earlier this month: Distance in Static.

Featuring a varied cast of collaborators that includes Pakistani-American Grammy-winner Arooj Aftab, Joy Crookes and Nilüfer Yanya, the sonically diverse record is described as a “moment of transition” that may well be Green’s final Bonobo project after 25 years working under the alias.

In an interview with the Tape Notes podcast on the making of the record, Green opened up his Ableton Live sessions to explore the production behind several tracks, including Talk To Me, Fire on the Water, and Me and You, a dancefloor-friendly cut built around a sample of 1950s field recordings made in Malawi by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey.

Speaking to host John Kennedy about the song’s instrumentation, Green reminded listeners that the most expensive piece of gear isn’t always the right one for the job, even when you have it sitting in your studio.

When laying down some chords to flesh out the track’s arrangement, Green reached for the Yamaha Reface CP he keeps on his desk – a tiny $499 keyboard that emulates classic electric pianos like the Fender Rhodes – even though the real thing was only meters away.

“This is the Yamaha CP, the little series of reissued keys that they did,” Green tells Kennedy while playing back the track. “The thing about this is, I have an actual Rhodes sitting here in the studio, but I have the CP on the desk, because it’s right there and it’s closer.”

Despite its diminutive size and affordable price point, the Reface CP (much like the entire Reface range) is a well-regarded piece of kit.

Equipped with six emulations of classic electric pianos – including models of the Rhodes MK1 and MK2 – the keyboard packs the same sound engine that you’ll find in Yamaha’s larger and pricier CP Series, leveraging a blend of physical modelling and sample-based synthesis to deliver its convincingly vintage-style tones.

As we can hear in Me and You, the Reface CP does an excellent Rhodes imitation, and while its size might be a limitation to some, it’s also a clear benefit: the CP is perfectly proportioned for placing on your studio desk, remaining within arm's reach while working on a project. As Green tells Kennedy, when you’re deep in the creative flow, speed and convenience often trumps authenticity.

“This is a big lesson in hardware,” Green says. “I just used [the CP] because it was there, instead of the real thing that was sat across from me. Plugging in one cable is the difference between using the real thing [and the imitation].”

Watch our hands-on demo of the Yamaha Reface CP below.

For more track breakdowns and interviews with artists and producers, check out Tape Notes’ YouTube channel or subscribe to their Patreon, where members can access full-length video episodes, exclusive offers, merch discounts, artist gear lists and behind-the-scenes content.

There’s another twist in the ongoing battle between Suno and the music industry. Universal Music Group and Sony are suing the AI firm over copyright infringement in its new v6 models.

The v6 was launched by the firm two weeks ago. According to Suno it’s faster, more expressive and trained “from scratch” on a new set of data developed with rights-holders that the firm has inked deals with, including Warner and BMG.

“This includes licensed music from Warner. It includes user data, and then it includes all of these learnings and innovations that the team has made,” said Chief Product Officer Jack Brody at the time.

However, it’s this ‘user data’ that Sony and UMG are concerned about. In their filing they cite over 60,000 recordings that Suno has used in its past training process. “Suno has admitted that it trained v6 using ‘user interactions’ with previous iterations of its models. But these ‘interactions’ are the outputs of, and preference data derived from, Suno’s prior models,” the filing says.

“Suno trained v6 with material that exists only because Suno copied Plaintiffs’ recordings without authorisation. v6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree. Suno’s development of v6 continued, rather than ended, its unauthorised exploitation of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Recordings.”

At the time of writing, Suno has yet to respond to the filing.

Meanwhile, in an entirely separate AI legal kerfuffle, Universal and Warner have asked a court to throw out a case brought against them by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) over AI licensing.

The AFM is arguing that the two majors licensed their members recordings to Suno and Udio without proper compensation. The case revolves around whether AI licensing constitutes a ‘new use’ of recordings.

Under the ‘new use’ clause of the AFM’s Sound Recording Labor Agreement (SRLA), if a sound recording is used by a record company in a new way that is not anticipated or covered by the agreement, the label have to compensate any musicians who appear on that recording. The AFM is arguing that AI is a new use, whereas the labels are saying it isn’t.

Universal’s briefs have pointed to a pre-motion conference in July at which the US District Judge Edgardo Ramos asked whether an agreement exists between AFM and the labels regarding AI. The union’s counsel, Eyad Asad, admitted in the filing that there wasn’t.

“That concession ends this case,” UMG’s lawyers have written. “Discovery cannot change that fact, much less create the missing agreement. A payment obligation measured by an agreement that does not exist is no payment obligation at all.”

We shall doubtless find out in due course whether Judge Ramos buys their argument.

Analogue purists might bemoan the advent of digital music production gear, but an undeniable upside is the ease with which brands can now roll out firmware updates for existing synths, not only fixing bugs and improving usability, but occasionally adding whole new capabilities to existing.

Originally released in 2022, Arturia’s hybrid MiniFreak polysynth is an instrument that has done particularly well out of this form of free upgrade. Built around a synth engine that combines multi-mode digital oscillators with an analogue filter and comprehensive digital effects, MiniFreak’s mix-and-match approach to synthesis lends itself particularly well to being tweaked and updated.

In the four years since launch, the six-voice MiniFreak has gained capabilities that include a vocoder, wavetable, sample and granular oscillator modes and a variety of new effects. Now, with the launch of its fifth major firmware update, MiniFreak is becoming more customisable by allowing users to upload their own samples and wavetables as source sounds for the oscillators.

MiniFreak 5.0 lets users drag and drop samples and wavetables into the synth’s companion plugin MiniFreak V, which will handle all necessary conversion and allow users to then upload sounds to the hardware.

Samples can be imported in WAV, AIFF and FLAC formats that can be used with the instrument’s sample and granular oscillator modes. The synth’s engine imports mono wavetables with 24-bit, 512 point compatibility, allowing users to upload files from a wide range of banks and libraries.

Along with the new capabilities, MiniFreak 5.0 comes with a bank of 23 new presets that also add new samples and wavetables to the stock library.

Although v5.0 perhaps isn’t as radical an upgrade as some previous iterations, it does add a nice extra dimension to an already impressive instrument, one which we described at launch as being “a joy to get lost in.”

Perhaps the most exciting possibility is the prospect of loading ‘vintage’ wavetables from classic ‘90s synths in order to impersonate hardware classics from the likes of PPG or Waldorf.

As with previous updates, the new features come to both the MiniFreak hardware and its MiniFreak V counterpart. The latter is available as a standalone purchase, allowing users to access the synth’s full feature set in a DAW without buying the hardware – albeit with a virtual recreation of the analogue filter.

MiniFreak 5.0 is available now as a free update for owners of either version. Head to the Arturia site for more.

Zplane has announced the release of TIMBRE, a real-time formant-shifting plugin designed to transform the character of vocals, drums, instruments and mixes without altering their pitch.

Like all formant-shifting plugins, Timbre shifts the formants that make up a sound’s timbral characteristics while leaving its fundamental pitch intact, a process that unlocks all kinds of possibilities for creative sound design. Zplane says Timbre is built on an expanded version of the engine from its Elastique Pitch plugin.

At the core of the plugin are two independently adjustable frequency bands, each offering up to ±36 semitones of timbral shift with their own solo and mute controls, split by an adjustable crossover. Link the two and you get one-knob control across the whole spectrum; unlink them and you can push the low-end one way and the high-end the other, or process just a single band.

The Carrier section is where things get more experimental. It replaces the carrier signal while maintaining the input's modulation envelope, using either a built-in white-noise generator, which can turn vocals into breathy “whisper-like textures”, or an external sidechain, which allows for vocoder-style processing where the envelope of one signal is imprinted onto another.

If you’re not familiar with formant-shifting, the technique is best explained in terms of the human voice. A typical vocal signal, like all signals with inherent musical pitch, comprises a fundamental frequency (the root pitch) and mathematically-related harmonic overtones.

Traditional pitch-shifting will transpose the fundamental and related harmonics up or down while maintaining their relationship, resulting in an obvious transposition of musical key.

A vocal’s formants, on the other hand, are resonant peaks in the spectrum - unrelated to the fundamental pitch - produced by the vocalist’s vocal tract, mouth shape and other resonant characteristics. It’s why, for example, one singer singing a C3 will sound completely different to another vocalist singing the same note. In broader terminology, we usually refer to this as ‘timbre’.

Formant-shifting enables you to manipulate these formants (and therefore the timbre) while maintaining its pitch. In recent years, the technique has become increasingly common in vocal production, with everyone from Frank Ocean to Kanye West getting in on the action and using formant-shifting to add a new dimension to their vocals.

Timbre is available now for macOS and Windows in VST3/AU/AAX formats. It's priced at €79, but reduced to €53 until the end of September.

Find out more on Zplane's website.

What is it?

Go:Mixer Studio is a desktop and tripod-mountable digital mixer with an integrated 12-in / 6-out USB audio interface, recording up to 24-bit / 192kHz. It joins Roland’s growing range of Go: badged portable products, which includes keyboards, pianos and mixers.

Go:Mixer Studio is designed for both standalone use and via USB, and is supported by both desktop and smartphone software apps: Go:Mixer Editor desktop (Mac OS and Windows), Go:Mixer Cam (iOS) and Camcorder for Go:Mixer (Android). The unit can be powered directly via the main USB-C interface connector, but you also have an additional USB-C power connector, which is helpful for mobile device use or if you want to use it as a standalone mixer. The box includes a regular 1.5m USB-C to USB-C cable but no further adapters, so factor that in if you want to use it with USB-A or Lightning-equipped devices.

The Go:Mixer Studio has a good selection of physical connectors on the back and side panels. On the back you get two XLR mic/line inputs with individually selectable 48V phantom power, two ¼” jack line outputs, MIDI in and out on 3.5mm mini jacks (breakout cables not included) and two USB-C ports (power and USB).

On the left is a dedicated instrument impedance input ¼” jack and also two headphone connectors, ¼” and 3.5mm mini jack, which you can use simultaneously. The headphone mini jack is also the TRRS type, providing access to the headset mic on combined devices. Finally, on the right there are two ¼” line inputs and a 3.5mm TRRS-style auxiliary connection for stereo input and mono output with suitably equipped devices.

The top panel combines physical controls with a colour display. The top three knobs are continuous rotaries with push-button action. Below these are two dedicated output levels for Phones and Line Out. Rounding things off are menu and navigation buttons.

Performance

Go:Mixer Studio is designed to be straightforward to use. You’ll find the screen system is easy to navigate, with parameters aligned with the three rotaries, while deeper options are accessed via the push button. In addition to the basics such as gain and phantom power, there is excellent functionality across the inputs, including 3-band EQ, compression and reverb as well as input stereo linking, pan and mute. There’s also independent control over input assignment to headphones and the line outputs.

Further options include independent level settings for the headphones, routing of the auxiliary input (line out or headphones) and source select for the USB audio outputs (direct, pre-fader, and post-fader). In typical mixer fashion, this last setting lets you control the recording level with the input gain and the fader (in this case, the corresponding rotary controller), or use only the analogue input gain, which you’ll find in the channel parameters. Overall, we found setting up inputs, setting levels and adding processing very simple. That said, there are some limitations to the processing options at higher sampling rates (96kHz and 192khz), where you’ll find the compressor and reverb become unavailable on some inputs.

If you choose to use the Go:Mixer in tandem with the desktop Editor app, all these options become even easier, with each channel’s Setup page providing quick editing and excellent visual feedback. There’s also a full mixer page for analogue inputs, USB inputs and analogue outputs. If you’re using the mobile app, options are more limited in terms of control, as the app is designed primarily as a video and audio recorder. However, there is control of input fader levels and the app also records the Go:Mixer Studio audio in a multitrack manner to individual tracks. Formats are limited to 48kHz WAV or AAC (64 to 320kbps), but you can export the recorded tracks as individual audio files, which is very handy.

Verdict

Go:Mixer Studio is a highly flexible compact mixer and USB interface that’s perfect for desktop recording and live performance. Even fader fans will find the screen based system easy to navigate, and the onboard effects provide the icing on the cake.

Hands-on demos

RolandChannel

Alternatives

Specifications

Everyone loves an iconic drum machine. Celebrated beatboxes like the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 dominate the conversation in music tech, and appear in more famous tracks than we can count.

But perhaps this relentless focus on a handful of legendary machines is a little narrow-minded – after all, there's a whole world of gear out there to explore.

Our latest sample pack was put together with that mindset. We've collected sounds from an array of somewhat lesser-known rhythm generators, bundling them together here for you to download, sample and experiment with in your DAW.

In the pack below, we've got individual hits and loops, both processed and unprocessed, from a variety of obscure drum machines, including the Boss DR-110, Yamaha DD5, Realistic Sessionmate, Korg DDM-110 and Dynacord P20.

What you need to know

This sample collection offers a variety of loops and hits in two folders, labelled by the machine used to create them.

All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!

Example sounds

Obscure drum machine samples: click to download

Obscure drum machine samples (217MB)

Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 95,000 more free samples.

Released a scant few months ahead of the track that would make them household names, 1996 album Second Toughest in the Infants found Underworld’s second-line up (Rick Smith, Darren Emerson and Karl Hyde) in rude creative health. It was blindingly obvious that the limelight would soon follow.

Balancing dank club savagery with sublime ambience and fascinatingly constructed beats, Underworld were out to prove that their electronic frontiers had no boundaries.

Back in 2010, production head-honcho Rick Smith spoke to us and recalled the less than ideal recording conditions for the album, most of which was assembled in a spare bedroom in his house in Romford.

“It was probably about twelve foot by about fourteen, Smith told us of said spare room. “And noise was an issue. My missus’ patience was deeper than the deepest ocean. The racket that would come out… Repetitive beats for months on end.”

On the classic tech used to bring the record to life, Smith went into detail…

“The desk was a Soundcraft S600 series. Beautiful, very basic, kind of raw. We had an Atari ST 1040 computer, running C-Lab Creator, which was dynamite and I still miss it. Sound sources running through the desk were not all clocked off the same digital clock, so you got this magic appearing between space, which was lovely.

“I also used an Akai MG14D 12-track tape recorder, which was synchronised to the Atari with an old Fostex synchroniser. I could run a sequence and lock up tape at the same time. It was a bit touch and go. Sampling was limited. I had a Casio FZ-1 - I couldn’t afford an Akai S900.

“Mic-wise we had a Neumann TLM 170, which is beautiful, and we’re still using it. We also had the vocoder, an ARP 2600, an OSCar, 303s, 909s , a Nord for bass, a Yamaha DX7 Mk1, two [Yamaha] SPX90s, a Roland MT-32 unit and a Roland SD-3000.

“All the recording was done on an early Sony portable DAT machine, battery operated. There was no hard drive recording, although I rented one later to assemble the album and mix tracks together.

“Essentially, mixes were very live, through the console, running multiple MIDI and tape tracks, with effects live in the console. Very basic. One of the SPX90s ran stereo pitch, the other a stereo delay. Then the Roland SD-3000 mono delay line for feedback and dub delays. That was it. No plugins, no compressors, no gates… I don’t know how I did it!”

Amongst various other tracks on the record, Rick remembered the specifics of realising the album’s lead single, Pearl’s Girl.

“I know this track came together quite quickly, over the period of about a month. Karl, Darren and I were jamming on an idea, which never really seemed to go anywhere, but there was something there. So I revisited it again about a month later, and a chap that works with us, Mike Nielson, an engineer, did a quick mix while I was halfway through the tune.

“That really helped in the track’s development because he really nailed the sound of it, as it wasn’t a house or obvious techno piece at the time, it was much rowdier. I loved the way it almost crossed over between a house and techno, and a drum ’n’ bass feel. The absence of a four-to-the-floor was unusual for us.”

Read our full classic interview with Underworld’s Rick Smith here.

Something interesting is happening in the world of AI music. What was once a Wild West of devil-may-care capitalism has recently taken on a decidedly conciliatory tone. Ethics, responsibility, transparency, principles – these are the buzzwords peppered through the press releases and mission statements of major players and start-ups alike.

It would seem that the AI music industry is turning over a new leaf and offering musicians an olive branch, and no company encapsulates this trend more than the music generation platform Suno.

Long the poster child for bad behaviour among skeptics of AI's role in music-making, Suno have previously admitted to training their early models on vast amounts of music scraped from the internet without permission, much of it protected by copyright.

However, CEO Mikey Shulman recently shared a blog post outlining a newly responsible approach. (It’s a remarkable pivot from Shulman, whose public persona has formerly consisted of god-tier trolling.) Moreover, the company is cleaning up its act with the introduction of new industry-backed models trained on licensed data, download limits and a watermarking system designed to help streaming platforms identify AI-generated songs.

“The future of music needs to be built in partnership with the artists, industry and music ecosystem that made music what it is today,” Suno’s Chief Product Officer Jack Brody told MusicRadar ahead of the V6 launch.

“These models were developed in partnership with the industry and informed by feedback from our community of users and artists and musicians at every level. I think this really is a huge moment for Suno, and it marks the beginning of a new chapter.”

What could have prompted this industry-wide about-face? The cumulative weight of lawsuits, labels and publishers suddenly looking to collaborate rather than litigate, growing stocks of ‘in-house’ data created and owned by the companies themselves - all of this has made the practice of scraping copyrighted music from the open internet less attractive.

But perhaps the most important factor is the society-wide AI backlash that is now beginning to bubble over. Even feet-draggers like Spotify are finally combating the AI slop that is flooding their platform.

The public sentiment is overwhelming. A 2025 study by BPI found that 82% of respondents believed that human creativity is essential to music, 80% viewed human-made music as more valuable than AI-generated music, and that 81% wanted fully AI-generated music to be clearly labelled. At the same time, Muse Group (the company behind Ultimate Guitar, MuseScore, and Audacity) surveyed 1200 musicians using their services and found that while 78% were open to using some form of AI, 81% agreed that the industry needed stronger rules and transparency.

So if consumers and musicians want guilt-free AI, the real question is: which companies can they actually trust, and which ones are merely paying lip service?

The unfortunate answer is that there is no easy way to tell. Talk is cheap, feel-good language is on-trend, and consumers hoping to vote with their wallets need to look past vague statements and seek out companies that provide detailed and concrete information regarding their AI policies.

Since its founding in 2023, Voice Swap AI has been one of the most transparent music companies working with AI, taking what CEO Ausrine Skarnulyte describes as an “accountable” approach to development.

Working directly with artists, the platform offers authorised voice models that can be used to create demos and legally licensed for music releases. Their datasets have been certified by the third-party organisation Fairly Trained, outputs are embedded with a ‘high-frequency watermark’ that allows any misuse to be traced back to the offending user, and 50% of the platform’s subscription revenue and 80% of licensing revenue goes directly to artists who have contributed to the platform.

“We chose a rights-first business, even though it was a little bit more painful and slower to establish, because most of the team comes from very deep-rooted music industry experience,” Skarnulyte says of the founding ethos behind the company.

“Building technology is hard but establishing rights around it is even harder,” Skarnulyte continues. “So before we even built the service, first we identified what processes we needed to put in place, what contractual arrangements needed to be made with the singers, what was the usage, what were the licensing terms, what were revocation terms? First, we agreed on those, then we started building the model and the infrastructure around it.”

Voice Swap AI is something of a case-study in what responsible AI development can look like; they also serve as a stark reminder of how few specifics most other businesses choose to share about their practices.

“’Ethical AI’ risks becoming a marketing term now,” warns Skarnulyte. “At the end of the day, ethics isn't a positioning statement. It is a set of operational decisions you should be able to explain – and few companies actually do.”

The problem, says Skarnulyte, is not individual bad actors per se, but an almost structural lack of clarity around what an ethical approach even is. “If every company can define ethics for itself then businesses with fundamentally different training, content, or deployment practices can make the same claim. At that point, the label itself stops being informative.”

For Geraldo Ramos, CEO and co-founder at Moises AI, it’s not enough to focus only on how training data is obtained – it also matters what kind of products you are making.

“We want to be inserted in the workflow of the musicians as opposed to being something that can bypass that,” states Ramos. “On the data, we decided to train with things that we license or that we create. On the product side, we want to be complementary to a human producer, to make sure that the music qualifies as human-created in the end.”

Moises AI has long been a leader in stem separation, but also offers users a suite of AI-powered creative tools. More recently they’ve introduced audio generation for stems, but maintain that they will always draw a line at fully-fledged song generation.

“The goal is always to be a tool for musicians and never to go for the whole creation of a song,” emphasises Ramos. “We have that constraint, and we will keep it, because we think the way that we do generative is no different than loops.”

Ramos goes so far as to question whether full-on song generators can ever be justified: “Even if you license all the data, one can argue that creating a model which generates the full song is unethical.”

When asked to respond to that viewpoint and the broader AI backlash, Brody acknowledges the shifts in consumer sentiment but maintains that more music made by more people is ultimately a positive, reminding us that there is clear demand for what Suno offers.

“I think we have a real responsibility to hear this feedback,” allows Brody. “To hear the criticisms, to hear the concerns, and to hear from the artists and the creatives who might feel threatened by this technology. It's an important conversation, and we certainly are not dismissing it here.

“At the same time, the majority of our team are artists and musicians who have been making music their entire lives. The people we speak with every day when we're building these products are musicians and artists whose entire livelihood is built around creating music. The core of what we hope to build is a tool to empower creativity, and our belief is that it is a good thing if more people are able to experience the joy of making music.”

“There will always be a vocal minority with any new technology,” Brody continues. “We've seen it time and time again in music, probably more so than in other mediums, and the pattern usually plays out the same way. Two years ago, there weren't a lot of artists and musicians embracing this technology. Now there aren't that many studio sessions in the world that are happening without the usage of some of these tools, the majority of which end up being Suno.”

Beyond defining what ethical AI for music looks like, there’s also the more pragmatic question of how to encourage the industry to adopt such practices. On both counts, few figures have been as influential as Paul McCabe, Senior Vice President of Research and Innovation at the Roland Future Design Lab. With 40 years working in music technology and almost 35 at Roland, he’s seen plenty of new technologies hit the market, but when OpenAI first dropped ChatGPT it provoked a “period of existential crisis” for McCabe.

The sprawling implications of generative AI eventually led McCabe to create the Principles for Music Creation with AI in 2022, first as an internal effort to establish a governance framework for Roland, and later as an industry-wide attempt to build consensus around AI development.

“I was actually thinking back to the early 1980s when the musical instruments industry came together to develop and adopt MIDI,” McCabe says of his early thinking on the issue. “That still stands as an example of industrial unity without equal. Could we do this again?”

Among other things, the initiative calls for respecting copyright protections and data transparency, centering humanity at the core of music-making. It’s now backed by over 150 major brands, labels and institutions, and McCabe hopes to see that number climb to 500 supporters. Of course, in contrast with the adoption of MIDI, there are major economic incentives to take shortcuts when it comes to AI. McCabe is clear-eyed about the limits of trusting corporations to do the right thing, and acknowledges that internal governance must be combined with enforcement mechanisms.

Skarnulyte believes that if enough stakeholders can come together to agree on definitions and enforcements, then we could see the AI industry adopt a system reminiscent of B Corp Certification, which verifies a business’s social and environmental practices, or the EU’s protected designation of origin laws, which safeguard certain foods against imitation.

“It would be much easier for AI companies that are labelled ethical to be marketed,” she notes. “And for the user to make a more informed decision on what tools and services to use.”

Actually passing laws with teeth is where things get tricky. “Legislation is always a couple of years behind,” says Ron Gubitz, Executive Director of the Music Artists Coalition. “Will the government be able to keep up? I think that's difficult.”

Describing the organisation's role as the “pugilistic representative for artists”, Gubitz calls for “clarity, consent, and compensation” as the basis for any definition of ethical AI. While he does point to some bright spots, such as the TRAIN Act – a proposed piece of U.S. legislation that would, among other things, allow training data to be subpoenaed by rights holders alleging copyright infringement – he believes the current shifts are being driven by laws that are already on the books.

“Litigation is expensive and annoying and it seems unending,” Gubitz points out. “If I'm a Suno or a Udio right now, and every day I’m catching a haymaker from a different angle, that's a real [business] incentive.”

Suno’s new V6 models are at least in part a result of a lawsuit initially brought by the world’s three biggest labels: Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. When WMG unexpectedly opted to settle their case and partner with Suno – along with BMG, the world’s fourth-largest music company, and Believe, a major global distributor – it paved the way for these new officially licensed models.

“The V6 family was trained from scratch,” states Brody. “It is not trained on the same data as the models that preceded it. It's trained on a combination of data we've licensed with these partnerships and user data.”

Buy-in from labels is a step in the right direction, however, we have no insight into the artists or songs that were included in the training data of the new models, and it’s not clear whether any of the artists involved were remunerated for the use of their work. The American Federation of Musicians is now suing WMG and Universal Music Group over the licensing deals cut with Suno and Udio respectively.

It’s also important to note that while Suno emphasises the start of a new chapter, the company is not conceding that it did anything wrong in the first place. “We believe the way that we've trained these models is fair use,” states Brody. “At the same time, we have always had the intent to build in partnership with the industry. We have never had the mindset of ‘we are here to disrupt, and replace, and own the future.’”

Lost in all this is the simple fact that the musical applications of AI are incredibly diverse, and many of them are extremely useful. “It is a bit frustrating,” admits Ramos. “Because some people don't even know that stem separation is AI. When you say music and AI, it's always connected to full song generation – but there's a big difference between generating a song and being able to get separated drums.”

McCabe also sees plenty of potential positives. “What seems to be common for all music creators is an interest in applying AI to help with more mundane ‘administrative’ tasks that may break the creative flow. But we’re also learning that most music creators would welcome AI as a source of musical inspiration, and we think this could take many forms.”

Learning to play, performing live, organising and searching through audio libraries, breaking through writer's block, transforming sounds in real-time, creating new revenue streams through licensed voice models; these are just some of the areas where responsibly-built AI could benefit music creators.

Unlocking those positive potentials will be impossible without a concerted effort to rebuild consumer trust. “Overall, we would have to say that this expression of dislike for AI-generated music by the public is positive, and is an important driver of change,” says McCabe.

“But what this negative sentiment also signals is that standards and infrastructure for identifying and labelling both the presence and nature of AI in music are needed now more than ever. It is not sufficient to simply say that music is or is not made with AI – we need to describe how the AI has been used in the music creation process.”

There have been various points over the last few years where AI’s progress has felt inescapable – something that will transform our lives irrevocably, whether we like it or not. That may well turn out to be true, but the current moment is also demonstrating that people en masse do have the power to shape how this technology is developed, and to what end.

Our discontent has forced AI companies to change their tune, but only continued pressure will ensure that the new song they’re singing contains more than empty words.

Lunacy – the LA-based music software company behind the plugins Cube and Beam – has announced the launch of Nova, a cloud-based virtual instrument platform.

All of Nova’s instruments can be played in both your browser and your DAW via the free Nova host plugin, which gives you access to a growing library of instruments that currently includes ten titles – five of which are available for free. The plugin is available in AU/VST3/AAX formats for macOS and Windows.

Among the free instruments are Woodland Piano, a characterful sampled upright piano with a granular delay onboard and Chiptuner, a single-oscillator chiptune synth that delivers classic video game nostalgia in spades.

Also available for free is Good Vibes, a sampled vibraphone with four velocity layers and multiple effects, and Zephyr Strings, a string arp instrument based on recordings of the Budapest Strings Chamber Orchestra. Finally, Silhouettes is an ambient instrument with five presets and an XY-pad interface that’s ideal for atmospheric pads and eerie drones.

Alongside these free instruments, Nova’s marketplace features five paid titles that are a little more versatile than the freebies. These include Gleam, a modal resonator synth developed by Rainbow Circuit, Drift Cassette, a dual-deck tape-emulating multisampler, and Growl, a monophonic FM bass synth built for aggressive low-end tones. All five are currently available in a $99 bundle or can be purchased individually for between $19 and $35, and you can test them out for free in your browser.

While Nova currently looks like a relatively conventional host and marketplace for virtual instruments, Lunacy is working on expanding the product to create something much more ambitious.

The plan is to develop a platform for prompt-based plugin development and customization, synchronized across your browser and your DAW. Using Nova's builder, creators will be able to design, edit, share and sell virtual instruments and effects without any programming experience, all with the aim of making plugin creation more accessible. Lunacy says the builder is currently in early access with a small group of developers, but hasn't yet shared a date for an official release.

“Imagine if you could build any musical instrument you can imagine,” Lunacy CEO Casey Kolb said in a press release. “Soon, NOVA will let you. Once it is fully launched later this year, you’ll be able to dream up any sonic idea or playground, then turn that into a music tool, and then share it with the world with a single link.”

“Say someone makes a step sequencer and shares it. You open it and wish you could add a custom shimmer reverb to the end of the signal chain. You can add that, then you can share your new version with a friend, and that friend expands it further. The tools are never fixed; they are always evolving.”

While these capabilities are still a little way off, we’re curious to see how Nova develops. As it stands, the Nova plugin is worth downloading for the five free instruments alone, and we’re told that the library will continue to grow as time goes on.

Find out more on Lunacy's website.

Since launching in 2023, AI music platform Suno has received a steady torrent of criticism from musicians and music fans sceptical of its legally dubious training practices and wary of the growing threat that generative AI poses to the creative industries.

Despite this – and a mounting industry backlash that’s seen multiple lawsuits filed against the company – Suno has grown to serve more than 2 million paid subscribers and raised hundreds of millions in capital investment.

However, it seems that with the release of its latest V6 model, some of Suno’s most enthusiastic supporters are abandoning ship. The response from the platform’s user community has been overwhelmingly negative, with many claiming to have cancelled their subscriptions as a result of the changeover.

Suno unveiled V6 earlier this month, a new suite of music generation models developed in partnership with major record labels following licensing deals inked with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. Suno claims that the V6 models are its best yet, describing them as “faster, more expressive and higher quality” with a more nuanced comprehension of musical language.

Much of the criticism levelled at V6 has centred on its audio quality. One user on Suno’s Reddit page described the results as “muffled, dull and strangely lifeless”, adding that “the vocals are often buried, the high end feels almost completely gone, and the whole mix has that ‘blanket over the speakers’ feeling.”

“I'm giving them a month to fix this problem and if not, I am cancelling my subscription,” another responded in the comments.

Others have found fault with the “creativity” of V6’s output, observing that the music it produces has become more generic and bland, with one user describing the results as “flatter, soulless and more similar-sounding”. Another described “overproduced, heavily compressed and limited tracks that lack even a semblance of melody, grit or soul”.

“I've published two albums made with V5.5 – people tell me the songs, vocals and instrumentation are virtually indistinguishable from ‘real’ music,” one particularly disgruntled user wrote. “I spent the two days of free usage trying all the same styles and prompts in V6 and found it produced muffled, generic, soulless garbage by comparison.”

“I haven’t been able to generate a single track I like,” another complained. “It completely lacks soul and basic understanding of how to compose a track, everything feels so random.”

Many of those that are unhappy with V6 have been calling for Suno to bring back older models that have now been permanently retired since the V6 launch, likely due to the increasing pressure from major record labels and industry players. Despite having settled with WMG, Suno remains embroiled in several long-running legal disputes, including with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

Some users are speculating that the drop in quality and creativity they can hear from V6 is due to a drastically restricted training dataset. Where earlier models were trained on tens of millions of recordings – in Suno’s words, “all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet” – V6 has been limited to licensed material from the catalogues of its industry partners and user data.

While the exact scope of V6’s training data hasn’t been publicly disclosed, it’s undoubtedly smaller and less diverse than the dataset used to train previous models.

Suno’s move towards licensed training data represents a welcome development for musicians and music fans that were uncomfortable with the company’s training practices, but if the negative response to V6 persists, the company may find that its decision to legitimise those practices ends up driving away the very users who helped fuel its rise. For those of us who remain sceptical about what AI music means for musicians and the wider industry, that may not be such a bad thing.

Japanese synth brand Sonicware has launched a new desktop module version of its ELZ_1 synth, ELZ_1 core.

The new module is based on the same digital synthesis engine as Sonicware’s ELZ_1 play, but trims down that instrument’s already somewhat compact form factor to fit into a pint-sized hardware box, ditching the original’s button keyboard in the process.

The ELZ_1 engine has three oscillators, each of which can make use of 18 different synthesis approaches ranging from wavetable synthesis through virtual analogue, FM, physical modelling and more. The instrument’s selection of stock wavetables include 16 officially licensed from Waldorf’s classic PPG and Microwave synths and it can also import wavetables created in Xfer Serum.

Beyond the oscillators, the ELZ_1 features nine varieties of filter and EQ, four types of envelope generator and 49 effect types, the latter of which can be used across four effect slots covering both inserts and sends. The synth also has a 128-step sequencer and 12-mode arpeggiator.

The new ELZ_1 core hardware is designed to be used alongside your existing MIDI controller, sequencer or DAW. It can connect to external gear via its MIDI input and output ports. There are also USB-C and USB-A ports, the first of which can be used for MIDI and audio streaming, the latter as a MIDI host that can also provide bus power.

The new synth has a 2.4-inch colour LCD screen that displays the redesigned Edit UI, which can be manipulated using a bank of five rotaries. Three of these can also be used as macro controls, configurable to adjust up-to three parameters simultaneously across the ELZ_1’s oscillators, synth engine and effects.

Alongside the launch of ELZ_1 core, Sonicware has updated the firmware for all versions of the synth adding a new system of preset tagging and favourites.

If you’re tempted by the look of the ELZ_1 core, you probably don’t want to hang around. Like the ELZ_1 play before it, the synth is being sold in limited, made-to-order batches. According to Sonicware, this decision comes down to the impact of, “Rising component costs and ongoing supply instability, [meaning that] it has become difficult for us to secure the quantities required for mass production.”

ELZ_1 core is available to order for £449/ €539/$499, with the first batch of 50 due to ship mid-October. Head to the Sonicware site for more information.

Three years on from its viral breakout moment, Nopia is finally here… almost. The creators of this much-hyped chord-generating synth have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first production batch of Nopia MK1, and pre-orders are now open with shipping scheduled for early 2027.

Barely 24 hours after its campaign launched, Nopia has already smashed its $50,000 target to reach well beyond $1,000,000 in funding. At the time of writing, the campaign has received more than $1.4m in pledges from over 2000 backers, and there are still 28 days to go.

Considering the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response Nopia received when its prototype was unveiled in 2023, it’s no surprise that support for the instrument has remained strong, but its creators have been blown away by the success of the campaign.

Sharing a statement through Kickstarter yesterday, the Nopia team thanked their backers: “No ad agencies, no massive marketing campaigns, just a community connected through videos, emails, and a deep love for making music,” they said. “To see over 1,800 of you show up for the Nopia MK1 in these first hours is something we will never forget.”

“We honestly didn’t know what to expect today, but that first wave felt like something out of a dream, surreal. You have officially given us the green light to bring the Nopia MK1 to life, and we are going to pour every ounce of our hearts into it. Thank you for trusting us, for opening our emails, and for being here right at zero. This is just the beginning.”

Nopia’s Super Early Bird and Early Bird tiers have both sold out, and there are currently only a handful of units left to purchase in the Standard tier, which are priced at $699. (If you’re interested in picking one up, you better move quickly.)

Designed to produce complex chord progressions without an in-depth understanding of music theory or even any keyboard skills, Nopia is described by its creators as a “semi-modular harmony generator” that taps into our intuitive understanding of the language of harmony.

The instrument’s chord-generating workflow is built around two core controls: the Chord Builder, a one-octave keyboard on the left-hand side, and the Tonal Selector, 12 buttons arranged keyboard-style on the right. The Tonal Selector (along with a major/minor switch) determines the home key and the Chord Builder plays whole chords with each key press, but Nopia has two distinct modes that determine what those chords are.

Real Mode builds each chord around the actual note played on the keyboard: choose C major on the Tonal Selector and a D played on the Chord Builder will play a D minor chord. Play a chromatic note, however, and Nopia will treat it as a major third of a chord, functionally harmonizing it to produce a secondary dominant chord that can then resolve to another chord in your home key: play a G# in C major and you'll get E major, the V of A minor.

If that all sounds like Greek to you, fear not: Nopia’s Static Mode is designed to be more intuitive for those that aren’t familiar with theory or the keyboard. Each key on the Chord Builder represents a degree in the scale chosen with the Tonal Selector, rather than a chord that’s based on the actual note played.

Choose C major on the Tonal Selector, and Nopia's Eb key will play a C major (the I chord) and the Bb key will play an G major (the V chord). If you switch over to E major on the Tonal Selector, though, Eb will play E major and Bb will play B major, the same scale degrees but in a different key. This means that non-keyboard players will only need to remember one layout to play all the chords in any key – a bit like a guitarist with a capo.

Nopia offers players a variety of ways to add flavour and variation to the chords it creates. There’s an Extensions Knob, which can be used to add harmonic colour with 9ths and 11ths, a Shift button that introduces suspensions and 6th chords, and a fader that adjusts the voicing and octave register. A touchplate under the Tonal Selector can pitch-bend chords, while another in the top-right corner can pluck or strum through their individual notes.

All of this combines to produce a complex polyphonic output that feeds into the instrument’s multitimbral sound engine, which draws on a combination of virtual analogue synthesis and samples across four independent modules: Keys, Bass, Arp and Pad. (Each module gets its own MIDI output and can be routed out to external instruments, or out to your DAW over USB-C.) Samples can be loaded into Nopia’s internal memory via USB-C and synth patches can be tinkered with using a browser-based editor.

That's not all: there's a decent selection of effects onboard, including filter, delay, reverb, saturation and tape emulation, along with a Beat Repeat-style glitch effect. You also get a three-slot looper with parameter automation and overdubbing for building layered performances.

Overall, it's a brilliantly innovative concept, and it’s not hard to see why Nopia has resonated with so many music-makers. Workflow aside, its preset library is stacked with a diverse array of sounds, from sampled pianos, Rhodes-style keys and strings through to virtual analogue pads, plucks and basses, all sharing a subtly organic and textural character.

Nopia's distinctive visual design also helped to catch the attention of viewers in its video debut: crafted from solid wood and anodised aluminium with a minimalist, pastel-green aesthetic, it’s completely free of any labels, with only a small display indicating the chords you’re playing.

Nopia was created by a small and independent team headed up by Argentinian musicians and designers Martin Grieco and Rocío Gal. While its creators were visiting MusicRadar HQ earlier this year, we had the chance to shoot a first-look video demo that shows what Nopia can do.

During their visit, Martin and Rocío told us more about the inspiration behind the instrument, the challenges they faced during its three-year development, and their plans for the future.

Where did the idea behind Nopia come from?

Martin: “The core concept behind Nopia stemmed from something that’s happened to me ever since I was a kid. I would listen to music and recognise the chord progressions, but I didn’t even know what a chord was – I learned that many years later. But I would hear them and say to a friend, ‘dude, this song is the same as this one!’ It was maybe in another key with a different tempo or different instruments, but I would recognise the progressions. And at some point, I realised that not many people were paying attention to this specifically in music.

“When I studied music, I managed to put a name to those feelings, but I was always very intrigued by the fact that there was no machine that took advantage of all the theory that explains harmony. There’s so much theory around harmony, but in essence, it’s a very simple thing. The idea was to build an interface that takes advantage of that and gives you the possibility of performing with it.

“There’s something physical about the nature of combining notes together, and I always felt like chord machines behaved more like a spreadsheet. ‘Okay, here’s your C major, C minor, C major seventh…’ and whatnot. Our brains and our ears don’t really work like that – Nopia was built from trying to mimic what happens in the ear.”

Can you take us back to the story behind the first prototype?

Martin: “I was doing live sets, and I found that harmony was such a difficult thing, because I needed two hands either playing the guitar or the piano but I didn't have an extra hand to do sound design or synth stuff. So the idea was, ‘Can I build something that would allow me to play complex chord progressions with one hand and to leave another one available for expression?’

“The idea of how to condense chromatic tonal harmony into one octave came to me in a second. The Extensions Knob, the Tonal Selector, it was like... ‘Okay, that’s how it should be!’ I grabbed my guitar and I recorded each chord one by one in Ableton Live: the bass, the arp, the pads.

“I was using it to play live, but I had it mapped to a MIDI controller. It was funny, people would say, ‘Man, I didn’t know you played the piano’, and I said ‘Didn’t you see I was playing one note at a time?!’ It started out as an Ableton Rack, and when I started talking with Ro, the original idea was to make it a VST. But Ro was like, ‘No, this should be a physical thing’.

“I come from a music and production background, but I was doing a postgrad on Expanded Music which had some electronics work, so I was starting to get into that world, and Ro comes from graphic design and industrial design. That’s how we built the first prototype, as a summer project for an instrument design contest.”

When did you decide to create the video that went viral?

Martin: “We would tell our friends about this idea of this instrument and nobody would understand it. I would talk about secondary dominants, modal interchange, the extensions and the tonal centre… but people would just be like, ‘What are you building?!’ What we really wanted with the video was to just show our friends what the idea was.”

Ro: “We were spending all our time inside a cave doing this and making the video, and nobody understood why [laughs]. It was like, ‘Okay, watch the video if you want to know what we’re doing.’”

Martin: “It was insane. We uploaded it, and boom! The next day, we opened the computer and it already had 20,000 views. It got to a million views in three days. It was like, ‘what is going on?!’ More than the views, the interesting thing was what people were saying in the comments. They were saying in words much more precisely than us what we were trying to explain.”

Ro: “We got a lot of messages, we talked with many people, and it was like, ‘Okay, this is beyond just the viral thing’. There are many things that go viral, but people’s words had a lot of meaning. So we said, ‘Okay, we should do something with this.’”

How did things unfold from there?

Ro: “We started to build it together. There’s so many things involved in making an instrument: production, design, electronics, engineering, firmware. We met amazing people, and we’re a bigger team now, and we’re here to keep the instrument alive. Everyone knows a lot about their own subject, and each of us are working on so many things.”

Martin: “At first, everybody said, ‘Don’t design your own knobs, don’t design your own buttons, don’t make your own keybed’. But we tried working with off-the-shelf stuff and it didn’t work. There was something about getting the feel just right, the tactile thing, which took a lot of time to get right.”

Ro: “We didn’t want to change the spirit of it, and that was the hardest thing, because it’s not the main way these things are done.”

Martin: “The industrial designers, they wanted to kill us when we were like ‘No, it has to be real wood!’ [laughs] Charlie and Vicky, shout out to them.”

I imagine you must have felt a lot of pressure after the video blew up?

Ro: “I can’t explain how much expectation and pressure there was. We were making it because we felt it was important and it was something that we wanted to play. But the pressure was also from people thinking that we were just a company launching a product and didn’t want to sell it, or something like that.

“It wasn’t an advertisement, it was more just like: ‘We have this idea, and we want to make it!’ It’s a lot of pressure. We live in a rollercoaster all the time.”

Martin: “I got really confused at first, because I was like, ‘Okay, we’re designing an instrument’. We uploaded a video, a lot of people wanted it, and suddenly everybody was calling it ‘your product’ and ‘your launch video’. I was like, ‘What are you calling a product?’ It’s an instrument, and it wasn’t a launch video – it was just showing an idea of what could be!

“But then, we take things really seriously, and we’re like, ‘Okay, it has to be as robust as possible’. It can’t fail. You need to be playing live and you need to know that this thing is not going to crash. It has to be in real time, it can’t have latency. All of these things that are essential.”

Where did the name Nopia come from?

Martin: “It didn’t have a name for a long time, and then randomly, a friend of my mum said ‘You have to put a big sign on the instrument that says ‘yhis is not a piano’’ – because everybody would call it ‘your little piano’. That idea resonated with me and I started thinking about that. Not a piano… no, piano… Nopia.

“There’s this funny thing in Argentine slang where you can flip the syllables of a word and it will mean the same thing. For example, pizza can become ‘zapi’. So tango players, old-school piano guys, will refer to the piano as a ‘nopia’. So people from Argentina will recognise it immediately. It’s not a piano, but it sort of is!”

Building chords with Nopia obviously works in a different way to a piano, but you’ve still got the one-octave keyboard there that people will recognise…

Martin: “At first, Ro was like, ‘Why are there even piano keys?’

Ro: “The question is, ‘Why is it a piano instead of just buttons in the same arrangement?’ But Martin said humanity has arrived at this layout over four centuries, this layout is important. We don’t have to change everything. [laughs]”

Along with the underlying concept, the aesthetic seems to be something that caught people’s interest early on. Can you tell us more about the visual design?

Ro: “There are so many things... one of the main things is that there’s not a grid of buttons or knobs in the same place. If you close your eyes, you can remember that there are different groups [of controls]. One of the main ideas was to create something very tactile that you can remember. I try to learn to play instruments with my eyes closed – when you’re playing live and it’s really dark, it’s nice to just remember. That’s why it also has a lot of space in between [the controls], which for industrial design is kind of weird.”

“Also there’s this no-label thing. A lot of people have said to us that they really like that it doesn’t have labels.”

Martin: “As Ro said, the original idea was that you should be able to play live with the smoke machine and the lights, and know where everything is. That’s why it originally didn’t need labels. I’ve tried one with labels, and I really love them, but nobody else does. We took it to an event, and the first thing people said was ‘Please don’t add labels!’”

Ro: “You have these dynamic labels, so each time you enter anything, you will see it on the display, and you’re not working blind. Maybe you can just make your own label and put it there if you want to remember. Like when people have their own instruments and they add labels and stickers to make it personal… this kind of blank space is its personality.”

How about the pastel colour? It’s an interesting choice.

Martin: “Ro was like ‘Make it white, man!’ [laughs] But I said it has to be that shade of green. It was inspired by a Fender Stratocaster, the green and the wood, but the closest we could find with spray paint was this horrible shade of green. It really was horrible. Then a friend of Ro’s, Matt Miller, told us to go to this paint shop and ask for a catalogue. I was there at the shop, I looked back at Ro and I’d never seen her eyes so big. She was like ‘it’s this one!’”

Designing your first instrument must be quite the learning curve. What was the most challenging stage of the process?

Martin: “Everything, absolutely everything. What thing wasn’t challenging? [laughs]”

Ro: “Everything, because even the tiniest things are a huge process and learning curve. We learned that it’s better to make technical decisions first. We made the layout and the aesthetic decisions first, and then we entered the technical side, and that’s very difficult – but we managed to make it.”

Martin: “Like I said, everyone was telling us, ‘Don’t design your own buttons, don’t design your own knobs’. Three years later, I’d have said the same thing to myself, but I’m glad that we did it. We’ve learned how difficult making a hardware instrument is, because it’s mission-critical. It can’t fail, but also it’s real-time. Everything you’re doing, it has to do so much in milliseconds, microseconds even.”

What does the future look like beyond Nopia MK1? Is a MK2 too far ahead to think about?

Martin: “There’s already a list for MK2. I want to make the MK2 so bad!”

Ro: “When Nopia meets the people that will be playing it, there will be so many things for us to learn and to make better.”

Martin: “That’s going to inform the MK2 much more than my list! But originally Nopia was part of a suite of instruments. With this MIDI controller I was telling you about, I also had a module for drums, for polyrhythms, for sampling. We have some prototypes for the other instruments – I made one for Ro’s birthday. So it’s a mix of a MK2, and hopefully expanding on the family.”

Visit Nopia's website to find out more.

Brian May has said that he has “changed his mind” about AI – now he’s firmly in the anti camp.

In an interview with Absolute Radio, the Queen guitarist said that at first he thought that it was “just like the Industrial Revolution” and thus inevitable. Now he feels “we have to resist, and we have to limit its scope. We have to control it very, very seriously and very quickly."

A large part of his antipathy is to data centres and their potentially destructive effect on the environment - May has long been something of a conservationist. "I hate the business of these data centres coming and destroying our countryside,” he continued.

“This is a big threat, in my opinion, and it will only get bigger and bigger and bigger. The more you give, the more they'll take, and they destroy communities. They destroy the environment. We cannot have this happening in our country. It's already been destroying communities in America.”

“So my message to Andy Burnham is: please, this is your job now. You have to put a moratorium on these data centres right now before it's too late."

But that's just one of May's AI worries. "AI has a lot more issues than that," he continued. "To me, there are inherent dangers in creating an intelligence which is able to possibly eventually control us. It's a very real threat.

"Unfortunately, they will have a lot of power, though, because they will be able to — well, reverse the control, and it's already happening. They're already breaking out. So we've got to think very seriously, in my opinion."

And it seems May’s opposition to AI may end up quashing any faint possibility of a Queen avatar show ever happening.

“Yes, we looked at it very seriously, particularly after I saw the Sphere and what The Eagles did (there), which I thought was amazing. And I spent a lot of time planning out what I thought could be a Queen show. I've kind of backed off now because you can't do it without massive use of AI, with all the consequences of that.”

“Now, in some ways, I don't wanna be stealing the work of other people,” the guitarist mused. “If you're stealing your own work, I'm not quite sure where I stand on it, 'cause you would be stealing from the Queen oeuvre, you know, which maybe is okay because that's ours.

"But at the same time, you're adding to the stresses that AI is putting on the world. So, I don't know. I'm not so keen as I was. I think it would be great to have a permanent place where people could go and feel like they're seeing us play live in our peak, maybe all over the world, maybe at all points in time. The doors are open, but I don't know if we're gonna walk through."

Universal Audio has announced the launch of Luna 3.0, a major update to the company’s DAW that introduces a raft of enhancements and new features, including AI-powered stem separation, lyric transcription and chord extraction, alongside Luna Play, a simplified recording mode designed to help you get ideas down fast.

Originally released in 2020 as a low-latency recording environment for owners of UA hardware, Luna was made available free to all Mac users in 2023 before a Windows version was launched in 2024. The software has a number of UA's analogue emulations embedded into its mixing workflow, integrating the sound of classic channel strips, mixing consoles and tape machines directly into the recording environment.

The new Luna 3.0 is available in both free and paid tiers; the paid-for version has now been renamed Luna Studio (formerly known as Luna Pro) and includes some of the more advanced features unveiled in the update. Luna Free has also received a significant overhaul, though – let’s dig into what’s new.

Available across both tiers, Luna Play is a new recording mode within the software that strips back the complexity of a regular DAW to offer a simpler and more streamlined workflow. Described as something like a “voice memo app” designed for “easy, immediate and focused creativity”, Play can automatically detect the instrument you’re recording and the tempo you’re playing, set appropriate levels and suggest presets from UA plugins – all you have to do is play. (Check out the video below for a demo.)

Luna Play is also equipped with the new stem separation functionality that you’ll find in both Luna Free and Luna Studio. The free tier gets 4-track separation covering Drums, Vocals, Bass and Other, while the paid-for version gives you two extra tracks: Guitar and Piano.

Also new in Luna Free are welcome improvements to a number of the DAW’s more bread-and-butter features. You get an overhauled Piano Roll that provides a dedicated MIDI editing workspace alongside the main timeline, Folder Tracks that organise tracks and route audio to folders, an Adaptive Grid on the timeline that adjusts to your zoom level, and more nice-to-haves like a Strip Silence tool, automation for clip gain and the click track, alongside rulers for chords, keys and time signatures.

Another addition is Record FX, a workflow previously only available to Apollo owners that allows you to record directly through native plugins. Overall, that’s an impressive amount of firepower for a free piece of software, especially considering that Luna Free was already one of the more capable free DAWs available to budget-conscious music-makers.

The updates exclusive to Luna Studio include audio-to-MIDI functionality and new AI-powered lyric transcription and chord extraction tools developed by Moises. The paid-for version now comes with several plugins you won’t find in Luna Free: Topline Vocal Tune, UA’s simplified vocal pitch correction plugin, along with two third-party instruments, Celemony Tonalic Essential and Dreamtonics Synthesizer V 2 Core. Luna Studio is priced at $199.

Universal Audio has also unveiled a new subscription plan, UAD Spark Studio, priced at $19.99/month or $149.99/year. A subscription will give you access to Luna Studio and a collection of 70 native UAD plugins, including some of the company’s most popular analogue emulations – covering classic compressors, channel trips, preamps, EQs, tape machines, delays, reverbs and amps – and seven instrument plugins.

Head over to Universal Audio’s website to find out more.

In 2019, a technician found himself in an unusual situation. While working on the restoration of an original Buchla Model 100 modular synthesizer, he realized that he was, in fact, getting high. The nine-hour trip was the result of trying to remove a crystalline substance from the interior of one of the modules – later testing revealed it to be LSD.

No one is quite sure how the acid got inside the synth, but at some point, a previous owner clearly dabbled in both modular synthesis and psychedelic drugs, a concrete example of how music-making and psychoactive substances have historically gone hand in hand. But are there tangible benefits to this beyond just having a good time in the studio? A growing body of research says yes.

We tend to think of psychedelic music as beginning in the 1960s, as exemplified by songs like The Beatles’ I Am the Walrus, but humans have been ingesting psychedelic drugs and listening to music for, well, ever. “Music and psychedelics have been intertwined throughout the existence of Homo sapiens, from the early shamanic rituals of the Americas and Africa to the modern use of psychedelic-assisted therapy,” says the study Psychedelia: The interplay of music and psychedelics.

Of course, listening to music while under the influence of psychedelics is not restricted to religious or therapeutic settings, as ‘60s concerts by The Grateful Dead (whose sound engineer, Owsley Stanley, was also known for his home-brewed and particularly potent LSD) and modern rave scenes will attest to.

“Music has been thought to be of great importance when taking psychedelics both within traditional settings and within more modern contexts such as raves – where masses ‘trip out’ not only from the mind-altering substances they consume but also from the techno music they are surrounded by,” say the authors of the study.

There’s no doubt that listening to music under the influence can have a powerful effect on the mind, but are there also benefits to creating music in a psychedelic state?

If you’ve noticed a renewed interest in psychedelics in recent years, particularly among the scientific community, you’re not wrong. In the year 2000, researchers at Johns Hopkins University received approval to begin testing psychedelics on human subjects. Since then, Johns Hopkins’ Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles – and that’s just the one location.

One area of study that is yielding fascinating results is the role that psychedelics can play in improving creativity. According to an article in Association for Psychological Science, studies have offered intriguing clues about the relationship between the two. “The psychedelic experience feels very creative by nature, in that it can provoke novel ideas and insights, intense emotional experiences, and hallucinations that can make the world feel brand new and full of possibilities,” the article says.

In another study, researchers found that lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) impacted creative thinking in unexpected ways, resulting in ‘pattern break’, which was reflected in things like novelty and surprise, and increased symbolic thinking.

Another study found that ingesting ayahuasca, a tea containing the powerful hallucinogen DMT, enhances divergent thinking, a thought process that can generate many unique ideas from a single starting point. This is supported by another study that showed that past psychedelic drug users exhibit better divergent thinking skills than non-users.

Psilocybin’s effects on cognition and creativity, a review study conducted in 2022, discovered that while large doses of magic mushrooms tended to impair cognitive performance and creativity, microdoses tended toward creative enhancement. “When it was a macrodose, which is a very large dose, cognitive functions and creativity were impaired,” Baeleigh VanderZwaag of the study explains.

“When it was a microdose, a dose considered to be sub-hallucinogenic, there were generally more positive effects on creative enhancement.” This suggests that microdoses could be useful when engaging in direct, creative work.

When asked if psychedelic substances like psilocybin could help with music production, Baeleigh answers, “There have been some new and emerging studies since we published our paper that are expanding to different levels of creativity.

"Creativity is actually a complex construct and I imagine music production taps into multiple aspects of it. That being said, some of the studies in our review did show improvements to some facets of creativity so it’s possible it might translate to creativity in the context of music-making.“

Musician and producer Pete Kember has been mining a psychedelic vein in his music for the entirety of his career. A founding member of trance rock band Spacemen 3, he’s since pioneered a kind of modular synthesizer psychedelia, and produced and collaborated with likeminded artists such as Panda Bear and MGMT.

For Pete, there are clear benefits to working with psychedelics when making music. “I think they can make quantum leaps possible and open the possibilities,” he says. “Look at I Am the Walrus. They can inspire a lot with sound effects too. The distortions of perception to your auditory input can be very inspiring.”

Psychedelics have played a part in Pete’s music-making since the beginning. “Of course,” he answers when asked if working with psychedelics aided in the development of his creativity. “It was what I was looking to incorporate from very early on. I try to make music that incorporates shifts of consciousness, and that only came from the use of drugs.”

When asked his psychedelic of choice, he responds, “I don’t do it so much these days, but DMT was always my go-to for evaluating. It gives a different perspective that is useful to have. Anything that changes your perception is useful in that role.”

Though Pete relied on psychoactive substances to enhance the creative dimension of the process, he says he would never partake before taking on tasks such as mixing and mastering. “I would never use [drugs] in those situations,” he stresses. “Using them in mixdown or mastering would be too misleading. They rearrange your auditory cortex too much for those critical points in the music.”

One artist who doesn’t shy away from psychedelics – even during technical work – is Andrei Olenev. As Iterate, the electronic artist produces a heady spin on bass music, one that is deeply psychedelic by design. “All of my music, and much of my life, has been linked to psychedelics,” he explains. “Psychedelics led me to wanting to make music. All of my creative endeavors are done in a psychedelic way.”

Much as Baeleigh suggested, Andrei likes to work on music while microdosing either LSD or psilocybin. “I generally take amounts that are somewhere in between a microdose and a standard hit,” he says. “The dosage depends on what I'm hoping to get from it. A sub-threshold microdose can be great in general for focus, clarity of mind and creativity.”

There are times, however, when he prefers to up the dosage, as he feels it helps him get into the zone. “It sounds a bit cliche,” he says, “but I really feel like it helps induce a flow state. I can, for example, be at a point with a track where I have several elements in place, and I'm not really sure of the direction to go.

"Getting into a psychedelic state can make the whole thing fall into place. The idea is there, I'm tapped into it, and I'm putting it all together.”

Unlike Pete, Andrei finds mixing and mastering can benefit from psychedelic assistance. “It can be interesting with psychedelics because they amplify your senses,” he explains. “You might be more sensitive to something like harsh frequencies. I don't think it would be good to always mix on psychedelics, but much like people test their tracks in different listening environments, working on a mix while in a semi-psychedelic state can be good. Especially if the music you are making will be played at psychedelic festivals, or heard by people at home on psychedelics.”

While psychedelics may have the potential to enhance creativity, there's always the possibility that things could go in the other direction. Unsurprisingly, the amount that's ingested is a decisive factor. In the same way that your performance will be adversely affected the more alcohol you consume, the more of a drug that you take can prevent any constructive work from getting done, or even impair your abilities entirely.

Baeleigh VanderZwaag’s study found that when it comes to mushrooms, the potential lies in the amount of the dose. “Given psilocybin’s hallucinogenic nature,” the study says, “it is unsurprising that macrodoses produced primarily negative acute effects on cognitive performance and creativity.” Interestingly, it was the microdoses that appeared to yield creative benefits.

Furthermore, researchers from Essex University studying the impact of drugs and alcohol on artistic creativity found that, overall, getting high doesn’t make you more creative.

“What we hear about in the media is people who successfully enhance their creativity using drugs, but you don’t hear about the examples where someone took drugs and passed out and therefore their creativity was lower,” the University of Essex's Dr Paul Hanel told The Guardian. “It doesn’t do anything for creativity. People don’t benefit from it – it just has no effect at all.

Regardless of their effects on creativity, psychedelics should always be approached with caution. For example, psychedelic therapists recommend always tripping with someone sober to talk you down in case things take a bad turn. This might not always be possible for a studio session.

When it comes to its use in the studio, Pete Kember advises taking any interactions with drugs seriously. “Psychedelic drugs should be respected and only used after some research,” he says. “And with a support network, period.”

He also recommends entering from the shallow end of the psychotropic pool: “Start with milder psychedelics and inform yourself as to the basic protocols of using.” He also mentions the importance of set and setting in the experience, your mindset (set) and the place where you do it (setting). If you are anxious or in a space where you aren’t completely comfortable, things can go awry – not something you want in a working musical environment.

Andrei cautions to start with small doses. “If someone is not experienced with psychedelics, I would definitely not take more than a microdose in the studio,” he says. “If you get very high, it's hard to work on music at a computer.”

He also highlights personal mindset as something to remain aware of. “For some people there could be risks, especially with large doses,” he cautions. “People with a personal or family history of mental illness should be very cautious with psychedelics, if not avoid them altogether.”

When asked if there are any dangers to working under the influence of mushrooms in the studio, Baeleigh VanderZwaag responds: “At this point, the research with psilocybin suggests that it is relatively safe for healthy populations.

"More recent research continues to suggest that psilocybin is well-tolerated, but there are certain medical conditions and psychiatric histories that are excluded in the research study. It’s always best to discuss with a healthcare provider to determine if it will be safe for any individual person.”

Finally, Pete cautions against thinking of psychedelics as something you can rely on for an instant boost of creativity. “I don’t believe that it’s instant inspiration,” he stresses. “You have to respect it deeply. It inspires different things in different people, as you might expect. It’s a vast and varied experience, and what it inspires should be too.”

Note that this article is intended for information purposes only. MusicRadar in no way condones any dangerous or illegal activity and this should not be misconstrued as such.

Audient has announced the launch of Horizon, a new flagship Thunderbolt audio interface range that the British company says has been five years in development.

The Horizon range is made up of three models, each housed in a 1U chassis and built on the same core platform with 32-bit AD/DA converters that deliver 133dB of dynamic range.

Horizon 8P is the tracking interface, a 24-in/32-out unit with eight of Audient's Console mic preamps onboard, offering 75dB of gain and based on the same discrete Class-A design used in the company's ASP8024-HE console. The 8P's preamps also feature ORBIT Control, a variable impedance switch with three settings that can bring out different characteristics from your mic collection.

8P is equipped with eight XLR/TRS combo jacks for mic- and line-level inputs, which are also accessible via two DB25 connectors that handle eight line-level outputs. An additional 16 ins and outs are available via ADAT, alongside four TRS outputs. You also get two Hi-Z instrument inputs and dual headphone outputs on the front panel.

Built for a different workflow, Horizon 16 and Horizon 32 are converters with no mic preamps aimed at those who get their analogue character from outboard gear.

The Horizon 16 offers 32 channels over four DB25 connectors for a total of 34-in/34-out, and the Horizon 32 doubles the channel count across eight DB25 connectors for a total of 50-in/50-out. Along with their ADAT connections, both have dedicated stereo monitor outputs and mix bus capture inputs, so console owners can record a stereo mix without using up any channels.

The Horizon range features no onboard DSP, instead relying on host processing and a Thunderbolt 3 architecture that's said to achieve 0.99ms round-trip latency at 192kHz, a figure the company tells us was measured in real-world use.

"As Apple Silicon and modern host processing get more capable, the value proposition of the DSP walled-garden model continues to diminish," Audient’s Chief Product Officer Andrew Allen said in a statement. "Engineers no longer need to lock themselves into proprietary plugin ecosystems to get pro-level performance."

Up to four units can be daisy-chained on a single macOS driver, maxing out at 200x200 I/O with four Horizon 32s, and all three models offer dual ADAT expansion, BNC word clock, selectable reference levels and digital recall of input gain and system settings.

Audient's control software has also been rebuilt from the ground up for the range, with a full routing matrix, four recallable cue mixes and custom monitoring profiles for speaker layouts up to 9.1.6.

The Horizon 8P and Horizon 16 are priced at £2,199/€2,499/$3,499, and the Horizon 32 at £2,799/€3,299/$4,299. All three are available to purchase from September 28th with a three-year warranty.

Find out more on Audient's website.

There’s no shortage of plugin brands touting machine learning tech right now, but Norwegian outfit Acon Digital has proved itself to be one of the most adept in the field.

Last year’s innovative Remix:Drums, for example, put a uniquely-focused spin on stem separation, applying the ubiquitous tech specifically to percussion in order to allow live remixing and editing of already mixed drum parts. It proved to be one of our favourite software releases of the year.

Now the brand has returned its focus to its longstanding audio editing, mastering and restoration application, Acoustica, for what Acon claims is the most significant update in the company’s history.

Acoustica 8 updates and expands upon its predecessor’s suite of tools, working the latest versions of Acon Digital’s AI and machine learning algorithms throughout. This includes overhauls to the DeNoise and DeHum modules, which are now machine learning-powered. The DeClip and DeClip tools, meanwhile, get new, streamlined interfaces.

Version 8 also includes Extract:Dialogue 2, which introduces individual sliders and sensitivity controls for adjusting voice, noise and reverb elements. This is joined by AudioFill, which can intelligently close gaps in audio content and as of this update promises to fill larger regions for “smoother, more natural repairs.”

Acoustica 8 also features some more fundamental updates. The entire UI has been overhauled, adding a new launch page, customisable toolbar and dockable workspace. The application also supports immersive audio, allowing for up to 9.1.6 channels, including Dolby Atmos.

There are updates to the application’s spectral editor too. This gains a new ‘select similar’ tool, along with adjustable feathering for smoother edits, and improved visualisation of the stereo field.

"Acoustica 8 is a result of listening closely to our customers and the wider audio community to fully understand the technical challenges they face every day,” says Acon Digital CEO Joel Heatley. “It is our most ambitious release to date, combining best-in-class tools with pricing unmatched in our industry."

As with previous versions, Acoustica 8 is available in several tiered editions. These start at £119/$149 for the Standard edition, rising to £239/$299 for the Premium and £359/$449 for the Ultimate editions. Each tier has differing levels of flexibility – Standard, for example, is stereo only, with no immersive support.

Acoustica 8 runs as a standalone app or as AU/VST3/AAX plugins (depending on the edition). As of this version, the application supports ARA2.

Head to the Acon Digital site for more information on each edition.

Arturia has updated its top-end desktop audio interface, Audiofuse Studio, launching a Rev 2 edition with ‘optimised’ preamps and an upgraded Bluetooth module.

Among the crowded audio interface market, Audiofuse Studio stands out for the breadth of its flexibility, offering a wide array of I/O capabilities that aim to cater for any and all studio needs. It features a total of 18 inputs, eight of which are analogue inputs on the device itself, the rest provided by digital I/O.

Of those analogue inputs, four are combo mic/line/instrument inputs along the front edge, each equipped with a DiscretePRO preamp. Those preamps have, according to Arturia, been upgraded for the Rev 2 model, now offering more headroom and extended gain range (-129dBu EIN, 119dB dynamic range, to be precise about it).

The remaining analogue line inputs sit along the device’s rear panel. Inputs 5 and 6 can also be switched to make use of an integrated phono/RIAA preamp, allowing for connection of a vinyl turntable,

On the output side, the Audiofuse Studio has four line outputs and two aux reamping outputs. There are also two independently controlled headphone outputs with integrated talkback and direct monitoring.

Beyond its analogue connections, the interface packs several digital connectivity options. This includes eight channels of ADAT inputs and outputs, along with S/PDIF input/output or Word Clock input/output/thru.

The device has a primary USB-C port for connection to a host computer, plus three additional USB 2 ports that allow it to act as a USB hub. There are also 3.5mm MIDI input and output ports.

Audiofuse Studio can also stream audio via its integrated Bluetooth module. This is another area the Arturia has upgraded for Rev 2. The module now supports AAC, aptX along with aptX HD and aptX Low Latency.

AudioFuse can be configured and controlled using the associated Audiofuse Control Center software, which can be instantly accessed by pressing the Arturia logo on the hardware. Alongside the launch of the Rev 2 interface, Audiofuse Control Center has been updated to version 2.5, which is free for all Audiofuse users and introduces features including preset import and export.

With its abundance of connectivity and customisation options, Audiofuse Studio remains one of the most versatile interfaces you’ll find at this price point. Its usefulness is enhanced further still by a generous bundle of Arturia plugins, including Analog Lab Intro and a selection of preamps, compressors, delays, reverbs and modulation effects drawn from the brand’s excellent FX Collection bundle.

Audiofuse Studio Rev 2 is out now, priced at £849/999€/$1,199 USD. Head to the Arturia site for more information.

Kevin Saunderson, techno pioneer, one third of the Belleville Three and all round dance music legend is to give a Roland 909 workshop this coming Saturday (ie tomorrow, 12 September).

It’s being facilitated with the Underground Music Academy, which is a Detroit-based gathering space for “educators, artists and visionary thinkers”. Saunderson, you’d have to say, ticks all those boxes.

Anyway, if you’ve recently purchased the iconic drum machine, or you simply want to improve your skills, this is an invaluable chance to learn from a master. Saunderson will be looking at both the original TR-909 and the new TR-1000, and even if you own other drum machines, there’s doubtless loads to pick up.

The workshop will apparently dive into sequencing, sound shaping, and performance techniques while connecting the history of the 909 to where the technology is heading today.

And it’s absolutely free! There are both in-person slots and online options. If you happen to be in Detroit tomorrow and want an in person ticket, you need to move fast as they are almost sold out. Or you can simply log into the stream (above) which will be going live on Saturday.

