Teenage Engineering’s fecund design imagination has yielded inventions wonderful, ambitious, sometimes prohibitively expensive, odd… but can the company reinvent the lowly field recorder? And was the “field system” just marketing vision or pipe dream – or does it bring those pieces together for something genuinely musical and productive? We turn again to CDM’s at-large Swedish gear tester (and tester of Swedish gear) Andreas Roman for a proper review. -Ed.

Whether you’ve got the hardware keyboard, the software plug-in, or both, Arturia has dropped a major V2 update with an all-new wavetable engine, new effects, and more. This is also part of today’s V Collection X update.

Brooklyn’s incredible artist and writer Janus Rose recently came on Refuge Worldwide in Berlin for my ongoing program POST, and this is one mix you don’t want to mix. It’s one of those times you want to creep/trainspot over the CDJ display on every single track, and a lot of it is forthcoming music so – you heard it here first.

Ready to get more control – without a computer or mouse – using Ableton Push 3 in standalone mode? We’ve got some hacks for advanced parameter mapping from our friends Darren of Isotonik Studios and Elisabeth Homeland. And there’s a free download – no Max skills required.

Roland has been steadily overhauling their plug-in range, but this one you shouldn’t miss. The 1983 JX-3P was always an overlooked gem – think a JUNO with two oscillators, cross-mod, and more pitch modulation. But now Roland finally nails their software recreation by improving the sound and adding a simulation of the PG-200 programmer for hands-on control.

With Ableton Push 3, Max for Live effects, instruments, sequencers, and other tools can work on standalone hardware – even without your computer. So it’s a perfect time to look at how Max for Live devices can work without a computer display – and, by the way, that’s just as useful on Push and Push 2, as well. Here’s what you need to know, as a user, a first-time patcher, or an experienced developer.

Moog Music has responded to concerns about last week’s layoffs in their Asheville, NC production facility, via their Facebook page.

Just when you thought the Roland TR-8S (and its little sibling, the 6S) couldn’t do any more – there’s this. Surprise: Roland’s drum machine for the rest of us just packed in new CR-78 and chromatic 808 bass models, plus a ton of new content, and a compact UI for the TR Editor. I’ve been playing with the release candidate firmware and – yes, indeed. Happy 1209 day, everybody!

You’ve probably seen Transit, the collaboration between Baby Audio and Andrew Huang, on the Interwebs and YouTubes. Well, surprise: it’s not just for massive EDM-style breakdowns or something like that. It’s an eminently tweak-able, programmable tool that lets you combine multiple effects and set them in motion. And it’s surprisingly fun to build up your own multi-effects from scratch. Let’s have a look.

It’s sampling and stem separation in one. It’s interface has some DJ deck-style simplicity, but it’s for serious production. It’s Serato Sample 2.0, now with the company’s machine learning-powered stem separation. And it could make Sample worth another look.  Serato’s history To those stumbling around with other tools, Sample might simply be off your radar. […]