Music tech Software Tech

VST is 30 years old, and Steinberg is giving away some of its earliest plugins

It’s the format that changed software music making forever: the VST plug-in format turns 30 this year. Steinberg is giving away updated versions of Neon, CS-40, Karlette, VB1, and LM7 — some of its earliest plug-ins — to celebrate. And that means you can run these vintage instruments (plus one tape delay) on your modern Mac or PC.

Audacity now has free AI-powered sound tools from Intel

The free audio editor now gets a suite of free AI tools from Intel, some competing with expensive paid subscription services. That covers useful stuff like noise suppression and transcriptions and music separation, plus more experimental generative features.

Peter Kirn - February 5, 2024

Music tech Software Tech

Ableton on Apple Silicon: smaller buffer sizes, lower CPU load

Ableton has published a tech note on reducing CPU load on Macs with Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3). This is both a good tip and good news: smaller buffer sizes, which also translate to lower latency, now often reduce CPU usage.