After an unimaginable year of violence and chaos, with tens of thousands killed and millions displaced and in danger of starvation, now is the time to keep talking about Sudan. Here’s some music and listening in the hopes of demanding action.

Happy 404 Day, indeed. Roland has a huge update to the SP-404MKII, adding some of the best of the Roland stable to turn the 404 into a live-looping, sampling, multitrack-exporting, bassline-making, app-connected powerhouse – and it finally grooves. Plus, in a surprise twist, Roland is connecting to the third-party Koala iOS/Android app. Let’s break down 4.04.

Apple has released macOS Sonoma 14.4.1. As verified by some plug-in developers, this includes fixes for an issue that could cause plug-ins to fail. It also includes important fixes for USB hubs and Java.

V4CO is more devilish proof that in Eurorack, anything is possible – even the improbable, unruly, and joyfully unwise. More than just an oscillator, it’s a demented, destructive voice combining 8-bit wavetables, sub-bass, overdrive, and VCAs, adding patchable circuit-bending mayhem with the GLITHc expander.

The world’s biggest music company has now teamed up with one of the world’s leading instrument and music creation tech makers to weigh in on the growing AI boom. Mostly what we get is a set of general principles – but talking about who made music for the data sets is central, and it could be an indication of musician/instrument/music industry partnerships to come.

Diagnosing the problem is easy – streaming is fundamentally broken and opposed to artists’ interests and no one likes it. But finding a solution? After going viral with a rant about streaming, James Blake has revealed his answer – but it’s one we’ve seen before.

Between samples and synth, sound design and performance—and with a heaping dose of machine learning—Visco is a new way of imagining a beat construction plug-in. But what you’ll probably notice first is that you get to squish around a futuristic blob of goo like it’s space-alien Silly Putty.

Ableton is today releasing an exhaustive free guide full of resources they’ve used internally in developing and maintaining devices. The guide has a ton of advice, so it’s a chance to benefit from Ableton’s experience.

We are awash in vintage compressor plug-ins, but Softube’s VCA Compressor is worth an extra look – and not just because it’s free.

Live 12 is here – so now what? Here are twelve other ideas to try out, from timesavers to inspiration sources.