It’s the basis of a lot of the live coding scene, and an unmatched powerhouse, free and open source. And it gets a big update this week.

It’s like esoteric music tech bingo: Mutable Instruments Eurorack meets just intonation meets open source meets virtualization meets microprocessor programming meets soldering.

It’s just an alpha version, but it’s already impressive: the open source visual programming tools Pd is running in a browser window, even with externals.

It’s the ultimate open source ugly duckling story. Once an awkward, esoteric tool, Blender has grown into a 3D modeling and animation standard that’s slick and pretty – and free.

Get ready for some tablet patching. A developer has revealed a port of popular open source modular environment VCV Rack to the iPad.

Vember Audio’s Surge synth could be an ideal choice for an older machine or a tight budget – with deep modulation and loads of wavetables, now free and open source.

AudioKit Synth One has arrived. The first wholly open source synth app on the iOS platform is here and is of course free to download. You can find all the specs for the synth right here

This has to be peak 2026 music tech. Across every feed, producers I follow are posting the same revelation: they’re finding their own music in training sets used by AI. Investigations by Alex Reisner at The Atlantic are making this more visible — and visceral. And the findings are actually much worse than I think […]

Francisco Partners, the private equity firm, is now exiting Muse Group amid 2026’s financial maneuvers. Muse Group is the Cyprus-based conglomerate that owns the publishing giant Hal Leonard, audio editor Audacity, notation software MuseScore and StaffPad, and the online platform Ultimate Guitar.

Ableton Live 12.4 is inbound, with Link Audio support coming to Live, Move, Note, and Push. But Live Audio can also be about routing audio over a network to other hosts, too. Julien Bayle (VOID) has an early, open-source implementation. If you’re ready to start experimenting even while this API is still in alpha, you’ve got a wide variety of sound and visual tools to try, all for free.