The best lesser-sung sounds of 2026 so far

It’s time for a sonic refill. David Abravanel is here with a full supply of lush arps, washes of sound, rapid-fire grooves — everything Appleblim to Posthuman to Vladislav Delay Quintet, Suzanne Ciani and a bunch more. Your mission: buy some downloads if you can spare the change, and load up some full-album listens in a player of your choice. And maybe turn off the world for a while. -Ed.

Tim Exile’s Finalist mixes and masters creatively, colorfully — with no AI

What if you could drop in a bunch of stems and let a plug-in mix and master for you, subtly or to extremes, with no “AI” involved? That’s the latest idea from Tim Exile, and it’s produces such quick, varied results that it can serve as a one-click way to hear your mix creatively from a different angle. Just when everyone had forgotten about Instagram filters, we finally see their equivalent in music. And it’s a delight.

Peter Kirn - October 14, 2025

Nepheton 2 is here: D16’s perfect, booming 808 recreation joins 909

This is what many drum machine fans were waiting for: following their remade 909, D16 has its 808 plug-in reboot, and it looks and sounds gorgeous. Here’s what’s new.

Peter Kirn - December 4, 2023

Review: Here’s Moog Mavis, packing analog Moog modular essentials into a 24-jack, $349 box

Peter Kirn - June 14, 2022

MicroFreak v4 adds users wavetables, accelerated encoders, more to Arturia’s freaky little wonder

Peter Kirn - October 27, 2021

Roland TR-8S hands-on: a more playable, powerful drum machine

Peter Kirn - March 5, 2018

Check out this detailed workflow comparison of Digitakt, Octatrack

Peter Kirn - July 4, 2017

Here are the best new features in Ableton Live 9.5 [Videos]

Peter Kirn - November 5, 2015

Ableton Push 2 Hands-on Review

Peter Kirn - November 2, 2015