It’s the most on-sale time of the year. You know the drill – but here are some select picks out of the flood, including some sales on tools that happen only this week, both for music creation and live visuals.
Keep reloading, this story is being updated live! And include your favorite deals at bottom! Some resellers include affiliate links – thanks for helping support CDM in 2023 to do more weird and unprofitable stuff, too!
Image generated with machine learning, using NightCafe Studio.
Sweetwater
Sweetwater has their usual blowout Black Friday sale, which also brings together a lot of the software sales on now in one place.
A few deals stand out.
Gear:
KORG synths and controllers are on sale, including the whole volca range (up to $60 off), and on top of the sale pricing buy 2 volcas and get 1 volca (beats, drum, or sample2) for free
That includes the Korg volca modular for $169 – see Francis Preve’s write-up for CDM. Well, damn, this is the one I want. Santa, where are you?
Bitwig Studio 4 crossgrade for $249, from any DAW (regularly $299) – Sweetwater exclusive
Roland Video A/V mixers are up to US$1100 off
Roland SP-404MKII is in stock (whoo!) and both the SP-404 and TR-8S come with a free 6-month Roland Cloud Pro subscription. That’s Pro, not ultimate, but still the prices here are solid. The TR-8S is $100 off for Black Friday, and they have carry bag and Decksaver bundles, too. But will you get that, or –
Various headphone deals, too – amidst some consumer-y crap I hate, here are some cans I love:
Sennheiser HD 650 open-back headphones are usually too expensive to buy, beautifully comfy and nice-sounding as they are, but now they’re $150 off for $399.95.
The full Beyerdynamic range is on sale, up to $60 off, with some appealing prices on the DT series. (If you’re in Europe, check Beyerdynamic direct – probably the only Twitter ad I clicked on all year.)
IK Multimedia iLoud Studio Monitors are already a bargain, now they’re $150 off
I just started testing Universal Audio’s SP-1 and SD-1 mics and they’re really lovely and great-sounding for the price – currently $50 off
SSL Logic SiX 6-channel mixer is $300 off, and I really need Santa again. See also $70 off their USB audio interface.
Or an SSL channel strip for $299, $200 off…
Universal Audio’s new Bolt audio interfaces are discounted and bundled with free LA-2A Collection and Pure Plate. (These are native; the Volt don’t use UAD. But they’re quite nice.)
Tascam’s DR-07X stereo recorder is $169 and includes a 16GB SD card and – I just paid a lot more for mine. (I love it, though! Well, Tascam menu diving aside…)
Rode RODECaster Pro looks handy for podcasting and it’s $169.23 off for $429.77.
Shure mics don’t get discounted so often, and they’re discounted across the board, up to $210 off.
AKG is on sale, as well.
And if you always wanted a Kurzweil, the PC4 is $500 off.
Software
TAL Software for 20% off including some serious favorites like their 101 model
50% off Steinberg WaveLab – which remains my favorite mastering environment, and just in time, Steinberg recently adopted a dongle-free authorization
50% off Steinberg Dorico notation software – rarely discounted this deeply, and in my humble opinion the scoring software to beat (and notation software is actually how I got into music tech)
Up to 50% off Baby Audio plug-ins including their awesome Spaced Out reverb/delay and IHNY-2 parallel compressor
$149 for Moog Moogerfooger effects plug-ins line is the lowest I’ve seen – and now includes the MF-109S saturator plug-in free, both limited-time offers.
iZotope is on serious discount – Neoverb for $25 (75% off), 75% off RX 10 and Post Production Suite 7, and more – the Holiday Bundle is $49 for 92% off?!
50% off Arturia V Collection 9, FX Collection 3, and Pigments 3 is a huge deal on still more favorites
Amazon (& Alto Music)
Less of a holiday for Amazon amidst whatever Prime days, but they do have some deals going, particularly via Alto Music:
Moog Matrarch Black – now discontinued, so your last chance to buy new – for US$1699. Honestly, even with unlimited money I’d probably choose this over the Minimoog reissue, honestly. That’s a terrific deal.
