Find whole worlds inside samples: Baby Audio Grainferno deep dive

Per-grain processing, automatic pitch controls, drag-and-drop modulation, and audio-rate oscillations — Grainferno proves there are still unexplored frontiers in granular synthesis and hand-crafted DSP. It’s addictive to add the synth to projects, drag in sounds, and see what you can discover.

The developer of Tweakbench wants to remake the DAW without linear time

The Digital Audio Workstation can never quite escape the timeline and its roots in multitrack tape. Tweakbench’s new Noemi, which entered alpha last month, starts from scratch. What if music in the DAW could constantly evolve and change? What if the DAW were non-deterministic?

Peter Kirn - March 4, 2026

Ardour 9.2, free and open DAW, grants user wishes — Region FX, anyone?

If you haven’t tried Ardour in a while — or if you’re new to the idea that a DAW could be free and open source — you might be surprised. Major updates and a lot of listening to users means you don’t have to sacrifice features like clip recording and editing (including looping), piano roll windows, and more. Plus you get things a lot of tools can’t do, like region effects. Ardour is worth downloading on macOS, Windows, or Linux — any of them.

Peter Kirn - February 23, 2026