The Square Enix Music Channel remains a gift to the Internet. So in this dire summer for the gaming industry (layoffs, the end of physical media, console price hikes), let’s keep the faith and listen to NieR played on hammered dulcimer. This, too, shall pass.

Here’s another live visual icon with some welcome updates. Vidvox promised lots of quality-of-life refinements with VDMX6 as a platform, and VDMX6.3 adds just that. So it’s a good excuse to mention VDMX again, in case you’d tuned out for a bit.

The news can be numbing in all its violence and mindlessness, compounded by a chorus of shills across media and social media. Temp-Illusion, the duo formed in Tehran by Shahin Entezami and Behrang Najafi, cuts through those feelings like a knife. Then stick around for the deeply meditative Bayal بیل (Shanin + Adel Poursamadi).

Sinevibes has been cheering on KORG gear as much as KORG themselves. Now they’re bringing the entire range of 20+ effects to prologue, minilogue xd, NTS-1, NTS-1 mkII, NTS-3, and microKORG2 — plus you get major sonic updates for the Eternal flanger and Shift frequency shifter.

MID continues to make cool stuff for Ableton Live, with a special emphasis on Ableton Move. Ever wished you could quickly chop up a track or other longer material into bar-aligned loops — especially for easy triggering on Move? Move Loop Slicer does just that, and it’s free now.

Native Instruments, iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx being part of inMusic? That was early May; now only NI remains at inMusic. 2026′ mergers and acquisitions have come so fast, you practically need a reference to keep up. So… let’s do just that. It’s part of a larger pattern of ownership changes and layoffs across every part of the music instrument business.

35 years later, the T-1000 is more relevant than ever. Terminator 2 debuted in the first weekend of July 1991. The groundbreaking mix of computer animation and practical effects has come full circle. And I can’t mention the T-1000 without mentioning Alan Oldham (DJ T-1000.) T-1000 Killer AI turns out to be chatbots causing psychosis, […]

Finally, proof that there’s life for Live after Apple and Microsoft. It’s unofficial and totally unsupported, but a set of patches for the free Wine compatibility environment lets you run Ableton Live 12, Max for Live, and Push 2 and Push 3 on Linux. And the result is just about indistinguishable from native support.

Novation’s Launchkey remains a go-to, no-hassle standard for MIDI controllers. Now they’ve rounded out their MK4 lineup with an 88-key model that adds the extra octaves without the weight or bulk that usually entails. They opted for semi-weighted keys to keep from bulking up.) It’s the compact MK4, all stretched out. Here’s the latest on the full MK4 lineup.

Isadora for macOS and Windows has long been a powerful media art tool for those in the know, thanks to its intuitive interface and focus on live performance. It’s the media art tool that can feel at home with dance choreographers, a rare piece of software that gets dramaturgy. Isadora 4.5 adds a lot to that, but most notably flexible sound tools — and VST3 support — bring it solidly into the world of audiovisual media.