Arturia release Augmented Yangtze Arturia’s Augmented series offers a combination of sampled acoustic instruments and synthesis, providing music makers with a comprehensive range of sounds that range from authentic to abstract.

The Cheapest USB Blaster Ever, Thanks To CH552Here’s a CH552G-based USB Blaster project, in case you needed more CH552G in your life, which you absolutely do. It gives you the expected IDC-10 header ready for JTAG, AS, and PS modes. What’s cool, it fits into the plastic shell of a typical USB Blaster, too!
The PCB is flexible enough, and has all the features you’d expect – a fully-featured side-mounted IDC-10 header, two LEDs, a button for CH552 programming mode, and even a UART header inside the case. There’s an option to add level shifter buffers, too – but you don’t have to populate them if you don’t want to do that for whatever reason! The Hackaday.io page outlines all the features you are getting, though you might have to ask your browser to translate from Chinese.
Sadly, there’s no firmware or PCB sources – just schematics, .hex, BOM, and Gerber .zip, so you can’t fix firmware bugs, or add the missing USB-C pulldowns. Nevertheless, it’s a cool project and having the PCB for it is lovely, because you never know when you might want to poke at a FPGA on a short notice. Which is to say, it’s yet another CH552 PCB you ought to put in your PCB fab’s shopping cart! This is not the only CH552G-based programming dongle that we’ve covered – here’s a recent Arduino programmer that does debugWire, and here’s like a dozen more different CH552G boards, programmers and otherwise.

The MLC Seeking Suggestions for Board of Directors and Advisory Committee CandidatesPictured: MLC CEO Kris Ahrend

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) is accepting suggestions of Publisher candidates for its Board of Directors and Unclaimed Royalties Oversight, Dispute Resolution and Operations Advisory committees. Under the Music Modernization Act (MMA), certain governance positions at The MLC are reserved for representatives of Publishers. The terms of several Publisher seats on the Board and the organization’s advisory committees are slated to end later this year.  

Elections to determine who will fill the open Board seats will be held this summer. Board and committee members sit for three-year terms and may be re-elected. Seats are filled pursuant to The MLC’s Bylaws.

There are openings on the Board of Directors for two (2) Publisher representatives. Under The MLC’s Bylaws, a “Publisher” means a music publisher to which songwriters have assigned exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution of musical works with respect to Covered Activities. “Covered Activities” means the making of digital phonorecord deliveries of musical works, including in the form of permanent downloads, limited downloads, or interactive streams, where such activity qualifies for a compulsory license under Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act.

The openings on The MLC’s advisory committees are as follows:

Two (2) Publisher seats on the Unclaimed Royalties Oversight Committee, which recommends policies and procedures to The MLC’s Board related to the distribution of unclaimed accrued royalties; 

Two (2) Publisher seats on the Dispute Resolution Committee, which recommends policies and procedures to the Board for the processing of royalties related to works that are subject to disputes over ownership; and 

Two (2) Publisher seats on the Operations Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations to the Board concerning the operations of The MLC, including the efficient investment in and deployment of information technology and data resources. 

The MLC’s Board of Directors and committees meet regularly, and all meetings allow for virtual participation such that travel is not generally required. Members are expected to devote sufficient time to prepare for and participate fully in all meetings. More information on The MLC’s Board of Directors and advisory committees can be found here.

Suggestions should be made no later than May 31, 2024. To suggest a candidate for a Publisher representative seat to The MLC’s Board or committees, please complete the suggestion form available here. 

Possibly The Cheapest Way To Film In Bullet TimeWhen The Matrix hit the cinemas back in 1999 it started a minor revolution with its use of so-called “Bullet time” — a freeze-frame technique in which the action could move round a momentarily frozen subject. It’s filmed using an array of cameras in an arc, something which was pretty expensive back then but is now within the reach of almost anyone. Just how cheaply bullet time can be filmed is shown by [3DSage], who turned nine toy cameras into a budget bullet time rig.
The cameras themselves are what you might expect for the princely sum of nine dollars, but as he points out, their low-resolution video has a certain charm. Some iteration was required to produce the rig without fouling their flip-out screens, and he found that the video quality was far better than their still image quality. But eventually he was able to extract the required array of frames and stitch them together with a video interpolator for the required effect. His cat is a handsome creature from any angle, we can now reveal.
The video below the break has all the details, and while we couldn’t spot quite the same camera he used on our local version of the online shop he used, there seem to be plenty of similar cheap devices should you wish to try it for yourself. Either way, this cost much less than the previous budget bullet time contender.

Warner Music Group boss Robert Kyncl backs US Senate bill to crack down on AI deepfakesKyncl to give testimony to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Commitee on Tuesday (April 30)
Source

‘There are so many people who make beats but don’t know how to produce.’T-Minus talks about his work with J Cole, Drake, Lil Wayne and more, as well as what makes a great producer in 2024 and what he would change about the modern music industry
Source

Instagram updates algorithm to favor small creators, original contentMeta-owned Instagram is making changes in the coming weeks designed to give creators of all popularities more equal reach.....
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FKA twigs is developing an AI version of herself to outsource fan interactionsFKA twigs is developing an AI version of herself that she hopes will be able to handle her “online social media interactions”, and is to testify before a Senate committee on the subject of AI regulation.
The singer is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, explaining that she’s been working on a deepfake version of herself to help manage social media interaction with fans.

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She says, “In the past year, I have developed my own deepfake version of myself that is not only trained in my personality but also can use my exact tone of voice to speak many languages.”
It will “extend my reach and handle my online social media interactions, whilst I continue to focus on my art from the comfort and solace of my studio,” she adds.
The subcommittee is considering the NO FAKES Act, which will protect artists and actors from unauthorised AI versions of their faces, voices, and likenesses. So, twigs will be discussing her own work in creating a deepfake version of herself, explaining that AI can be helpful for artists.
However, she’ll also be saying that AI can only work when it’s under the control of an artist – like in her own situation.
She’s set to say in her statement, per MusicAlly, “I will be engaging my AI twigs later this year to extend my reach and handle my online social media interactions, whilst I continue to focus on my art from the comfort and solace of my studio.
“These and similar emerging technologies are highly valuable tools both artistically and commercially when under the control of the artist. What is not acceptable is when my art and my identity can simply be taken by a third party and exploited falsely for their own gain without my consent due to the absence of appropriate legislative control.”
Also giving testimony will be the Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl, the boss of twigs’ label.
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Swifties drive 1M streams with Sationhead listening party as more Artists take noteLast week, Taylor Nation, the official Taylor Swift fan account, hosted a listening party for her new album "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology" on Sationhead, which drove over 1 million streams on Apple Music and Spotify in under 24 hours.....
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Two notes update Genome The first major update for Genome adds five new Components that offer a mixture of new amp and effects pedal models.

“That was me trying to escape something and being a bit of a dickhead honestly”: Porter Robinson regrets labelling EDM as “not really art”Porter Robinson says he regrets calling EDM “not really art” in a 2014 interview, explaining that he was “being a bit of a dickhead” at the time.

READ MORE: “They have flashy interfaces that make you think they’re doing more than they’re actually doing”: St. Vincent isn’t a fan of plugins in the studio

Robinson became disillusioned with the genre, and in 2014 – in the run-up to the release of his debut album – he appeared in an NME interview dismissing and criticising it. He said at the time, “A lot of the EDM stuff stopped being appealing to me not because of the culture of it but more so because the music is quite functional.
“It exists to make people go crazy, and to me in a lot of ways it’s entertainment and it’s not really art. I know that sounds kind of pompous but, just in terms of expression I think there’s kind of a ceiling to what you can do when you’re trying to operate within this tiny little circle of stuff that can make people go crazy and jump up and down and wanna have an awesome party.”

But, as he tells The Independent in a new interview: “EDM is clearly art … that video was me trying to escape something and being a bit of a dickhead honestly.”
Around the time the NME interview happened, he made the smash hit Clarity with Zedd. But Robinson didn’t want to be associated with it, and even took his name off the credits. He explains, “Around then, I was at my peak level of angst about not wanting to make EDM… and wanting to be cool. I was trying to be a rockstar but really, I was just drinking to get through the shows.”

