It’s the lunchtime juice box of samplers – and an answer to the complexity of both hardware and software without sacrificing power. We’ve gotten our hands on this one; let’s have a look.

The other shoe has dropped: yesterday, following the sale of Bandcamp from Epic to Songtradr, around half of the company’s existing staff were laid off. That’s leading more folks to start talking about alternatives.

Everybody gets more waveshapers! Bitwig just announced Studio 5.1 with new waveshapers, new filters, polyphonic voice stacking, and a Bite dual oscillator, plus other enhancements.

If you like your effects with a heaping side serving of envelopes and modulation, MOTIONS is for you. Triggers and dynamics, texturizers and distortion, filters and panning, and a whole lot of tools for creating shapes and rhythms combine in a semi-modular multi-effects that just won’t sit still. But – that doesn’t mean you can’t use it for precise and subtle effects or skip the over-the-top stuff. Let’s explain.

Synplant 2: it’s still leafy and organic – just more so. Now it has AI-powered sonic analysis and generation which – can sound completely glitchy and unexpected. It has a DNA view full of parameters. It’s weirder than ever, from top to bottom. So here are some more insights from Magnus Lidström about how the original 2009 Synplant led to 2023’s Synplant-further-out follow-up.

It’s a hardware module. But it’s also a software module in the free (paid plug-in) host VCV Rack. The do-everything, clock-based multipurpose voltage-sending Pamela’s Pro Workout is the latest module from ALM Busy Circuits to make the hardware-software crossover. And it joins a number of modules there – many of them free (including some news there, too).

A focus on female composers and electronic artists from Iran – alongside big AV productions like CDM favorites Temp-Illusion – is front and center at Tehran Contemporary Sounds in Berlin this weekend. If you can’t be there, we’ve got a big lineup of music to queue up.

The best mixing doesn’t just jam some bangers together – it creates an emotional topography to traverse. So it’s a pleasure to welcome Moe Nagasi aka Surface Crawler, whose compositional imagination and musicianship shines through in her mixes. Good timing, too, as she’s got a score for a film premiering this weekend in Leipzig.

VCV Rack, the software Eurorack modular you can use standalone for free, has four handy modules for your patching enjoyment.

Minimal Audio, the maker of some of the more unique effects in recent years, is now stepping into the synth space with Current. And they’ve got a real mothership of a synth, merging tons of synthesis and effects ideas into one instrument. It is subscription-based – and they have a particular take on that, too. Here’s a breakdown: