Roland apparently doesn’t want to leave too much to the imagination – or online leaks. Now, it’s official. Roland has posted a teaser image to their AIRA site. It’s marked with the catch phrase “Start Patching,” plus “Frankfurt Musikmesse 2015” (next week’s industry trade show here in Germany). So, we know a lot for sure […]

CDM quietly turned ten years old last year. And that means it’s time to get a fresh picture of who you are. We need to know who’s reading, what you do, what you want to see on the site, and what devices we need to target. So, we’ll ask a couple of short questions – […]

Native Instruments’ Traktor Kontrol D2 deck was all but revealed at WMC, but now we’re finding out more clearly how everything comes together. And we know the price: the unit is US$499 (499€ / £429), even with that nice color display. (If NI is getting their part cost down, I wonder if we might soon […]

You already know sound is something you feel, physically – you know this from the sensation in your head on headphones, from your gut as a PA produces big bass, from the bodily experience of thunderstorms or the siren on an ambulance. But we may soon live in a world where increasingly the role of […]

You’ll recall I predicated music app developers would try to do something with Apple Watch. (That was a relatively easy prediction, like suggesting that warmer months with longer periods of sunlight would follow the colder, snowier bits occurring in winter.) Well, the Apple Watch isn’t even out yet, and we’re already seeing a couple of […]

With widespread reports that Roland will soon have a new modular product, it’s worth remembering: Roland has done modular before. That legacy carried the name System-100. The original 100 semi-modular lineup of the late 70s, and the Synthesizer-101, might actually be more relevant today than it was when it first shipped. The clever concept here […]

It’s one of the best-known electronic sounds ever – perhaps the best electronic sound branding in history. It made its launch in 1983 – right before Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, no less. But it seems the THX “Deep Note” was due for an upgrade. And that’s what it got last […]

Bitwig Studio turns one year old this week, and they’re keen to use the occasion to convince you to try their software. But the pitch takes a different angle, focusing more than ever on the particular bundle of instruments and effects. There’s an artist pack by Cristian Vogel that makes it clear what’s possible (hello, […]

What if one controller could pack everything you need for playing creative DJ and live sets in a single, tall, slim device? What if it had the ultra-compact design of German builders Faderfox and Glanzmann? And what if it borrowed elements from previous controllers, but grouped them in a new way you probably hadn’t seen […]

The most important thing to know about Stems, a new multitrack specification for audio, is that it’s simple by design. That simplicity means that it could really take off as a way of sharing music with multiple tracks, for DJing or live-remix applications. Stems won’t solve every problem of file exchange and sharing. It’s not […]