In tenuous times of war, disease, and uncertainty, our MusicMakers Hacklab program in May at CTM Festival held a special energy. Here’s a look back at this open performance lab for music, just as the deadline for the 2023 edition approaches Sunday.

Wait, you don’t own a listening bar? Well, if you did, you’d probably shortlist the Orbit.6. It’s a new “elite” rotary mixer by revered mixer engineer Andy Rigby-Jones, and launches his new Union Audio outfit.

A funeral with violins, a hospital, a broken piano, a diesel engine, a farewell – artist Łukasz Polowczyk’s new work Noise in the Key of Life layers live players and field recording with equal standing and reflects on experience and sound. We talked to Lukasz and premiere a short film about the work.

Apple quietly dropped Logic Pro 10.7.5 with some highly desirable stuff. That includes support for Ableton Link, the ability to capture ideas without using a metronome, and the fancy new iPhone self-calibration for Spatial Audio, plus a hefty handful of long-awaited additions.

The new Max thing Cycling ’74 has been teasing is here, and it’s pronounced “rainbow.” Maybe the easiest way to see why this is a big deal: on the product page, you can mess with an interactive patch in your Web browser natively.

BOSS has taken the advanced slicing / rhythmic / tremolo / panning powers of the SL-20 and packed it into a single stomp form factor. And despite that new compact size and price, you still get stereo in and outs as an option, and full MIDI control.

Born in LA, known for the West Coast, worked on the East Coast – but this week a stunning portrait of Morton Subotnick and live performance will take place in a town with no coast. It’s SUBOTNICK in Berlin.

Noise Engineering is back with still more modules we want – this time, a stereo mixer with some specific desirable extras, and a handy utility for offsets (and other things).

Kyoka, the innovative producer and artist (Raster-Noton), has electrodes attached to her head with good reason. In collaboration with neurologists, she’s exploring the power of sound in mood and thought. She talks to us on the eve of a premiere at Berlin’s Signals Festival.

We’re fortunate for all the time we get to spend together talking about the stuff we love and meeting the people who make our musical instruments. And that time is always limited. So this moment from the OB-X8 team is especially worth watching for all four designers – and RIP, Dave.