MPC One for $699 also via Alto Music
PreSonus ATOM controller for $99.95 (50% off)
PreSonus AudioBox USB for $74.99
Zoom V3 vocal processor for $189.99
Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones, one of the few pairs I’d be comfortable for both mixing and DJing (usually one negates the other)
Shure SM7B for $359
Big Hardware Sales
30% off everything from Bastl Instruments is one of the bigger hardware sales of 2022. That includes the wonderful Casper collabs, modules like Pizza I was recently raving about… fabulous.
Schneidersladen are here in Berlin, where “Black Friday” isn’t even a thing, but … they’ve got some great discounts. That includes the Befaco Lich, my current favorite module (run Pd and SuperCollider), great stuff from ALM Busy Circuits, and more. Check the Schneiders sale page
Perfect Circuit not only have a bunch of Black Friday deals, but also store-wide 10% off non-sale items with only a few exceptions. Uh, wow.
KORG’s buy two volcas, get one volca free is available on their site so you can go to your favorite dealer
Elektron Syntakt, which is just one of my favorite boxes of the moment, is heavily discounted across dealers.
Elevator Sound, another favorite European retailer for modular stuff, has their seasonal clearout with some lovely stuff – see the UK store or EU store
UPDATED
Thonk has everything 20% off in their store – for your modular / DIY synth needs!
Noise Engineering has 15% off everything including modules, through Monday
Software Freebies
You can get Soundtoys’ Little Radiator (modeled tube mic pre-amp) free through the new year.
HoRNet’s awesome Sybilla “intelligent de-esser” is free today – yeah, downloading that for myself right now!
Waves are back with their usual sale – and this year’s freebie, which is Lil Tube saturation. (I’m going to pass on that one, though, and stick with Little Radiator – true story)
The fine folks at Isotonik Studios are doing a 12 weeks of Christmas promotion with free stuff for Ableton Live users every week
Big Software Sales
Soundtoys has Soundtoys 5 at 55% off again – still some of the software I use most often. Up to 80% off everything else, 55% off upgrades. See my last round-up of tips.
AAS is up to 60% off – absolutely essential for us physical modeling lovers, especially
20% off Ableton Push + packs (this is always the one sale of the year)
50% off Arturia flagship software
AudioThing is up to 70% off (whoa) and you get Bubbles free with any purchase
Puremagnetik, makers of a lot of really wonderful and creative stuff, are 50% off everything
Waldorf just made a software version of their Streichfett string synth, and you can grab it now for an intro price of 33 EUR (for instance)
Big discounts at Plugin Boutique
A livestream? That’s daft.
Harrison has their AVA plugins for $29 instead of $267
Independent maker Klevgrand is another rising star and they’re up to 70% off now
Eventide just released Newfangled’s Invigorate bus compressor/limiter/overdrive – writing about that next week – and it’s on sale for 50% off at $49. It’s truly one of the product releases this year I’m most excited about.
VSTBuzz has a bunch of steep discounts on tons of software, even including IRCAM stuff (“The Snail,” anyone?)
AudioDamage is 40% off everything, from one of the great all-time plug-in makers (and no annoying copy protection schemes, either)
UPDATED –
Everything Plogue is 50% off through end of the month
Patchworld is deeply discounted on the Meta Quest Store for VR-based music creation (now with Mixed Reality support, too)
Create Digital Motion
Everything from Resolume is 50% off this weekend, from educational licenses to t-shirts. Really. Wire, Avenue, Arena, the lot.
MadMapper just dropped a big upgrade and everything is 20% off
Unreal Engine’s Marketplace has up to 70% off its catalog
Vidvox only does one sale a year, and it’s now – grab VDMX for $100 off
[ … updating … ]
Who have we missed? Best deals only … let us know in comments.
Ed.: There’s a great comment thread going so I’ll direct you there! Some nice tips.
Now, my favorite is the Freakshow Industries Black Friday sale, where they increase prices for the ‘holiday’: