FFmpeg, the free multimedia toolkit, is so powerful that, honestly, it’s entirely possible not to know all that it can do. For audio, the new FFAB offers a graphical front-end on Mac and Linux, with real-time preview, drag-and-drop filters, parallel processing, and useful visualizations that even command line lovers won’t want to miss.

MetaSounds is a powerful platform for sound, synthesis, and procedural audio and music. And the price is right (free). But in the past, it had some gaps in out-of-the-box functionality. Epic has quietly released TechAudioTools Content, a bunch of free editor tools and widgets that anyone interested in Unreal or MetaSounds should go grab right this second. It’s always the little things.

Mario Nieto’s Novagrid opens up sequenced volume, pan, filter, and bitcrusher effects in plug-in form. And while that may sound a bit familiar, Novagrid has some tricks up its sleeve. If you like animating sound, you’ll definitely want to take a look. If you buy something from a CDM link, we may earn a commission. […]

Take a moment for the arresting stillness of “all dolls go to heaven.” IOWA, the full-length opus by film composer Lia Ouyang Rusli (“OHYUNG”), hits you deep in the gut. The first 2026 release by must-follow label Trans Music Archive is both an essential meditation and a call to arms.

If you’ve got an Ableton Move, you can take advantage of its public beta today, too, just by connecting Move to your computer. And this is a huge release: in addition to other new functionality, Audio Tracks support warping clips and live-processing audio. This has the power to turn Move into a serious pint-sized powerhouse, […]

Ableton Live 12.4 enters public beta today. New features include continued refinement of Live’s audio effects and the ability to merge stems and separate stems for just a selected portion of time. And there’s one unexpected twist: Ableton Link can now do audio. Here’s a deep dive into what’s new, based on beta builds leading […]

JeongHo Park, a self-described “algorithmic composer” and artist, is building a delightful instrument that turns images into scores with full drawing capability for making paths. Inspired by the likes of Xenakis’ UPIC, the tool gives you instantly mind-bending results, living in that netherworld between synthesizer and score.

Here’s a perfect way to treat your ears at the start of the week. Sound artist and percussionist Lorenzo Colombo recorded this ethereal, cosmic live set at Torso Electronics in Copenhagen. The dadamachines automat toolkit and its mechanical possibilities get woven together with Torso’s T1 and S4 hardware, and the results are pure magic.

Massive sound, lots of unique tricks, hard-hitting personality, onboard basslines — more people should be talking about the Modor DR-2. And amidst the blizzard of news last month, you might have missed that it now does trig conditions. OS014 landed at the end of December, so we may have missed it while we were all […]

Pikimov, the community-supported free Web visual tool, keeps getting better. Pikimov 5 dropped today with a “classic” editor that makes it competitive with tools like CapCut — or any time you need a quick video edit. That joins After Effects-style motion tools, with surprising options like background removal and rotoscoping.