The most sophisticated, most important music and sound instrument of 2014 is – your hearing. But the best hearing protection is simply the one you’ll always use. And that’s why DUBS are the best product of 2014. There are great hearing protection products out there, and for professional applications like touring, something spendy may well […]

Enjoy it, because this will be about the only time something this weird racks up hundreds of thousands of SoundCloud plays. Yes, it’s Toronto’s Joel Zimmerman, aka deadmau5, uploading this week to SoundCloud. 432 is an ode to 432 Hz, with horror movie-spooky sounds oozing over the top. “DAT KICK DOE” from earlier this year […]

KORG has now made it public: we’ll get to see their ARP Odyssey, a remake of the classic 1970s synth involving one of the original creators, in January. Some sort of working unit at the NAMM trade show seems a likely thing to hope for. And we can also see from the image they’ve posted […]

Nils Frahm is a gem in music right now, a sensitive and reflective voice. And infused into everything he does is an unwavering sense of taste. If you’re feeling the weight of the endless rotation of overplayed saccarine-sweet Christmas tunes, Nils can cure what ails you. For the second year in a row, he’s released […]

The Christmas gifts keep coming. On top of an excellent free NI delay, a free clap plug-in, and a free retro-inspired Max for Live drum machine, now you can add a free saturation effect – anywhere. Softube are making, simply put, some of the best amp and saturation models anywhere. I’m routinely using their stuff, […]

Low-cost electronic music gear king Behringer has begun asking a peculiar series of what-if questions on Facebook. First, they asked, hey, what if we entered synth market? (And, specifically, how many keys it should have and whether it should even be software or hardware.) Now, here’s a Christmas bombshell: they’re suggesting they might just go […]

A funny thing happened on the way to the future. Thing is, at the same time the computer has improved as a music-making instrument, so, too, has standalone hardware. The reality is, hardware rigs for music making are more affordable and more accessible than they ever were before. They do more, better. They’re easier to […]

Clap your hands say clap! And the holiday gifts keep coming. Next up: an all-clapping plug-in. Yes, Clap Machine does just what it says: it makes claps. Think four octaves of them, even, all very natural-sounding. Now, at first this is the sound of one hand clapping – okay, two hands clapping. You’ll probably want […]

Word had already hit the street that Arturia was working on a new audio interface. Now, the company has announced its agenda for the product – and set the NAMM show at the end of January as a release date. And, boy, are they being ambitious. Basically, if you can name a complaint about audio […]

Cue Huey Lewis and the News singing “Back in Time,” because we’re going back to the 80s. And where we’re going, we don’t need … stereo. Robert Henke (who has of late mostly shed the Monolake moniker) has a brilliant new Max for Live drum machine that borrows some of the limitations of vintage 80s […]