He describes Avicii’s 2018 suicide as a “wake-up call” for a lot of people in EDM. Robinson is now sober, along with many of his peers. He explains, “Almost every single DJ who was popular in the 2010s is now extremely sober. You start falling apart but then you procrastinate, like putting off the pain. Then it hits you all at once.”
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Berklee College of Music’s Online Class of 2024: A Testament to TenacityHere are six different 2024 Berklee College Of Music's Online graduates that have had notable and inspirational journeys leading them to commencement day.....
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DHPlugins’ New Bass-Face Multi-Effect Plugin is Free for Limited Time
DHPlugins launched the Bass-Face multi-effect plugin, and it’s free for a limited time, which is down from a list price of £15. However, please note that you’ll need to provide a physical address and your email address when signing up (we know that many BPB readers won’t like this). The developer describes the macOS and [...]
View post: DHPlugins’ New Bass-Face Multi-Effect Plugin is Free for Limited Time

Behringer’s Vintage plugin is now out and available to download for free – for real this timeWe thought we’d be able to get our hands on it earlier this month, but now Behringer really has released Vintage, its first synth plugin, for free.
Earlier this month, some people were able to download it for free, but the Behringer Vintage webpage seemed to be broken, and it turns out there was an “accidental leak”. Behringer explained in a Facebook comment addressing the confusion: “The Vintage VST has not been officially launched and the Weblink for our testers has accidentally leaked. We’re in the process of finalising the plugin and launching it soon.”

READ MORE: Save nearly $2,000 on Brainworx’s Heritage Bundle at Plugin Boutique

And now, it’s finally available for real.
The plugin, which is “based on meticulous modelling of legendary analogue vintage synthesizers,” now has a proper page on the Behringer website. While it’s free, Behringer says that it’s valued at $99, and you can make a donation to the Playing for Change Foundation, which supports music education and works with artists around the world,  if you wish.
It was created with Stefano D’Angelo of music DSP company Orastron, and offers two oscillators with hard sync and a choice of five waveforms, two 12/24 dB filters, a noise generator, as well as two amp modules and dual LFOs.
Meanwhile, Tone2 Audiosoftware clarified that it wasn’t involved in the development of Vintage after some people found similarities between Vintage and Tone2’s Saurus, saying, “The look and feel of the recently released Behringer Vintage has caused confusion among our customers. Behringer Vintage is not a new version of Tone2 Saurus. Both products have a different synthesis architecture and sound different. We are not involved in the development of Behringer Vintage.”
Vintage is available for PC and Mac, and runs in VST/AU/AAX formats.
If you want to get your hands on the plugin, head to Behringer.
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dSONIQ’s Realphones 2.0 offers a realistic and affordable one-stop solution to headphone mixingStandard £85/Professional £131/Ultimate £191
Upgrade/loyalty deals for existing users
Education discounts available
dsoniq.com
Realphones 2.0 is a suite and plugin that aims to put headphone mixing engineers at an equal footing with owners of lavish, acoustically-treated rooms adorned with expensive monitors.
The idea is that with any half-decent pair of headphones, you can get an accurate impression of how your mix will sound on a multitude of playback speakers and rooms. Version 2.0 comes with many new playback systems and rooms to choose from, a new sound engine and MIDI control.

READ MORE: IK Multimedia’s iRig Stream Mic Pro is a hassle-free solution for all recording artists

Frequently with this type of system, there are features missing — for example, you can do headphone EQ correction and listen virtually to a few sets of speakers, but crosstalk and room ambience are forgotten. Other plugins have all the essential parts but don’t work system-wide or their ambience simulation sounds artificial.
Realphones overcomes all these hurdles and had already gained fans prior to this new release. System-wide capability is a big deal in particular . Competing systems that only work as a plugin have to be hosted at the end of the mastering chain or a dedicated control room mix (if available), and with the former you also need to turn the processing off before bouncing. There are more elegant solutions that host plugins in the system audio stream, such as Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource, but it’s a hassle.
Despite the plusses, there are irritations. There remains a stingy limit on the number of headphone calibration profiles available in 2.0. This seems a little rough given that competitors don’t impose such a limit and many will use a number of different pairs of cans in their everyday work. Oh, and with the changes made to pricing tiers, the cost went up too — it now starts at £85.
Realphones 2.0 Simple mode
What does Realphones 2.0 do?
There are multiple parts to Realphones, starting with EQ correction to iron-out any nasty resonances and inadequacies in the headphones’ frequency response.
Having selected your particular headphone models in the user area of the dSONIQ site, the profile (an averaged EQ correction based on measurement of multiple sets of the same headphones) is loaded in. You can vary the percentage of correction — for example, for more subtle EQ that preserves some of the particular ‘mojo’ of the headphones — plus there’s an option to customise the correction with higher-priced tiers and even load in your own custom profile.
The second stage models crosstalk — an often-overlooked major difference between mixing on headphones and speakers. On headphones, sounds reach the listener instantaneously and you only hear hard-panned signals from a single ear cup/bud in each ear. With speakers, there’s always crosstalk; i.e, your right ear still hears some of the material playing in the left speaker and vice versa.
The third stage is modelling a range of speaker playback systems, ranging from domestic settings of Bluetooth speakers and in-car listening, through to large PA systems and more lugubrious recording studio listening experiences. There are options for near- mid- and far-field placement as well as speakers that have unusual or limited voicings, such as TVs and mobile phones.
The final ingredient is how the room reacts to the playback system — this has also been modelled by dSONIQ by gathering impulse responses at various distances. On a more shallow, referencing level, you can check how your mix might translate to high quality monitors in a well-behaved, acoustically-treated room that has a very tight reverb time. Dive deeper and the software allows you to simulate more extreme situations like nightclub systems with deep bass extension.
Realphones 2.0 Simple mode snapshot grid
Can you really mix and master on headphones using Realphones 2.0?
As we’re already familiar with the software, we get going with our set of open-backed planar headphones in advanced mode, monitoring our finished mixes through different sets of speakers and rooms including expensive far-fields and near-fields in recording studios, some mid-heavy ‘grot boxes’, a car and then with a sub-bass boost to check low-end behaviour. All the simulations sound realistic, putting your ears around the monitors and into the particular space without any strange phasing or the lop-sided stereo fields sometimes experienced in other plugins that use impulse responses to simulate rooms. The live, PA settings are every bit as convincing as the studio and domestic spaces, so you can even explore how your song might come across at a gig.
MIDI control implementation is great, allowing us to toggle each main section on and off at the press of a button when the Realphones window is in background focus; especially useful as it makes most sense to have some stages always on (e.g. headphone correction) and introduce other parts (ambience) for final translation checks. We wish there was MIDI support for toggling through presets though, but this can be done with snapshots.
On a related note, saving user presets makes complete sense, but with the extra layer of nested snapshots (which also save all settings in the interface) followed by further sub-menus for speaker choice etc, it all becomes confusing in Advanced mode, even if you understand what all the controls do. Briefly we seek solace in Simple mode (implemented in the preceding version at userbase request) and it’s more of a breeze to use, with a grid of buttons to switch between different sets of speakers and rooms (it’s also quite difficult to find Simple mode as it’s accessed via a second settings menu obscured in the window).
But we very quickly learn to live with the quirks of the user interface as Realphones 2.0 proves its worth as an indispensable tool for mixing on headphones. We port the mix to our Genelec monitors for a translation check and everything sounds pretty much as expected, with no wrong moves in panning and effects depth choices and no surprises even in the bass end. Job well and truly done!
Simulating an in-car system on Realphones 2.0
Should I buy dSONIQ Realphones 2.0?
Pre version 2.0, Realphones was already among the most comprehensive and convincing headphone mixing/monitoring suite, aside from the more expensive Slate VSX. But Slate uses its own standardised yet relatively basic set of headphones that you’re stuck with instead of being able to integrate your favourite cans, which are often selected using a mixture of personal and technical attributes such as comfort in long sessions and low levels of distortion.
Realphones 2.0 really builds upon its accolades. For those wanting to mix and master on headphones, it’s a one-stop, essential tool that’s well worth the price of admission despite the price increase and limited headphone profiles, with the Professional pack hitting the sweet spot for the vast majority of users.
Selecting altertative target curves in Realphones 2.0
Key features

Headphone mixing suite
Plugin and system-wide operation (MacOS/Windows)
Headphone EQ correction
Crosstalk and HRTF modelling
Up-to 45+ virtual playback systems including near-, mid- and far-field monitors, HiFi speakers, car systems and domestic/consumer systems
Up-to 35 listening environments
Additional subwoofer options
Monitor control options (mid and side soloing, mono button etc)
Integrated music player to load in reference tracks
NEW studio and speaker emulations
NEW sound engine updates
NEW MIDI control
NEW custom calibration profiles and correction profile tuning
41-day trial available

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