Registration is taking place now but the deadline is midnight tonight Detroit time. It all takes place at 3pm – 6pm tomorrow Detroit time (that’s 9pm – 12am in London or 10pm – 1am if you’re in Berlin). For more information head over to undergroundmusicacademy.com.

Serato has unveiled the latest major update to its DJ software, Serato DJ 5.0, which has just arrived in public Beta.

The headline feature of this new version is a significant overhaul to the application’s beat detection technology. This arrives in the form of new Lucid Beatgrids, described by Serato as its “most accurate and intuitive beatgrid technology to date”.

These beatgrids make use of new analysis processes, designed to adapt better to tracks with fluctuations in BPM, resulting in less manual editing and better reliability when playing, for example, classic funk, soul or disco tracks not recorded to click track or DAW timeline.

According to Serato, both the ‘flexible’ and ‘fixed’ modes in v5 offer more accurate and reliable analysis. Lucid Beatgrids also offer improved labelling and customization, as well as improved editing controls and better labelling of BPM changes.

The other major change for Serato DJ 5.0 is improved integration of streaming services. As with previous versions, users with the relevant subscriptions can mix with tracks from Apple Music, Tidal, Beatport, Soundcloud and Spotify within Serato DJ. As of this update, however, it's possible to mix and match tracks from different streaming platforms – and your own library – all without signing in and out of different accounts.

In the library, each streaming service now appears as its own crate, with a new provider search dropdown added, making it easier to find tracks across different services. The library also now displays BPM and key information for streaming service tracks before analysis, for better on-the-fly selection and preparation.

Both of these feature upgrades come to both Serato DJ Pro and the free Serato DJ Lite. Pro users get an additional new feature in the form of Cue Loops, which lets users save loops as cue points, allowing DJs to easily jump to a pre-defined loop point and activate it on the fly.

Serato 5.0 is in public Beta now. You can learn more about the Serato DJ 5.0 Beta at Serato’s The Drop blog and join the public Beta here.

Soundcraft has announced the Signature Plus Series, a new range of analogue mixing consoles that succeeds the company's Signature line, aimed at studio engineers, live performers, podcasters and content creators.

There are four models, offering 12, 16, 22 and 32 channels, and Soundcraft says the feature set is consistent across the range, meaning you don't lose functionality by opting for a smaller desk. The 12- and 16-channel models are equipped with rackmount ears.

The channel strips are built around Soundcraft's Ghost mic preamps, which the company says deliver smooth overload behaviour and rich harmonics while providing up to 65db of gain. These are paired with Sapphyre EQ and dbx one-knob compressors with harmonic enhancement, and insert points are onboard for patching in outboard gear.

Signature Plus’s headline feature is the built-in Lexicon hardware effects processor, which Soundcraft claims is unique at this price point, and now features both preset storage and Tap Tempo. The effects available span multiple styles of reverb, delay, and modulation effects.

Soundcraft has also redesigned the layout of the mixers, separating the input and output sections to make navigation more intuitive. Colour-coded buttons and what the company is calling "squircle" knobs are designed to make adjustments quicker and more accurate in low-light and high-pressure environments.

Recording and playback are handled by a 4x4 USB-C interface capable of operating at up to 192kHz. USB returns can be routed into channel strips like any other input, or sent directly to the main output for playback between acts or DJ sets.

Elsewhere, there are four aux sends with a Mix to Auxes function, a Listen bus for monitoring individual channels without disturbing the main mix, and Talkback To routing. Headphone and control room outputs each get configurable monitoring options covering mute, dim and mono sum, while a QR code on the mixer links to manuals, training videos and support resources.

“Developing this new series was first and foremost driven from listening closely to what engineers and content creators needed,” HARMAN Product Manager Scott Wood said in a press release.

“We included all the features that users can most often utilize and added many others they always wanted to. With this lineup and this feature-set, users have everything they need to bring out their best work.”

The Soundcraft Signature Plus 12 is priced at £699/$799, the 16 at £799/$899, the 22 at £1,099/$1,199 and the 32 at £1,299/$1,499.

Find out more on Soundcraft's website.

Elektron has launched Outbox 8, a new eight-channel audio/CV breakout box designed to be a complement to the company’s range of hardware grooveboxes. The hardware unit, which we first spotted at Superbooth back in May, features eight fully assignable outputs designed to transmit both audio and control voltage signals.

Outbox 8 is not restricted to working exclusively with Elektron gear, but its most obvious use case is as a way to expand the limited number of physical output found on devices such as Digitone II and Digitakt II – each of which features 16 potential synth or sample voices but just one stereo analogue output.

Although most current gen Elektron instruments can already output individual audio tracks via USB, doing so relies on the use of Elektron’s Overbridge plugin or connection to a USB host in order for the instrument to function as an audio interface. With Outbox 8, users can achieve the same functionality without the need to use a computer as an intermediary.

According to Elektron, “Outbox 8 enables you to route individual tracks, stems, or submixes for external processing, mixing, or performance – creating a flexible bridge between your Elektron workflow and the wider world of sound and control.”

As well as routing audio, Outbox 8 also functions as a MIDI-to-CV converter, allowing users to route digital control outputs from a sequencer, DAW or controller through the device’s outputs as an analogue signal, which can be routed to a hardware synth or modular rig.

Outbox 8 can also be used as a portable audio interface, paired with a laptop, tablet or smartphone for a compact multi-output setup.

Most Elektron grooveboxes will allow users to configure the routing and output type directly from the menu of the connected instrument. When used with third-party devices, Outbox 8 can be configured using Elektron’s browser-based app.

With their deep sequencers and modular approach to audio generation, the current generation of Elektron grooveboxes – which also includes the likes of Syntakt, Tonverk, Model:Cycles, Model:Samples, Analog Rytm and Analog Four – are popular choices for electronic live performers and ‘DAWless’ music makers. With its promise for plug-and-play expansion of those devices’ audio and sequencing capabilities, Outbox 8 looks like a potentially smart investment.

Outbox 8 is out now priced at 299€/£259/$349 USD. For more information head to the Elektron site.

AI music platform Suno has unveiled a new suite of music generation models, the first to be developed in partnership with major record labels following its licensing agreements with Warner Music Group and BMG.

Suno claims that its V6 models are the best that the company has ever developed, describing them as “faster, more expressive and higher quality” with new features that offer more precise control over the music they produce.

The V6 models are said to understand “more of the language and building blocks that musicians use”, and prompts can now cover everything from vocals, instrumentation and structure to more abstract attributes like mood, feel and non-musical references.

Rolling out today, Suno’s V6 suite consists of three distinct models, each designed for a different use case. V6 is the flagship model for subscribers to Suno’s Pro and Premium plans: it’s described as reliable and precise and said to deliver “polished music across every genre and style”.

V6-wild is a more experimental model built for creative exploration. Also only available to paid subscribers, it’s less predictable than V6 and capable of producing “unexpected, textured and ambitious results”. Finally, V6-mini is the only model that’s available to all users, and is described as fast, efficient and easy to use.

The V6 models offer more fine-grained control over their output than the previous generation. Creators can now edit specific parts of an existing song using prompts, combine elements from multiple songs together, or sample an element of an existing track and build something new around it. Along with text and audio, V6 can also use images and video as the basis for a track.

Following the launch of V6, all of Suno’s previous models will be permanently retired. While the previous models were trained on tens of millions of songs – including copyrighted works – Suno tells us that its V6 models have been trained from scratch.

The company has confirmed that they were not trained on the same data as the previous models, and instead were trained on a combination of licensed data from its industry partnerships and user data. This includes licensed recordings from the catalogues of Warner Music Group and BMG.

Warner and BMG have both stated that artists and songwriters will be compensated under their partnerships with Suno, but neither company has disclosed how much individual creators will receive or exactly how the money will be distributed.

Suno has also announced today that it has inked a partnership with Believe, a digital music company that provides distribution, publishing and artist development services to independent musicians and labels. Believe is the owner of TuneCore, a DIY distribution platform for self-releasing artists.

Tracks created using Suno will now be eligible to distribute through Believe and TuneCore, and music from participating Believe and TuneCore artists and labels will be used to train the new V6 models, should they choose to opt in. Believe said in a statement that "artists who consent to participate will be compensated for their music and their rights will be protected".

Alongside the launch of the V6 family of models, Suno has revealed that it’s developing new product experiences that will allow users to create with and remix the music of individual artists who choose to participate. Suno has confirmed that participating artists will be compensated for the use of their music, and says that the products will "open up revenue opportunities across the music ecosystem".

Suno’s move towards licensed training data arrives as the company faces ongoing legal challenges from the music industry.

Warner Music Group settled its copyright lawsuit with Suno last year as part of the partnership that led to the development of V6, while Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment continue to pursue copyright claims against the company, alleging copyright infringement "on an almost unimaginable scale". Suno maintains that its use of copyrighted material was lawful under the fair use doctrine.

In July, a German court ruled against Suno in a case brought by performance rights organization GEMA, finding that the company had infringed copyright by using protected works to train its models without permission.

In a press release, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said the release of V6 marks “the beginning of a new chapter for music”.

“V6 is designed to expand what is creatively possible and open up new revenue opportunities across the music ecosystem,” the statement reads. “We believe this is a blueprint for how AI and the music industry can strengthen one another and build entirely new product experiences for artists, fans, and the broader music community.”

Last month, Suno launched the next iteration of its browser-based DAW, Studio 2.0, enabling users to work with its music generation models in a more conventional production workflow. Studio 2.0 introduced a number of new features, including MIDI support, audio effects, and a chat interface that lets users generate stems, create plugins and interact with their projects via text prompts.

Denon DJ has released its latest all-in-one DJ system, the Prime 4 G2, a four-channel device that includes some intriguing features lifted from Akai’s recent MPC designs.

The Prime 4 G2 is a fully standalone setup running on a built-in CPU that allows users to mix with digital media loaded from the onboard storage or streamed via Wi-Fi. Its so-called ‘omnisource’ architecture is also designed to move seamlessly between standalone DJing and acting as a DJ controller for software applications including Serato DJ Pro and Algoriddim djay.

For this second generation update, Denon has taken its cues from its inMusic stablemate Akai Pro, replicating many of the enhancements the company recently brought to its MPC range. The most interesting of these is the inclusion of the same multi-expression MPCe pads found on the MPC Live III and MPC XL.

The MPCe pads are both velocity and pressure sensitive, and are also divided into four quadrants across their X/Y axes. In their application here, that allows users to control a variety of functions from each of the 16 pads, such as triggering multiple hots cues or samples, manipulating stems, engaging rolls, performing with effects or even controlling lighting.

How usefully having this kind of multi-expressive control within a DJ context will likely come down to how much of a ‘performance’ focused DJ you are. For many users applying multiple functions to 16 pads may well be overkill, but more dexterous performers are likely to find fun ways to expand their DJ sets.

Like the MPCs, this G2 update also significantly enhances the processing power under-the-hood. That comes in the form of an eight-core ARM processor with 4GB of RAM that, according to Denon, results in four times the processing power of the previous generation. This allows for faster browsing and loading of tracks. More significantly, it allows users to render and manipulate track stems within the hardware in standalone mode.

Other improvements include better effects capabilities. The Prime 4 G2 now features over 25 Main FX, 10 Touch FX, four Fader FX, and four Sweep FX.

Like its predecessor, the hardware has a central 10.1-inch touchscreen acting as the primary interface for its software elements. The G2 unit has larger jogwheels than its predecessor, up from 6 to 8-inches, along with redesigned dual-rail faders.

The Prime 4 G2 offers wireless streaming from platforms including Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, Beatport, SoundCloud Go+, and TIDAL for those with the relevant subscriptions. It also has Bluetooth connectivity for connectivity with tablets and smartphones.

Other highlights of the design include a 3-pin DMX output that allows for direct control of lighting without the need for an additional interface. The device also has an additional Zone audio output that allows it to stream an entirely independent audio signal alongside the main output, allowing event or party DJs to provide music for two rooms simultaneously.

"Performance-driven DJs want technology that disappears into the background and lets creativity take centre stage,” says inMusic DJ Brands Product Manager Jason Stout.

“As someone who regularly DJs high-end events, I rely on equipment that can adapt as quickly as the crowd does. Prime 4 G2 combines powerful performance tools, onboard Stems, streaming access, and integrated DMX lighting control into a single workflow, giving DJs the freedom to shape both the music and the atmosphere without missing a beat."

The Prime 4 G2 is out now, priced at $2,599 USD/ 2,699.99€/£2,299.99. Head to the Denon DJ website for more information.

Back in June, Universal Audio announced the release of Topline Vocal Tune, a native vocal pitch correction plugin that lifted the vocal-tuning engine from the company’s existing Topline Vocal Suite plugin and made it available as a standalone tool.

Today, the company has made Topline Vocal Tune available for Apollo and UAD-2 hardware, meaning that owners of compatible products can run the plugin on their hardware's internal DSP. This enables ultra-low-latency pitch correction when monitoring vocals while recording, without relying on your computer's CPU for processing power.

UA launched Topline Vocal Suite in 2024 as an all-in-one vocal chain, offering producers analogue-emulating preamps, saturation, compression, EQ and a multi-effects section alongside its vocal tuning capabilities.

Topline Vocal Tune strips that back to the tuning engine alone, which UA says offers “ultra-low-latency” performance, allowing vocalists to perform live through the plugin or monitor pitched vocals without delay while recording.

According to Universal Audio, Topline Vocal Tune can handle everything from transparent and natural-sounding correction to the recognizably hard-tuned effects associated with hip-hop, R&B and pop.

At the core of the plugin is a single Tune control for dialling in correction speed, ranging from subtle to fully hard-tuned. The Natural section adds Elastic and Sustain controls, which are intended to keep a vocal in tune while maintaining the slides, vibrato and tonal character that pitch correction can often mess with.

Topline Vocal Tune's Shift panel features Pitch and Formant controls for conventional pitch- and formant-shifting that can be blended in with a Mix dial, while the MIDI Repitching function lets you input melodies and harmonies through a MIDI keyboard to retune your vocals with your playing.

The plugin's Topline Key Finder detects the key and scale of your session automatically, saving time on set-up, and the Scale Define mode can be used to lock pitch correction to custom scales.

"When singers feel good in their headphones, that's when great takes happen," says Julian Prindle, Senior Product Designer at Universal Audio. "Topline helps artists stay confident and in the moment while giving producers everything they need to shape vocals behind the scenes."

Topline Vocal Tune is priced at $99 with an introductory discount of $79, and the purchase includes both DSP and the native version, which runs on macOS and Windows in VST/VST3/AU/AAX formats.

Find out more on Universal Audio's website.

There are some people whose advice is worth listening to and, if you’re a musician, legendary keyboard player Greg Phillinganes is probably one of them.

Alongside synth programmer Anthony Marinelli, Phillinganes has recently been in the studio recording a bang-on recreation of Baby Be Mine, a song from Michael Jackon’s Thriller that was written by Rod Temperton. Both Marinelli and Phillinganes worked on said album, and it was during a discussion about that time that Greg dropped his truth bomb.

It came as they recalled what producer Quincy Jones used to tell them: “You’re never more of a musician than you are a human being”. This is something that Jones was himself told by Nadia Boulanger, his famous music teacher, and Phillinganes suggests that it’s still as valid today as it ever was.

“That comes in the music,” he says. “That’s infused in the music.”

Explaining further, Phillinganes argues: “You have to respect the groove, and there’s certain musicians that understand that and there’s certain ones who don’t. And you can tell – you can tell if they’re respecting it or not. No question. It’s painfully obvious.”

Reiterating what he’s just said, Phillinganes adds: “Respect the groove – by any means necessary, respect the groove. Or else, stay home. What’s the point?”

Addressing the camera and wagging his finger, he says: “Yeah, I’m talking to you. Stay home. If you can’t respect the groove, just stay home. Wash dishes. Sell shoes. What’s the point if you can’t respect the groove? [If] You can’t respect the groove, you can’t respect people. If you can’t respect people, what’s the point. Yeah, I said it.”

Consider us told.

Phillinganes’ respect of the groove is certainly evident during his runthrough of Baby Be Mine. He plays a variety of synths, including the actual Minimoog and Prophet-5 that were used on the original recording.

The drums and synths were programmed by Marinelli, and the guitar played by Jarrett “Bueno” Goodly. Ray Monteiro, Jesse McGinty and Garrett Smith made up the horn section.

The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one of the best-loved songs on the White Album and generally considered to be George Harrison’s first real masterpiece as a songwriter.

It’s one of those songs that maybe you get burned out on from overexposure on classic rock radio, but then if you leave it alone for a while and come back to it, you find more intriguing details the more closely you listen. Here’s the 2009 remaster.

George recorded a demo of the song with acoustic guitar and some overdubbed harmonium. It was released on the Beatles' Anthology 3. It’s more wistful than dramatic without all the production. George’s original lyrics are a little different too.

The lead guitar on the White Album version was famously played by an uncredited Eric Clapton, amid a tense studio atmosphere.

George Harrison recalled how Clapton's contribution came about in the The Beatles Anthology: "We tried to record [While My Guitar Gently Weeps], but Paul and John were so used to just cranking out their tunes that it was very difficult at times to get serious and record one of mine," he said.

"I was driving into London with Eric Clapton, and I said, ‘What are you doing today? Why don’t you come to the studio and play on this song for me?’ He said, ‘Oh, no – I can’t do that. Nobody’s ever played on a Beatles’ record and the others wouldn’t like it.’ I said, ‘Look, it’s my song and I’d like you to play on it.’

"So he came in. I said, ‘Eric’s going to play on this one,’ and it was good because that then made everyone act better. Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seriously."

The song itself is about the band’s internal friction after their trip to India, which Harrison experienced as a profound spiritual experience, and which the rest of the Beatles experienced as… a trip to India. This tension is memorably parodied in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which, if you haven’t seen it, don’t deprive yourself.

At the time he wrote While My Guitar Gently Weeps, George had been reading the I Ching, and was enthusiastic about the idea that everything is meaningfully connected, that there are no coincidences.

So he decided to write a song by opening a book and using the first words he saw, which were “gently weeps.” When I was a kid, I didn’t know about all the intra-Beatles conflict, and thought that George was singing about the state of the world generally. I was probably partially correct; the song works well either way.

Like most Beatles songs, While My Guitar Gently Weeps is not complicated, but it is nevertheless is full of musical intrigue. Here are the chords to the intro:

| Am | Am/G | Am/F# | F |

| Am | G | D | E |

The verses begin the same way as the intro, but the second time through the phrase, the chords are a little different.

| Am | Am/G | Am/F# | F |

| Am | G | D | E |

| Am | Am/G | Am/F# | F |

| Am | G | C | E |

The intro and verses begin with a common musical trope called lament bass, a bassline that walks slowly downward from the tonic to the fifth. European canonical composers used lament bass constantly. For example, here’s Dido’s Lament by Henry Purcell (1689):

You have heard enough lament bass in classical contexts that when it appears in a rock song, it gives a sense of old-world tragic grandeur. Pre-rock Anglo-American popular music is full of lament bass too. Check out My Funny Valentine by Rodgers and Hart (1937), performed here by Chet Baker:

The Beatles loved lament bass, and used it in several of their songs, including Michelle, Dear Prudence, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and Magical Mystery Tour.

In the verses to While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the lament bass runs under the opening two bars, “I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping.” In the next two bars, on the lines “while my guitar gently weeps”, the chords move through Am, G, D and E.

This short progression feels like a miniature adventure, because the D chord does not belong to the key of A minor like everything you else have heard until this point. You would naively expect a Dm chord there, which contains the note F. The D chord’s active ingredient is the note F-sharp, the source of the chord’s surprising brightness. (There is also an F-sharp in the lament bass part, but because it’s part of a descent, it doesn’t have that same feeling of temporary uplift.)

The second time through the verse form, George sings “while my guitar gently weeps” in a different melody, over a slightly different chord progression: Am, G, C and E. The C chord sticks out for a different reason than the D chord did the first time.

C is part of the key of A minor, but it’s also the basis of its own key, C major. The G chord is shared between A minor and C major, and it makes a nice logical pivot between the two. You have heard this particular A-minor-to-C-major change uncountably many times. I’ll talk about why it works so well in a minute.

After your brief brief visit to the sunny land of C major, the verse ends on another E, which mentally prepares you to return to Am at the top of the form. But no, the song goes into a new section on the line “I don't know why nobody told you.” Most people call this the bridge, though it’s placed where a normal song would have its chorus. Whatever you want to call this section, it’s not in A minor like the verse; it’s in A major instead. This is a much more dramatic shift than the brief visit to C major a minute ago. To understand why, you need to know some music theory.

Picture the white keys on the piano keyboard. They play seven notes, repeated in octaves: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. If you play these notes over a droning or repeated A, you get the A natural minor scale. But if you play them over a droning or repeated C, you get the C major scale. The scales consist of the same notes in the same order, but changing the starting note changes the notes’ meaning, like the words RESPECT and SPECTRE. When you move from A minor to C major, you aren’t changing any of the notes, just the relationship of those notes to each other. Pretty cool!

You might also expect the key of A minor to be closely related to the key of A major, because they both center on A. Beyond that similarity, however, the two keys don’t have much overlap. They only share four of seven possible notes in common (A, B, D and E). The relationship between A minor and A major is more like the one between the words RESPECT and REVENGE than the one between RESPECT and SPECTRE. While moving from A minor to C major is so smooth as to sometimes not even be perceptible, moving from A minor to A major feels more disjointed.

Anyway, the bridge stays safely within A major, before plunging you back into the gloom of A minor when it goes back to the verse.

| A | C#m | F#m | C#m |

| Bm | | E E/F# | E/G# E |

For more musicological insights into the tune, check out Alan Pollack’s analysis, part of his epic project to analyze the Beatles’ entire recorded output.

The Beatles recorded While My Guitar Gently Weeps over a few sessions in August and September of 1968. It was one of their first songs to use an eight-track tape recorder. (Everything up until the White Album had been recorded to either two or four tracks. For everything! Can you imagine?) You can read all the details of the sessions in The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Marc Lewisohn.

On the final version of the song, George sings lead (sometimes doubling himself) and plays acoustic guitar and Hammond organ. Paul sings harmony and plays bass and piano. He also takes the unusual step of overdubbing a second layer of fuzzed-out bass. John plays electric guitar with a tremolo effect on it. Ringo plays drums, overdubbed tambourine, and a strange galloping rhythm on castanets. The tempo drifts around between 110 and 120 beats per minute, but Ringo’s halftime drum pattern makes it feel like an incredibly slow 55 to 60.

In an unused early version of the song, George tried one of his trademark backwards guitar solos, but he was dissatisfied by it and didn’t keep it. Instead, he brought in his buddy Eric Clapton to play lead guitar on the finished version. Clapton was concerned that he wouldn’t fit into the band’s sound, and he suggested that they manipulate the tape to make him sound more “Beatle-y”, as he put it.

During mixdown, engineer Chris Thomas made a copy of the lead guitar track and used varispeed to slightly wobble its speed, which also resulted in wobbling of its pitch. This is why Clapton’s guitar sounds vaguely seasick. It sounds like they did a similar varispeed effect on the organ track. The Beatles used varispeed a lot, sometimes to make things higher and brighter (like John’s voice in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or Paul’s on When I’m Sixty-Four) and sometimes to make things lower and sludgier (like the entire band on Rain.)

While the chords to While My Guitar Gently Weeps evoke European classical music, Clapton’s lead guitar comes out of a very different musical tradition: the blues. He uses string bends to play pitches in between the piano-key notes, giving the guitar a vocalistic quality.

Clapton plays more simply than usual–his solo on the outro starts by repeating the note E thirteen times–but he uses expressive pitch bends to create emotional intensity. Those thirteen E’s aren’t monotonous because he bends them a slightly different amount every time, so none of them are tuned exactly “right.” I prefer this style of playing to Clapton’s showier stuff, it feels more emotionally direct.

John Lennon gets a nice blues moment in the song too, right at the beginning of the first bridge. He plays a little guitar fill that ends on C, a note that’s part of the Am chord. But the chord here is A, and the note is supposed to be C-sharp, so John bends the C up toward where it’s supposed to be. Maybe this was intended, or maybe John forgot that the change was coming and reacted to his wrong note in the moment. Either way, it’s very satisfying, because he traverses all the microtonal pitches in between C and C-sharp, and the effect is exquisite.

Covering late Beatles songs is hard. Their musical impact is so dependent on the specific sonic atmosphere the band and their engineers and producers created in the studio, the exact guitar tones, the surreal timbre of slowed down and sped up tape, the odd instrumental touches (castanets!), the layered vocals. Any competent rock band can learn While My Guitar Gently Weeps in ten minutes, but it won’t sound exactly right without all that sonic atmosphere.

To really convey the vibe precisely, you would need two bass players, and someone playing castanets, and a way to create that pitch wobble on the lead guitar and the organ, and on and on.

Danger Mouse used samples of the White Album recording to make a new backing track for “What More Can I Say” by Jay-Z on his mashup classic The Grey Album – it's an excitingly fresh approach to these holy relics of rock and roll. There are steep legal obstacles to sampling and remixing the Beatles, but I don’t know of a better way to engage creatively with their sounds.

Who doesn't adore the Casio SK-1? Once the cheapest sampler in the world, this little number may be underpowered, flimsy, and lacking in MIDI, effects and memory that extends beyond space for a single sample, but it's got a certain charm that we simply cannot deny.

As is often the case with quote-unquote "bad gear", the SK-1's apparent flaws have become the very things that music-makers love about it. Whether its the crunchy 8-bit sound of its sampling engine, its cheesy stock drum patterns or its delightfully nostalgic set of synth presets, this miniature marvel has lo-fi goodness written all over it.

That's why we've devoted today's edition of SampleRadar entirely to this lo-fi legend. Scroll down and download for a collection of hits, beats, loops and single-shots sampled directly from the SK-1.

• Read more: Blast from the past: Casio SK-1

What you need to know

This sample collection offers a variety of samples in five folders.

All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!

Example sounds

Casio SK-1 samples: click to download

Casio SK-1 samples (110MB)

Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 95,000 more free samples.

Launched in 2000, Audacity is one of the world’s most popular apps for audio editing and recording, having accrued hundreds of millions of downloads over its 26-year lifespan.

It’s not hard to see why: not only is it free, open-source and cross-platform, Audacity has become increasingly powerful in recent years, inching ever closer to becoming a fully-fledged DAW while preserving the simplicity and ease-of-use that it’s known for.

Today, Muse Group is launching Audacity 4, bringing with it a host of significant improvements in what its creators are describing as “the biggest update” in the software's history. Audacity’s latest update overhauls the software’s editing workflow, polishes up its interface and introduces new ways for users to organize their work, all with the aim of making the app easier and more intuitive to use.

Open up Audacity 4, and you’ll be able to see the difference straight away: the software now opens on a dedicated home screen and has been outfitted with a refreshed user interface that has a more modern feel. (If you like the classic Audacity look, you can switch back over.)

The update isn’t just skin-deep though, and Muse Group says it has improved “nearly every aspect” of Audacity’s audio editing workflow in an effort to provide greater flexibility when working on complex projects. Clips can now overlap on the timeline and be combined in groups, and they’ve also been equipped with new handles for trimming and stretching. Audio editing is now non-destructive, so trimming clips no longer deletes the underlying audio.

A new Split tool has been introduced that allows you to slice up clips with ease and precision, and the Envelope tool has been improved. What’s more, each track in Audacity 4 now has its own level meter that can also monitor audio input when recording, and the main playback meter can be switched to a vertical orientation.

Audacity 4 also introduces Workspaces, which allow you to switch between multiple versions of its interface designed for different use cases. The interface is now more customizable, and you’re able to save customized iterations of the UI as Workspaces that suit your personal workflow.

The update has also refreshed the software’s catalogue of audio effects to make them more intuitive to use, and the application now supports a broader range of third-party VST3/AU/LV2 effects.

"Audacity has been helping creators record and edit audio for more than 25 years, and our goal with version 4 was to prepare it for the next 25”, Muse Group’s Chief Product Officer Julia Sazhina said in a press release.

“At Muse Group, we're always looking ahead at how technology can help creativity. It was important for us to bring one of the world's most iconic audio editors into the new era. We are not changing what creators love about Audacity, but giving it the modern architecture needed to support the intelligent tools and connected workflows of the future."

Audacity 4 is now available for macOS, Windows and Linux. Head over to MuseHub for a download.

Tone3000 has been quietly revolutionising how guitarists find their sound. It hosts the world’s largest community of NAM A2 captures and IRs, all community created, built on open-source Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) tech.

Players can take their analogue device – be it an tube amp, overdrive pedal, fuzz or whatever – create a capture of it and share it digitally for anyone in the Tone3000 community to use.

And it is bringing this tech to a number of leading brand’s hardware devices, too, with the likes of Blackstar and HeadRush offering Tone3000 native support. Even in the digital era where the amp modellers have ushered in a great abundance for players, this is a paradigmatic shift in how we search for tone.

Now, Tone3000 has made access to its vast library of NAM A2 captures available in a free and open-source guitar plugin that can be run inside your DAW or as a standalone app.

It makes the Tone3000 ecosystem a lot more user friendly, with a Chains feature that allows you to put together a full signal path from user-created NAM A2 captures and IRs. For example, you could take a capture of a slightly pushed Marshall JCM800, stick a capture of an EP-3 boost pedal in front, then – what the heck, right? – lets stick a Keeley Mk3 Driver on there too, more heat more crunch, then with an IR of your choice.

Chains lets you go further, stacking unlimited NAM A2 captures. You can also create these sounds in stereo, run two chains simultaneously and pan one left and the other right. The Spread control allows you to widen a mono signal without splitting it into stereo and there is a handy EQ section that applies global EQ to your entire chain and offers pre and post parametric EQ to your individual blocks.

There are also a plethora of advanced controls – “oversampling, MIDI mapping, per-block normalisation” – to make using these NAM A2 captures a lot easier.

And that’s really the point. The Tone3000 is designed to simplify your workflow. There’s no need for a third-party NAM player.

Everything from the Tone3000 library is available within the plugin from the moment it was created, and it’s there you can manage your favourites, organise them and integrate them with the rest of your in-the-box setup.

"Because the TONE3000 Plugin is open source, right now is the worst it will ever be,” says Stanley Vergilis, the co-founder and CEO of TONE3000. “We’re excited to see what the community does with it.”

For more information, head over to Tone3000.

Labor Day is nearly upon us, which means it’s a great time to bag the last of the summer savings on music gear. Over at Guitar Center, you can save up to 30% on all manner of gear, which admittedly doesn’t sound like all that much compared to some others who are offering bigger headline discounts.

GC has an ace in the hole, though, as much of the gear that’s discounted is exclusive to Guitar Center, which means you can’t get it anywhere else. That means not only are you getting a great deal, but you’re potentially getting something that not many other people will have, helping you stand out on stage, in the practice room, and in the studio.

The first model I want to shout out is the stunning Epiphone Les Paul Custom Quilt in Ocean Blue. This is a classy and pretty unusual guitar, but thankfully it plays and sounds as good as it looks! You can save $150 at Guitar Center right now.

Next is the striking Gretsch, with a $70 reduction, and its midnight blue finish with gold hardware makes it a real head-turner. Dual Filter’Tron pickups are perfect for rock and roll guitar playing, while the treble bleed circuit ensures you can roll off the volume and still retain the clarity. Add in a Bigsby tremolo, and you’ve got yourself one amazing guitar for a lot less.

Next is a favourite here at MusicRadar, the Alesis Nitro Max electronic drum kit. It’s got a not-insignificant discount of $50 at the moment, bringing the price just below the $400 mark, which is excellent value for money.

Next up, I spied a nice discount on a JBL 306P MkII studio monitor. We reviewed the 5-inch version and found it to be a fantastic-sounding monitor for the money. A $50 discount takes the price down to just $199 each.

Finally, for those looking to start playing piano with the new school year, the Casio CDP-S110 has $70 off. The weighted keyboard offers a realistic, grand piano-style response, with a responsive touch that lets you express yourself.

Now, obviously, there's a lot more on offer in this sale, so I highly recommend browsing the entire offering. You have until September 9 to get involved.

2026 is turning out to be a significant year in the life of Reason, the rack-based DAW that can also operate as a plugin. Following the news that its developer, Reason Studios, had been purchased by LANDR, a new version (14) of the software was announced in April, and now there’s Reason Free to consider.

This, as you’d expect, is a completely free version of the software that works both standalone with its own sequencer (you can record up to 16 audio or instrument tracks) and as a plugin (VST3, AU, and AAX). What’s more, it comes with some of Reason’s best-loved devices – all of which can be used within the DAW of your choosing – so if you don’t currently own the software, it could be a great way to increase your creative options without spending any money.

Reason Free contains 15 devices, including four notable instruments. One of these is the excellent Europa wavetable synth, which was sold as a plugin on its own at one time, while the Kong drum module still sounds as good today as it always did. Songwriters will appreciate the ID8 sound module, which covers ‘stock’ GM-compatible sounds such as pianos, drums, bass and strings, and the line-up is completed by the simple Monotone bass synth.

There are effects, too – The Echo delay, the Audiomatic ‘character’ effect, the RV7000 MKII reverb and the Mclass Maximizer limiter – along with the Scales & Chords MIDI chord player. The Combinator enables you to combine instruments and effects into a single playable preset, and there are also LFO, audio and CV merger/splitter and MIDI output devices.

It’s a pretty solid collection, then, but the hope for the developers is obviously that you’ll like what you see and upgrade to a Reason+ or Reason Rack Plugin subscription, which will give you the full complement of devices.

Even if you don’t, though, there’s plenty here to keep you entertained – Reason Free can be downloaded now from the Reason Studios website.

It feels like there’s always been an unwritten rule that no synth or MIDI controller should have fewer than 25 keys on it, but PIanni could be about to break that with the Orphea.

Featuring just one octave’s worth of keys (plus an extra C at the top, giving you 13 in total), this has the advantage of being barely larger than a smartphone, so is certainly portable. It also features a built-in multi-wave synth engine, a rechargeable battery, speakers, a 3.5mm audio output and MIDI I/O.

The not so good news is that the keys aren’t velocity sensitive, which will limit the amount of expression you can generate, and although it’s possible to shift the keyboard up or down three octaves, there’s no getting away from the fact that there’s not a great deal of serious playing you can do with just 13 notes in front of you. Even simple basslines could be tricky, and you can forget about forming anything other than basic chord shapes.

In fairness, it looks like the Orphea is primarily being aimed at kids who simply want to “explore melody and composition,” but even absolute beginners might hit a creative wall with it pretty quickly.

The people will be able to make a judgement, though, when the fate of Orphea is determined via a soon-to-be-launched Kickstarter campaign. No news yet on how much the device will cost or when it could potentially ship.

One tends not to notice when an instrument is perfectly tuned. The music just flows, notes ring out together and harmonies magically intertwine and augment. But when an instrument is out of tune… Ouch… You know about it.

Guitarists and drummers have it easy when it comes to tuning, but for pianists?Let’s just say that life is rather more difficult.

Pianos – and we’re talking about the real thing made out of thousands of precision cut pieces of wood and metal here – typically have 88 keys, and each one of these keys could have up to three strings, each of which must be perfectly tuned to unlock the magic of the instrument. One key, or one string, being a just a few cents out could be enough to make the whole thing sound deeply wrong.

And while you think you might be able to wade in with a spanner to fix things, spare a thought for the many piano tuning specialists who often have taken a lifetime to perfect their craft. So before you get busy, perhaps at least finish reading this article first.

So let’s start with some basics.

How does a piano work?

While acoustic pianos may seem relatively simple, they are in fact complex instruments that produce sound through a combination of mechanical and acoustic elements. When a key is pressed on the piano, it sets off a series of mechanical actions. Each key is connected to a series of levers and pivots called the key action.

When the key is pressed, it activates a mechanism that propels a small wooden hammer towards a set of strings. These hammers, typically covered in felt, strike these high-tensile strings with a force directly proportional to the force at which the key was hit.

From there the piano’s soundboard, across which the strings are stretched, amplifies the vibrations produced by the strings. As the strings vibrate, they transfer energy to the soundboard, which resonates, resulting in a rich and vibrant sound. When a key is subsequently released, a system of felt dampers comes into contact with the strings, stopping their vibration and muting the sound.

Simple, right? Maybe not.

At this point it’s probably worth saying that if you’re at all in doubt about your mechanical skills (and value your piano above all else) then perhaps employing a professional piano tuner to do the job for you might be your best option.

Still want to continue? We’re here to help.

How to tune a piano: Step-by-step

As you’d expect, there are some tools you will need, and some prep to undertake.

For starters, ensure that the piano is clean and free from any debris. It's important to have good lighting at this stage so you can see the strings clearly. You'll need a couple of tools too, namely a tuning lever or wrench, which is used to adjust the tension of the piano's strings, along with mutes to isolate specific strings while tuning.

And, of course, you’ll need a tuning reference, either in the form of an electronic tuner or - if you’re skilled enough - a traditional tuning fork. You might even consider using one of the many smartphone tuning apps. We’re particularly fond of the Boss Tuner from Roland (available on both Android and iOS) but you may have your own preferred app.

Let’s get started.

Step 1

Begin by lifting the lid and doing whatever disassembly your particular piano requires to grant you access to its strings and the nuts holding the string ends in place.

It’s a good idea to remove the dampening felt at this point too, again, to afford you better access and visibility to the strings.

You’ll see that the lower notes have one string, middle notes have two strings and the upper notes have three strings.

The idea (and reality) is that two (or three) strings being struck together will produce a fuller sound than just one string. Like three guitarists playing together rather than one.

The idea is to get all of these multiple strings for each note tuned to be identical. Or, at least, as close as you can get.

A good starting point is to go to the A4 key on your piano, which is the A above middle C. This key is typically tuned to the industry standard frequency of 440 Hz, but it can vary depending on the desired pitch.

Using a tuning lever, adjust the tension of each string in unison until they produce the desired pitch. This process involves comparing the pitch of the strings to a reference tone and making fine adjustments as needed.

Turning the tuning screw clockwise will increase the pitch of the string. Turning it anticlockwise will release the tension and lower the pitch of the string.

To remove unwanted, out of tune distractions, mute the strings that you're not tuning by simply placing your finger against them. This will prevent this string from ringing out, leaving only the sound of the string that you want to tune.

Alternatively stuffing a piece of felt or material between each note’s strings will let you damp the outer notes in turn, leaving you hands free to play and tune.

Yes, you can turn the tuning screws with with a spanner (adjustable or otherwise) but it’s really much easier with a piano tuning lever or tool (available for not much from your favourite music store or online retailer).

Step 2

Now, with your first string perfectly in tune it’s time to move onto your string's partners – the unison strings that sound together each time you press a note.

If your piano has been sounding woeful (and we all know the sound of that out-of-tune ‘pub’ piano…) you’ll immediately hear an improvement as the old familiar ‘wobble’ and ‘beating’ sound disappears as each of the unison strings becomes aligned in tuning and tension with its partners.

While an accurate tuning meter is essential here, don’t be afraid to let your ear and musical brain guide you as to what sounds best too. When the ‘vibration’ of the sound stops then your two (or three) strings are in tune together.

The ideal goal is to tune the ‘beating string’ so that it produces a slight wobble or beating sound when played with the unison string. This effect creates a rich and full sound. It’s entirely up to you as to what sounds best.

Even IF it were possible to get all three unison strings at the exact same Hz pitch you MAY find that you prefer the sound if one or two of them are a little higher or lower, producing a warmer ‘beating’ sound with their partners.

It’s a good idea to tune A4 first then do the same for all the A’s on your piano, moving down and up the keyboard.

Get these A anchor points sounding great together and you’ve created a guide where you KNOW that the piano is in tune. From there it’s just a matter of fitting in the other notes in between them.

Take time to get your A’s right, THEN move onto the notes between them.

Step 3

It's important to check the whole piano to ensure all the notes are correctly in tune as you go. This process involves playing chords, scales, and intervals to listen for any discrepancies or out-of-tune notes. Adjustments may be required to individual strings or sections of the piano to achieve overall harmony.

Keep playing and comparing as you tweak.

It’s important to be patient here. Even the most experienced professionals, with the best ears, can spend many hours achieving the perfect tuning. So, unless you’re due on-stage at Wembley within the hour, you can afford to take your time.

Just methodically get each note working with itself… Then aligned musically with its partners.

Want to leave it to the professionals?

Having a hard time doing it yourself? Yes… It can be a case of one step forwards and two step backwards, so don’t be afraid to enlist a professional to help. Pianos, particularly older ones, can be temperamental beasts and require an experienced ear to get the best out of them.

You might be worried about the cost, but it probably won’t be a huge amount, and once it’s done you don’t need to worry about it again for a little while - the general rule of thumb for a well-played, well-used piano is to have it tuned twice a year, but your mileage may vary.

The actual cost of piano tuning can vary depending on several factors. The condition of the piano plays a role in the cost of tuning; if the piano has not been tuned for a long time or if it requires additional repairs or adjustments, the tuning process may take longer and require more work, which can result in higher costs.

A professional piano tuner will also make a judgement based on the size and type of piano. As you’d expect, grand pianos tend to be more expensive to tune compared to upright pianos due to their larger size and more complex construction. Additionally, some specialized pianos, such as antique or high-end instruments, may require additional expertise and care during the tuning process, which can increase the cost.

A decent piano tuner may offer additional services to help bring an old or broken piano back to life. For example, if the piano has broken strings, sticky keys, or other mechanical issues, these can be addressed during the tuning session, potentially increasing the overall cost, but ensuring there’s nothing left to frustrate you afterwards.

Related buyer's guides

• Best digital pianos: options for every level and budget
• Essential piano accessories: everything you need to get started
• Best piano benches: hand-picked options for maximum comfort

Roland's FP series is a long-established line of digital pianos that currently spans five models across various price points, from the no-frills FP-10 to the range-topping FP-90X. Today, the Japanese manufacturer expands the series with a new release: FP-40.

FP-40 is Roland's first piano with built-in Wi-Fi. Why does a piano need Wi-Fi, you ask? Well, the FP-40 is launching alongside Piano Sphere, a free app for iOS and Android that's designed to help you learn the instrument and develop your skills.

Connecting to your piano over your home network (or Bluetooth), Piano Sphere provides real-time feedback on your playing, and is able to create personalized tuition plans based on your skill level and musical preferences. Roland says it's not just a companion app, but a "complete ecosystem" that brings together your piano, lessons, songs, and progress in one place.

Developed in partnership with tuition platform Skoove, Piano Sphere features a library of step-by-step lessons and skill development tools, alongside 100 songs covering everything from classical to pop hits. Users can upgrade the app to access over 1000 more songs and additional courses as they progress, and are encouraged to advance through their learning journey with gamified features such as streaks and reward badges.

The piano records your playing history through Piano Sphere even when the app isn't open, allowing you to take a backwards glance at your development, and thanks to its Wi-Fi connection, FP-40's firmware is automatically updated over your home network – Roland promises that the piano will "continuously evolve" with "new services, feature enhancements, and ecosystem integrations".

There are plenty of digital pianos out there built to help you learn to play or improve your playing, but very few of these feature built-in Wi-Fi – most rely on Bluetooth MIDI for a wireless connection or a wired MIDI or USB connection.

Sitting squarely in the middle of the FP range between the FP-30X and the FP-60X, the FP-40 features Roland's Piano Reality sound engine, introduced in 2024, which is a first for the FP range: the other models in the series have either featured Roland's SuperNATURAL or PureAcoustic engines.

Roland tells us that Piano Reality combines sampled sounds with modeling tech from its high-end GP Series grand pianos to capture the "depth, detail, and tonal character of an acoustic piano", delivering "smooth response, natural resonance, and rich dynamics". 40 different preset sounds are accessible from the piano, with an additional 265 available through the existing Roland Piano App.

FP-40 also benefits from an upgraded speaker system, arranging its dual speakers (each powered by a dedicated 12W amplifier) in a redesigned internal layout that's said to produce a clearer and more spacious sound with a deeper low-end.

Those are some respectable upgrades, but FP-40 isn't all new: it features the same PHA-4 Standard keyboard that can be found in the FP-10, FP-30X and FP-60X models. This triple-sensor system delivers fully-weighted hammer action and escapement, along with an ivory-style feel applied to its plastic keys, but sits below both the PHA-50 and Hybrid Grand in Roland's lineup of digital piano actions.

The Roland FP-40 is available in both black and white models for $749. Find out more on Roland's website.

What is it?

The significance of the Prophet-5 synthesizer, in the evolution of commercial music and production cannot be overstated. Where the Minimoog brought pseudo-affordable synthesis to the masses, the Prophet-5 picked up the torch and single-handedly reinvented synth production, with real musicians in mind. All of this was courtesy of Dave Smith and his company Sequential Circuits Inc (now just known as Sequential).

Initially released in 1978, the Prophet provided 5-note polyphony, coupled with the ability to save and recall patches. This was a revelation for keyboard players, alongside a five-octave keyboard and the immediacy of hands-on control, thanks to the beautiful control panel. As one successful UK session keyboardist commented to us recently, “it was the only synth you needed!”. That might not be quite true today, but it certainly was back in 1978, with little choice or competition.

After three major revisions of the original instrument, production ceased in 1984. Dave Smith released several other synthesizers with a slight nod to the Prophet moniker, but it wasn’t until 2020 that he revisited the original format, with the release of Version 4, in both five- and ten-voice iterations.

There have been many software versions of this legendary machine since the dawn of the plugin era, but we have had to wait until now for synth behemoth GForce to offer its own model on the original. Impressively, its Prophet-5 is the only example with official endorsement from Sequential.

Performance

GForce has included all the usual plugin formats, as well as a standalone version. With its scalable interface, this allows you to get lost in the programming by blowing it up to the full size of your computer screen, and just playing… and playing!

We are fortunate to have a hardware Prophet v4 in our studio, which allowed us to place the two against each other for direct comparison. The software also includes all of the original patches, which are present without any additional layer of effects, so this was the perfect place for us to start.

We probably shouldn't be surprised by what we heard, given GForce’s amazing reputation. The attention at the sonic level is exceptionally good. The behaviour of the pots is a little different; the software pots tend to offer a greater level of detailing and accuracy, particularly with the lower values, which is just where you want the fine-tuning. By comparison, the hardware offers conventional, equally-measured operation from 0 to 10.

Reducing both synths to their basic waveforms equally provided no clues in our attempts to separate the two, in our blind testing. Maybe the filter section would reveal differences between the two? No! In fact, much like the v4 hardware, GForce has included the original Mk1/2 SSM filter, alongside the Mk3 Curtis chip filter, and other than a difference in pot position, there is nothing to choose between the two, sonically.

In fact, despite keeping our own hardware in V.4 territory (which should be very stable), our own hardware had a tendency to wander in terms of its pitch stability. A Vintage pot was introduced to allow users of the hardware to engineer how stable they would like their Prophet to be, and in a nice touch, GForce has included this pot, not that you will want the instability of a v1 Prophet-5!

More notes good

Despite the revelation of five voices in 1978, later polys did attempt to address the problem of note stealing, for more grandiose synth pads with long release tails. This is not going to be an issue here, as the software allows 10-voice operation, effectively like the Prophet-10. Where GForce goes further is with the ability to stack voices into layers, with both layers offering full 10-voice operation.

If we add this to the exceptionally good effects section, we can't be surprised that the overall stature of the effected output is stunning, and all of this with the ability to control parameters on screen, or using automation within the DAW. Like other GForce products, the mapping of modulations or control through MIDI CC is very simple. There are several hardwired modulation paths, just like the original instrument, but one of the most eye-catching is the inclusion of the XLFO and XADSR sections, which offer more flexible, capable and advanced sources for modulation. Assigning these elements is as simple as selecting the modulation destination and adjusting the settings in the ‘X’ section. We were even able to modulate the Vintage pot in this way, although it might be more useful to generate pulses and gates in the direction of the filter.

If working within a DAW, a dedicated CC button allows the assignment of MIDI CC to pretty much any parameter, and certainly all the ones you need.

The other Poly

One element which we have to pay particular attention to, is the Poly-Mod section. This was always a unique form of cross modulation, which quickly became part of the Prophet sound, allowing the generation of metallic tones and thunderous effects. Experience tells us that this can be very difficult to capture in software, but GForce has really nailed it. It is every bit as effective as it always was, but if anything, offers a greater degree of control, thanks to its software domain.

Located down in the performance control area, there are a number of other tasty tidbits that were never available on the original instrument. Firstly, the original Prophet only ever offered a mono audio output. Thanks to a pan mode, with spread amount, you can quickly generate stereo depth, before using the onboard effects.

There is also the addition of chord memory and the exceptionally useful arpeggiator. In standalone mode, the latter really does allow you to get lost in the sound, particularly when used alongside the hold control.

Verdict

We have to conclude that this is a pretty special release. Firstly, the Prophet-5 holds a very special place in people’s hearts as the first machine of its kind, and GForce has really looked after its legacy beautifully. If you are a purist and just want an original machine in software, you are firmly in luck. You can dial back any of the additional elements, and just use this like an original Prophet-5.

However, for more contemporary or stylised work, the software has an incredible amount to offer. With over 420 new patches, alongside the original 38 factory patches, the programming team has taken full advantage of everything this new iteration has to offer while truly respecting its heritage. The subtle detuning of the oscillators, with the greater control of the envelope section, means that you have the sound of an original, with extraordinary levels of control and greater depth of modulation. It is undoubtedly the best of all Prophet worlds, and an enormous testimony to the original machine and the brilliance of GForce for looking after the details in software.

Hands-on demos

GForce Software

Alternatives

Specifications

What is it?

UDO's Super Gemini is one of our favourite synths of the last couple of years, so we obviously have sky-high expectations for the company's new DMNO, or Domino, another double-timbre beast with a massive amount of onboard tweaking. This time, though, you get less polyphony in favour of more interaction between these engines, and a fabulous screen to help peel back the synth's many layers.

As with Gemini, DMNO is double the synth fun, but the end result is different enough to make it another ridiculously characterful UDO synth, and one aimed fair and square at proper 'synthusiasts'.

UDO is one of the most exciting synth brands around – and we’re not just saying that because (like us) it is British. The company has an obvious passion for creating cutting-edge synths that might sometimes borrow the best bits from the odd synth icon, but always deliver something completely new and without compromise, and machines that often feel alive and unpredictable – traits again shared with their vintage forebears.

Gemini, which we reviewed a couple of years ago, is a prime example: two synths in one, a nod to the Yamaha CS80, and with a signal flow between both engines that can create an all-new and awe-inspiring sound. The company’s new DMNO follows a similar path: two independent 4-voice synths, this time with design cues from the Oberheim 2-voice, but again resulting in a synth that delivers sound design options in spades.

Unlike Gemini, DMNO has a superb screen to help you navigate around the all-important signal flow, which is all about the interaction between those two synth engines. DMNO also allows you to shift between eight different Play modes for extra performance versatility, but it still delivers a similar Gemini user experience where things might not always go according to plan, but they do always seem to go right.

And while DMNO lacks the polyphony of Gemini – four binaural/eight mono compared to 10 and 20 respectively on Gemini – it’s another gert lush synth from our local Bristolian neighbours which looks like succeeding in extracting cash from our bank account. But will it do the same to yours?

Performance

You can think of DMNO as two synths in one because that is exactly what it is: DMNO 1 and 2 have almost identical controls, sitting side-by-side on the front panel, and they each have their own effects, arpeggiators and modulation setups.

The hybrid workflow starts with two FPGA Digital Oscillators per voice, before going into an all-new analogue, dynamic multi-core analogue filter with parallel, series and stereo connection modes.

The digital FPGA-based 'super-waveform' oscillators deliver classic analogue waveforms and user selectable wavetables. They also feature six of what UDO call ‘sister oscillators' which come into play in ‘super mode’ where you can pretty much 'super trance' up any of your supplied waveforms, of which there are plenty.

With Osc 1 you get six basic waveforms and you can load in another six wavetables from 32 options. It's a similar story for oscillator 2, but here you only get three additional slots rather than six, as the other three are taken by Osc 2's 'keyboard off' options. This is where the oscillator can operate in LF mode as a sub or, handily, as an LFO and modulation source. And while DMNO is not a wavetable synth per se, you can morph between waveforms, upload your own, and generally tinker with your core ingredients beyond what you'd expect.

The filter section is pretty incredible with parallel, series and stereo modes, each with several filter setups to choose from. And with a dozen LP, HP, BP, all pass, and phase shifter filter types available – most with selectable poles plus two resonance choices for LP – there is a lot to choose from.

The all-pass mode is particularly worth auditioning, where resonance becomes the main operating parameter, driving certain sounds in a more unpredictable way, and great fun at extreme settings.

DMNO's screen is a real bonus, and while we didn't miss one on Gemini – with that synth it almost helped not having one as you focused on your hands-on tweaking – the one on DMNO kind of shows you what your were missing. It combines brilliantly with the four rotaries beneath, and certain parameters go brighter as you select them, very useful, especially great when modulating, as we'll see.

To the left of this is a mixer for the synth layers, with panning and effect sends to overall reverb and delay for your mix. There are other drive, chorus and EQ insert effects plus reverb and delay send effects within each layer. You can tweak up to four effect parameters at a time with those rotaries beneath the screen, and again the screen is a highlight, indicating graphical changes like EQ.

Extra performances

With DMNO's ingredients, then, you're already starting with something different, but it's the interaction between DMNO 1 and 2 where things start going on a tangent, and it's a path you will gladly follow – just make sure you have a few hours to pass, because this thing will eat your spare time, albeit richly rewarding you along the way.

Chief among these workflow extras are the eight play modes which we'll list simply because they tell you all you need to know, and reveal an insight of the leftfield thinking behind the synth. Single, Dual and Split are the most obvious. The first allows you to play either DMNO with maximum 8-voice (mono) polyphony; Dual plays both synth layers together, each with the polyphony halved; while Split simply puts each synth on a selectable range of the keyboard, as you might expect.

Fourth mode One-Two allows you to play the first synth with your first four notes of polyphony but switches to DMNO 2 for the rest; Cycle alternates between each engine, so press one note for DMNO 1 and the next plays DMNO2, then swaps back and so on. Random alternates between the layers randomly based on user definable probabilities; Chaos is Random plus random pitch changes (by octave, fifths etc); and finally Series is where the audio of DMNO 1 can be routed into 2.

Whether you'll use all of these modes is, of course, debatable – some might be a little too out there for you – but we love anything that adds performance variation, and particularly like Chaos mode, especially combined with the arpeggiator, as you can keep things relatively in control while sounding off-beat and a much more interesting player than (in our case) you might well be.

Modulation

Each DMNO layer has two LFOs, although, as we said above, Osc 2 can additionally be used as one in LF mode and one of the envelopes can be looped to act as an LFO – this doubling up of functions across DMNO is very 'on brand', if you think about it. Similarly there are two envelopes with a not-so-hidden third able to shape the VCA.

To the left of the keyboard there's a dedicated block for more performance/keyboard based modulation, and one other feature well worth picking out is the envelope follower. Here you can modulate with an external signal, a bit like side-chaining with a kick through a compressor, and it's yet another small addition with big dividends.

There's a lot of modulation to delve into here, and like Gemini, DMNO can be incredibly hands-on and instant, but its screen again adds another dimension. You'll be switching between fat, detuned super waves (not just saws) by way of several three-way switches to select more obvious sources and destinations, and the screen acts beautifully here, highlighting each options as you shift.

However, the display comes into its own when offering more complex modulations that can be set up by way of the modulation matrix, with seven slots, 10 sources, 15 destinations, and levels all controlled with the four rotaries beneath. Easy and plentiful.

Verdict

All of these features add up to a synth with a very big and layered sound, which is particularly suited to sound designers and, really, those after something a little different. Sure you can get huge, analogue-style leads, basses, sequences and the like, but it's really what happens when you combine your Dominos using either the play modes or straight audio routing.

Here DMNO stands out and, like Gemini, it seems to be another synth designed from the question, 'what can we make that would be really cool?' rather than 'what can we make that will sell?'. That's not to say it won't sell – it certainly deserves to – but this isn't yet another analogue synth, another wavetable or another wacky hybrid. We have enough amazing synths that fit the bill in all three of those categories, but DMNO tends to forge its own path around and through all of them.

In that sense it very much has its own character, but perhaps makes it a harder sell, especially if you are after the huge pads that we love about Gemini. For those, you might find DMNO's polyphony lacking – you're only getting the full eight voices in mono mode – but if you think of DMNO as a massively souped up dual mono synth or a twisted paraphonic, you certainly won't be disappointed.

So where Gemini is all about rich, massive and expressive walls of sound, DMNO is more like its rather unruly nephew – less to say, a massive attitude, probably a chip on its shoulder, but it talks the talk and you listen when it does.

Hands-on demos

UDO Audio

Alternatives

Specifications

What is it?

The history of commercial music is littered with instances where a new technology has inspired creativity to go in a different direction: acoustic to electric guitars, acoustic to electric pianos, drum machines and, of course, synthesizers.

While synths took a little while to take hold of the mainstream, there were moments of backlash, with the '90s being an example, through bands such as Oasis. But it was in 1997 that Roland released a hardware synth called the JP-8000 that would notably change the sound of commercial music forever. This initial influence was evident through the style of electronic music known as trance, but quickly infiltrated other styles, remaining incredibly fashionable in today’s commercial production landscape.

The JP-8000 introduced the concept of the supersaw waveform to the world; it was a sawtooth wave, but with clones of itself that could be detuned in a controlled way, giving rise to the enormous-sounding synth pads that were popularised in trance. It also influenced other commercial synth products, with the Virus range of machines, from Access, being notable supersaw ambassadors.

These sounds are fully omnipresent in pop and commercial culture, with a majority of synths providing some form of capacity to embrace the sound. It is, however, sometimes difficult to get the exact sound you want, so wouldn't it be great to have a specific software instrument that embraces this technical trait and stamps its endorsement on the name of the product?

Performance

Super*Saw (pronounced as SuperStarSaw) is a new plugin from Native Instruments, designed in collaboration with critically acclaimed producer AG Cook. If you are unfamiliar with his work, search out his album Britpop, or his work with Charlie XCX, and you'll hear plenty of evidence of supersaw usage.

Apart from integrating seamlessly with other NI products, such as Komplete Kontrol and Maschine, Cook has supplied many of the patches, while the visual aspect of the plugin includes design elements from his longtime visual collaborator, Simon Whybray. It is very striking in its appearance, albeit in green and pink!

The new Super Star

Upon loading Super*Saw for the first time, there is a degree of familiarity, which begins with the oscillator section on the left-hand side. To be honest, this rather undersells the concept, as we will quickly discover!

Super*Swarm is equipped with two partial sound sources, which are identifiable by a pink and green dot, located on the top left-hand side. Each of these sources is identical, but they are described within the context of the instrument as Swarms. Each Swarm is equipped with its own set of parameters, which begins with the number of audible sawtooth oscillators, which can then be detuned. You can't start with a single oscillator, but what's the point of that in this context, particularly when you can increase the Swarm up to 16 saws per partial? You can see how many are in play from the square graphic located on the top left-hand side of the Swarm section. Once you have selected your Swarm level, you can then de-tune and spread the oscillators across the stereo field. Even with only one Swarm in operation, it sounds gigantic!

In the lower half of the Swarm section are a host of modulation elements. Changing parameters is simple enough, once you get the hang of it, but requires the movement of the mouse over a particular parameter, at which point a value will appear, allowing you to increase or decrease with the mouse. Your connection with this interface may just depend on what you are used to. It is an elegant and simplistic piece of design, but as with all levels of minimalism, sometimes things aren't as obvious as you might hope! Like anything, once you know how it works, you quickly get used to its modus operandi.

Mix it up

Moving to the central part of the instrument (and with previous thoughts on the design ringing in our ears) you definitely have to do some experimentation.

Located at the top in the centre is a mix control, which indicates levels between the pink and green Swarm layers, as a circle. This fills or depletes with each click and drag. It's elegant, but you have to get used to it. This is also where you can change the tuning of each Swarm layer, with the ability to transpose up or down two octaves, either side of the core note.

This central section is described as the Morpher, as it allows you to take a snapshot, using the target icon, located in each corner. Much like an X/Y pad, it then allows you to seamlessly shift between the snapshots, and does so very smoothly indeed.

At the bottom of this section, icons relating to amplitude envelope and filter quickly reveal a host of control elements related to each menu category. To be honest, this felt a little bit fiddly, as a lot of information is displayed in a relatively small space, and while the elegance is maintained, a larger display area would certainly be beneficial here. The filter itself is very in keeping, stylistically speaking, with the genre intended for a synth of this kind. You can switch between 2- and 4-pole filters, with lo, band and hi-pass filters being available.

The central display is also switchable to Voice Control mode, which allows the engineering of a host of different elements, particularly relating to control of polyphonic playback. Here you can engineer all sorts of glides and bends, which can be particularly useful for creating risers or quirky synth sounds.

FX and more

The section on the far right is switchable between the effects section, which provides chorus, delay and reverb, and further modulation sources, which include LFO and two ADSR envelopes.

Verdict

It becomes very clear, very quickly, that Super*Saw is an immensely powerful sound source, as long as you don't mind starting with a sawtooth as your main constituent component. No problem there, because that's the whole point, right?

In order to get you going, there are a considerable number of presets, all placed in categories to guide your path. It doesn't take long to hear how complex sounds can quickly become, and we have to admit that despite our admiration for the concept, we felt like we only scratched the surface with its capabilities. A large part of this is because of the hieroglyphic and graphical nature of the interface, which is really fun to use, but does find you scratching your head occasionally. Of course, in an ideal world, you would work with the synth to fully understand its operational elements, and make no bones about it: if you have a requirement for huge-sounding saw-based pads, this is a fantastic synth which is going to reward you continually, but you’ll need to have the manual on hand to get the absolute most from the instrument.

Hands-on demos

Native Instruments

Alternatives

Specifications

What is it?

For many of us who work predominantly in the box, a complex audio interface is completely unnecessary. Indeed, what we want is something compact and affordable. Couple that with excellent audio quality, solid construction and ease of use and you should be onto a winner. Solid State Logic, a company best known for its market-leading and user-friendly pro-level audio equipment, picked up precisely this baton some years ago with its SSL 2 and SSL 2+ devices. These no-nonsense units have now been joined by an even simpler offering, the SSL 1.

Visually similar to the MkII versions of its SSL 2 and SSL 2+ units, SSL 1 is a 2 in / 2 out desktop USB audio interface with up to 32-bit/192kHz operation. It is USB 2.0 compliant and is powered via the main USB-C audio interface connector. It also includes an additional 5V USB-C power input, so is ideal for use with a wider range of devices including smartphones and tablets.

The two inputs are clearly delineated – Channel 1 is the mic channel and Channel 2 the line/instrument channel. This keeps the rear connectivity very straightforward with a regular XLR (Channel 1) and a single ¼” jack (Channel 2). The back panel also has a single stereo output on a pair of balanced DC-coupled ¼” jacks, and two USB-C connectors as discussed above. On the front panel you’ll find a single headphone output on a ¼” jack.

SSL 1 features a combination of mechanical knobs and soft buttons, and the latter include handy LED indicators. The options for Channel 1 are 48V phantom power, low-cut filter (18dB/octave @ 75Hz) and SSL’s Legacy 4K circuit. Meanwhile, on Channel 2 you get a line level switch (the default input option is instrument). Both channels get regular Gain knobs, and 5-part post gain LED level meters.

The main level output is controlled from the large Monitor knob, which in typical SSL style goes up to 11, and the headphone level is controlled from the smaller knob in the top right. Finally, the ‘Mix’ button blends the channel inputs (which are both panned in the centre) with the stereo USB audio output for minimal-latency monitoring.

Performance

The SSL 1 has excellent build quality and, although reasonably compact, is weighty enough to stay in place on the desktop once everything’s plugged up. The rotary controllers feel smooth and solid and feature the classic SSL knob design; meanwhile, the buttons, although soft selectors rather than latched switches, have a positive action. With no power switch, simply plugging in the relevant USB-C cable gets you up and running; meanwhile, a handy two-colour power LED (green for USB, amber for external 5V power) indicates the power source. Windows users should also download and install the SSL ASIO/WDM drivers.

The layout couldn’t be simpler and the knob and button per function design is completely self-explanatory. It’s worth noting that if you use the minimal latency Mix option, there’s no manual blend control, but there is a corresponding reduction in the USB output level to help achieve a better mix. If you want to modify that mix further, you’ll need to adjust the output level from your connected device.

The mic channel provides plenty of clean gain (63dB) and although there’s no EQ, it does include SSL’s 4K emulation circuit. This adds some harmonic distortion and a high-frequency presence boost to the sound. We found this great for livening up a dull-sounding mic, and it's particularly handy for dialogue. Also worth noting is that small buffer sizes deliver very respectable round-trip latency. In Logic Pro we achieved 7.9ms at 44.1kHz with a 32-sample buffer. Use the higher sample rates and this reduces even more.

Finally, SSL 1 also includes three additional stereo software-only loopback streams. By default, the first loopback output carries the main stereo output and overall the three stereo streams provide very useful flexibility for routing audio internally between apps.

Verdict

Much like its slightly larger siblings, SSL has resisted the temptation to cram as many features into the SSL 1. Instead, the focus is ease of use and audio fidelity. It would have been great if it could have snuck in MIDI connectivity, but we won’t mark it down just for that and overall this is a great unit with a very attractive price point.

Hands-on demos

Solid State Logic

Alternatives

Specifications

It’s been confirmed that Stage Tour – the successor game to Guitar Hero – will launch in December. Just in time for Christmas.

Red Octane, the developers behind the original game, have been drip feeding details of the Stage Tour soundtrack for months now. It looks like over 90 songs are part of the game and the important date is 10 December: that’s when it will be available to purchase for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

The game will work with some existing instrument controllers from those systems but fans can also purchase a number of different peripherals. A copy of the game plus a Kramer wireless guitar controller will cost you £119.99, whilst a bundle featuring two guitar controllers is £179.99. The Band bundle – featuring guitar, drums and a microphone – is priced at £269.99.

The developers have also released a trailer for the game, which is up now on YouTube.

As for the soundtrack, already confirmed are Extreme (Get The Funk Out), Paramore (For A Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic), Weezer (Island In The Sun), Slipknot (Psychosocial) and Radiohead (Just,) amongst others. The Stones have contributed a track from their current Foreign Tongues album in the shape of In The Stars and other names mentioned in the trailer include Muse, Metallica, Black Eyed Peas, Duran Duran, Motley Crue, Ed Sheeran, Fall Out Boy and Genesis.

As previously with the Guitar Hero series, the developers have included a number of new names: German ‘electronicore’ band Electric Callboy, Canadian indie rockers Good Kid and Californian guitarist Jfarrari will all be expecting a sales boost from their presence on the soundtrack.

Red Octane has been regularly updating its progress on the game throughout the year. Back in March it explained in a blog post the long process by which they came up with the idea for Stage Tour. “Tim (Clark, one of the firm’s developers) said something that changed everything: ‘There’s clearly still an audience. Fans still love these games. Just start by making a guitar.’”

Hence the new Kramer controller. Gibson (which owns the Kramer brand) inked a deal with the developers which means the front-end of the game is based on the Gibson Garage in Nashville.

In a further blog post published in June, Red Octane said that “our ultimate goal with Stage Tour is not only to bring the rhythm game back but bring it back better than ever before.” Come December we’ll discover how close they’ve come to achieving that objective.

You can pre-order Stage Tour now on the RedOctane website.

Confirmed Stage Tour songs

• "In the Stars"— The Rolling Stones
• "All Star"— Smash Mouth
• "Starlight"— Muse
• Current Confirmed Stage Tour Setlist (25 Songs)
• "RATATATA" — BABYMETAL & Electric Callboy
• "Get The Funk Out" — Extreme
• "Square Hammer" — Ghost
• "Mimi's Delivery Service" — Good Kid
• "Dani California" — Red Hot Chili Peppers
• "Terminator Oscillator" — Static-X
• "Island In The Sun" — Weezer
• "Bite Me" — Avril Lavigne
• "Airhead" — Honey Revenge
• "For A Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic" — Paramore
• "Do Me Like That" — The Paradox
• "Jane!" — The Long Faces
• "The Unknowing" — Jfarrari
• "Siren" — Castle Rat
• "Broken Dreams, Inc." — Rise Against
• "Psychosocial" — Slipknot
• "The Motherload" — Mastodon
• "The End" — Mammoth
• "Blind and Frozen" — Beast In Black
• "Just Like Heaven" — The Cure
• "Just" — Radiohead
• "Just Pretend" — Bad Omens
• "In the Stars"— The Rolling Stones
• "All Star"— Smash Mouth
• "Starlight"— Muse