Shoreline College's Music Tech Programs Utilize Solid State Logic ORIGIN ConsolesThis is the sort of news that should give everyone the warm-and-fuzzies before the weekend, thanks to ORIGIN inline architecture helping students, "attain a practical understanding of recording, mixing, routing, and gain staging through hands-on operation within a broader environment that also includes SSL interfaces."

According to news released this week, "Shoreline College, 10 miles north of downtown Seattle, Washington, opened its recently constructed Bracken Building, the new home of its Music and Music Technology programs, in April 2026. The new facility houses two recording studios with associated live tracking rooms, three small production/mixing rooms and two MIDI/computer labs that all feature equipment from Solid State Logic, including ORIGIN 32-channel and ORIGIN 16-channel inline analogue mixing consoles and dozens of SSL’s USB audio interfaces."

“We had two goals with this new space,” said Matt Jorgensen, Music Technology Faculty, Shoreline College, in that statement. “Number one was to have two recording studios that were nearly identical, and the second was to almost take a step back from the digital world and have the consoles be purely analogue.”

"Shoreline's investment in both SSL ORIGIN consoles and SSL audio interfaces helps create a more complete educational experience, allowing students to develop and translate practical, real-world production skills from the 'classroom to the control room' that mirrors industry practice," Ashleigh Davies, Head of Education, Solid State Logic, told MC. "We are proud to have our technology being used by Shoreline in this manner."

“When I recorded in Seattle I spent a lot of time at Studio X, which famously has a big SSL console, and all the engineers in town have always raved about SSL,” Jorgensen says. “But I think having a giant SSL would have been a bit overkill for what our students are doing, so I think what drew us to the ORIGIN board was the fact that it’s simple. We are an educational institution, and those consoles help us to get the students up and running as quickly as possible so they can do the things that they want to do.”

For more info, visit solidstatelogic.com.

The post Shoreline College's Music Tech Programs Utilize Solid State Logic ORIGIN Consoles first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

From Universal Music’s fresh round of layoffs to Spotify’s catalog surge… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-upThe biggest headlines from the past few days...
Source

Forma Labs Audio release Filament 1.2 Forma Labs Audio have recently launched a significant update that brings some powerful new features to their real-time MIDI orchestration software. 

Excite Audio bundle bargains – save on these huge plugin bundles at Plugin Boutique with up to 62% offUntil the end of October, you can save on some huge bundle deals from Excite Audio at Plugin Boutique.
With discounts ranging from 49 to up to 62 percent off, you can grab a themed bundle to meet your desires or needs, or gain access to the entire Excite Audio plugin catalogue with the comprehensive Excite Bundle.

READ MORE: Plugin Boutique launches new tiered membership programme that rewards you based on how many plugins you buy

Learn more about each bundle below:
Evolve Bundle
The Evolve Bundle consists of six sample-based soft synths, each built around the sonic character of a different material. It includes Dark Matter, Nest Acoustics, Air, Elastic, Velvet, and Alloy. Now £99, you can get this bundle for half price until 31 October.

Bloom Bundle
This complete Bloom collection features all 16 Bloom series plugins, described as “inspiring and playable instruments”, that are “engineered and curated to provide a stunning sonic experience out of the box”. It includes Bloom Mura Masa, Bloom Ensemble Strings, Bloom KSHMR, and much more. With 50 percent off, it’s now £209.

Excite Audio Bundle (all plugins)
Go all out with the complete Excite Audio Bundle, with all plugins from the brand in one purchase. You can get this bundle for £379, reduced from £758. You’ll get access to its Bloom, Evolve and Motion collections, just to name a few examples.
Artists Bundle
As its name suggests, the Artists Bundle includes all of the four plugins that were made in collaboration with artists. It includes Bloom Mura Masa, Bloom KSHMR, Evolve Nest Acoustics and VISION 4X for £99. This offer ends sooner than the other bundles, finishing on 19 October.

Motion Bundle 
Get the Motion Bundle for £89 until the end of the month, including three plugins: Motion: Harmonic, Motion: Dimension and Motion: Fractal. All are “designed for producers seeking to push the boundaries of sound design”.

Check out these deals and more by visiting Plugin Boutique. 
The post Excite Audio bundle bargains – save on these huge plugin bundles at Plugin Boutique with up to 62% off appeared first on MusicTech.

Time to revamp your studio? Find huge savings on equipment across Sweetwater’s Studio & Recording deals event[Editor’s note: Sweetwater predominantly serves the US. If you’re outside the US, you’ll be shown similar deals.]
With the end of 2026 looming ahead, you might be thinking of ways to refresh your studio space for the new year.
There’s no time like the present to start shopping for new gear and studio upgrades at Sweetwater, as its huge Studio & Recording deals event is offering a wide range of discounts across gear from Ableton, KRK, PreSonus, and much more.

READ MORE: The best new music plugins this week, free and paid

Some deals are running until the end of the year, but others are only available while limited stock lasts. We’ve rounded up some of the best finds to help you out, which you can check out below.
Save over $200 on Ableton Move and Live 12

Only available why stocks last, Sweetwater is offering an exclusive deal on Ableton Move and the Live 12 Standard software. This bundle discount is now $599, a $229 saving. Move is a portable, standalone instrument for music making, which MusicTech rated 8/10 at launch. Paired with Live 12, you get a complete hardware/software production system in one deal.

Save on monitors: JBL, PreSonus, KRK and more

If you’re in need of some new monitors, there are a range of brands now discounted with price tags under $200. You can save on the JBL 308P MkII (now $149 each), the KRK Classic 8 (now $199 each), or the PreSonus Sceptre S8 (now $499.99 each). All of these deals save you $50 or more, with the PreSonus offer saving you a mighty $500.
Software savings: discounted plugins and bundles
If you’re looking to completely refresh your software set up, then check out these huge bundle deals.
Save $400 on the UJAM Music Creation Suite virtual instrument and effects plugin bundle, which includes every plugin offered by UJAM. For just under $100, you can also get your hands on IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube 5 MAX v2 guitar and bass gear modelling software, now $99.99.
At the more expensive end is the Universal Audio Complete 4 Plugin Bundle, spanning over 140 separate product titles and containing more than 200 individual plugins. This whopper of a bundle is now $1,199 – a huge saving of $1,300. Or, you can opt for the Ultimate 14 Plugin Bundle instead at a reduced $499.
To view all of these deals and more, visit Sweetwater. 
The post Time to revamp your studio? Find huge savings on equipment across Sweetwater’s Studio & Recording deals event appeared first on MusicTech.

Zero-G introduce Elements Silentium Elements Silentium comes packed with an array of source sounds and provides users with the tools to transform them into “complete sonic and musical worlds”.

That Worship Sound offers Mammoth Bass Moog one-shots FREE until October 31
That Worship Sound is offering Mammoth Bass – Moog Subsequent 37 One Shots, a collection of analog synth bass samples, for free until October 31. The pack normally costs $15. With so many new plugins appearing daily, I think it’s actually becoming more interesting to cover things that involve some real human interaction with gear. [...]
View post: That Worship Sound offers Mammoth Bass Moog one-shots FREE until October 31

NoiseWorks releases PloseAssist, a FREE plugin for removing vocal plosives
NoiseWorks has released PloseAssist, a free plugin that automatically reduces the low-frequency pops caused by hard P and B sounds in vocal recordings. Back when I was learning to record vocals for the first time, the standard bedroom studio trick was to put a thin sock or similar material in front of the mic as [...]
View post: NoiseWorks releases PloseAssist, a FREE plugin for removing vocal plosives

Audient smashes its way into the high-end interface market with HorizonHorizon 8P: £2,199 / €2,499 / $3,499
Horizon 16: £2,199 / €2,499 / $3,499
Horizon 32: £2,799 / €3,299 / $4,299
audient.com
The Audient ASP8024 large format console came a bit late to the large format console party, arriving in 1998 just as computers were starting to become a viable alternative to a room full of expensive equipment (aka an analogue studio). Nevertheless, the ASP8024 is regarded as one of the pinnacles of all-analogue console design, and remains in production to this day, yet the company’s tentative first step towards introducing its audio interface expertise into these loftier realms came only recently in the form of the ORIA Immersive Audio Interface and Monitor Controller. With Horizon, though, Audient is going all-in with a statement of intent aimed squarely at the likes of Universal Audio, Antelope and RME.

READ MORE: Audient’s ORIA is the Atmos interface that engineers have been waiting for

Can Horizon cut it alongside such well established competitors? I grab a couple of units to find out.
Image: Press
I/O a-gogo
There are three models in the Horizon range, all of which connect to the host via Thunderbolt and are Mac only. Windows support isn’t officially on the horizon for Horizon (see what I did there?), but the brand is keeping a close eye on things and continually re-evaluating this position (so if you’re a Windows user who wants Horizon, let Audient know!).
The Horizon 8P is likely to be the most popular of the bunch thanks to a versatile I/O load-out geared towards higher-end home and project studios. The eight mic/line inputs, served from jack/XLR combo sockets, feed a set of preamps taken from the ASP8024 console (and what preamps… I’ll come back to them in a moment), while a 25-pin D-SUB connector provides a means of bypassing the preamps and feeding line signals directly to the Horizon analogue-to-digital (AD) converters.
A second D-SUB handles eight of the unit’s 12 line outputs, the remaining four being TRS jacks – I use these as monitor outputs. Analogue ins and outs can be bolstered with up-to 16 channels of ADAT I/O – connected to a pair of ASP880 preamps or similar, this would give you 24 console-grade mic/line inputs via a single interface.
Horizon 16 and 32 are aimed more towards larger studios, facilities and venues. Both ditch the preamps altogether, with the Horizon 16 delivering 18 channels of pure line input and output plus, again, up-to a further 16 channels of ADAT I/O, and Horizon 32 taking things up to 34 channels of analogue I/O alongside (you guessed it) up-to 16 channels of ADAT. With a suitable ADAT bridge and/or preamp, that’s 50 channels from a single interface, perfect for handling large amounts of outboard synths and effects, sitting between a console and DAW, driving surround and immersive monitoring systems, or even as the front end for a venue sound system.
If you’re unimpressed by 50 I/O channels then get this: up-to four Horizon interfaces can be combined in a single system, for an absolute maximum of 200 inputs and outputs. That’s more-than ample for even the highest-specced facilities and most demanding of applications.
Like the 8P, the 16 and 32 units also make use of 25-pin D-SUB connectors, with only two ins and two outs served via standard jacks. Breakout cables for all of these could be a bit pricey, but I think it more likely one would connect Horizon’s D-SUBs directly to a D-SUB equipped patchbay (and likely a high-density bantam patchbay at that). Assuming you already have such patchbays, the cost of a few D-SUB cables is negligible… unlike the ludicrous cost of a bantam patchbay!
All three Horizon models come as 1U rackmount units finished in silky black and sporting a bright, high resolution colour screen and accompanying data entry wheel. The 16 and 32 have no further adornments, but the 8P’s fascia provides buttons for controlling the preamps and monitoring directly from the unit, a pair of instrument input jacks feeding the first two preamp channels, and a pair of headphone outputs.
Image: Press
How good are Horizon 8P’s ASP8024 preamps?
This all looks very pleasing when installed in a rack, but the more important question is how does Horizon sound? In a word: phenomenal! Preamps deliver exquisite clarity and definition, offering up to 75 dB of gain and featuring phantom power, a -10 dB pad, a hugely useful variable high-pass filter with a 20 Hz to 250 Hz cutoff range, and Audient’s ORBIT input impedance switching, all of which is applied in the analogue domain.
ORBIT provides three settings, Low, Mid and High, which set the preamp’s input impedance to 220, 1200 and 2800 Ohms, respectively. This is a useful way to control the tone and response of the input signal, which is the intention of the system, but a three-option switch feels a bit on the blunt side. In most circumstances you’re likely to have ORBIT set to High (the default), which delivers optimised performance with 99.9% of professional mics, yet ORBIT unquestionably expands the preamps’ tonal options so I like that it’s here.
8P’s use of combination jack/XLR sockets for the preamps is frustrating, especially when installing the unit in a rack where tricky access makes connectors difficult to change when needed. The D-SUB line inputs provide something of a workaround, and are ultra clean given they feed directly to Horizon’s analogue-to-digital converters, but this also means your line signals miss out on the opportunity to be sweetened or gain-boosted via the preamps (the latter being more important when hooking up to older hardware).
Image: Press
Audient Horizon’s quality and control
Impressive though the ASP8024 preamps are, I’m dazzled by Horizon’s audio output quality (and here we’re talking about all three models). The sonic precision is breathtaking, delivering a tonal balance and dynamic response that’s pure perfection, and pinpoint positional accuracy that’s a joy to work with.
Also, with so many outputs on-hand, Horizon can support practically any speaker configuration you like, from stereo through to 9.1.6 surround, and can effortlessly jump between them as needed. Conveniently, you can share speakers between different monitor configurations, for example allowing your stereo monitors to also act as front left and right in a surround array.
All of this is configured within the Horizon Control software. If you’ve ever used an iD interface you’ll feel right at home here, the software having a similar clean and intuitive look and feel. From here you can control the preamps, set channel levels for the main monitor mix and any of the four auxiliary/cue mixes, control and configure your monitors, and configure all the deeper details of a Horizon setup.
As well as Horizon Control, Horizon customers can also claim Audient’s ARC software bundle that includes a two-month trial of Sonarworks speaker calibration software, Cubase LE, 2GB of Loopcloud downloads, three months’ membership of Roland Cloud, and a whole bunch of plugin effects, amp modellers and instruments.
Horizon Control mixer. Image: Press
Should I consider buying an Audient Horizon interface?
Horizon clearly has the creds to shoulder its way into the higher echelons of the audio interface market. It delivers the pristine audio quality required by the most critical of applications, and can be expanded to the extremely high channel counts demanded by high-end facilities and venues.
Pleasingly, none of this puts Horizon out of the reach of regular users. In fact, Horizon 8P is significantly more affordable than equivalent UA Apollo hardware. And what Horizon lacks in onboard effects processing it makes up for with its gorgeous-sounding, all-analogue preamps and stunning sound quality.
So, if you’re in the market for a high-end, high-spec audio interface, Audient has just made your decision a lot harder. Or perhaps it’s just made it much easier.
Image: Press
Key Features
All models:

Thunderbolt 3 audio interfaces
Colour screen
Up to 16 channels of digital I/O via two pairs of optical ports
Digital I/O ports support ADAT S/MUX
Up to 192 kHz / 32-bit quality
Combine any four Horizon units in one system
Wordclock in and out

Horizon 8P:

8 combo mic/line inputs driving ASP8024 preamps
High-pass filter (80 – 250 Hz)
Variable mic impedance
2 instrument level jack inputs
8 line inputs via D-SUB direct to ADC
8 line outputs via D-SUB
4 TRS line outputs
132 dB dynamic range
2 headphone sockets (6.35mm)

Horizon 16:

16 line inputs via D-SUB direct to ADC
2 TRS line inputs
16 line outputs via D-SUB
2 TRS line outputs
133 dB dynamic range

Horizon 32:

32 line inputs via D-SUB direct to ADC
2 TRS line inputs
32 line outputs via D-SUB
2 TRS line outputs
133 dB dynamic range

The post Audient smashes its way into the high-end interface market with Horizon appeared first on MusicTech.

How Lou Reed Turned "Walk on the Wild Side" Into an Unlikely Pop HitHow did Lou Reed turn "Walk on the Wild Side" into a pop hit? Explore the song's underground roots, unforgettable bassline, and the real people behind its lyrics.

Amazon devices chief Panos Panay on the importance of failure and bouncing back from it Panay said that it's possible to recover and learn from all sorts of failures, even catastrophic ones, when building products.

ORBITAL REVISITS A HISTORIC MOMENT WITH OFFICIAL GLASTONBURY 1994 RELEASEElectronic pioneers Orbital recall one of the most influential performances in dance music history with the first official release of their legendary Glastonbury1994 set.

Restored and remastered from the original tapes, the collection captures the moment the duo helped bring electronic music from underground clubs to the festival main stage, forever changing the perception of live dance performances.

Photo credit: Steve Double

The post ORBITAL REVISITS A HISTORIC MOMENT WITH OFFICIAL GLASTONBURY 1994 RELEASE first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Mozzaik Audio Mozzaik MonitorMozzaik Monitor adds noise of a very low level to the signal that goes to the DA converter. Delta-sigma converters can produce idle tones and limit cycles when the signal is very quiet or constant. A small amount of noise at the input breaks these patterns up. How much it helps depends on the converter. The signal itself is not changed: the plugin only adds the noise. Mozzaik Monitor goes last on the monitoring path. For export it is turned Off, or left On in front of the dither if you think that the noise will help the converter of the listener. The noise can help an AD converter in the same way: send the output of Mozzaik Monitor through a DA converter and mix it with the signal in the analog domain, before the conversion. Features: - Off/On with a fade of 10 ms, without a click. In the Off position the signal passes unchanged. - Amount from -100 dB to -40 dB, -80 dB by default. - Shaping between 0 and 20 kHz: Flat (white noise), Medium (rises 6 dB per octave) or High (rises 12 dB per octave), so most of the noise is at the top of the band, where hearing is less sensitive. - Gaussian noise, not correlated between the channels. - Sample rates from 44.1 to 384 kHz, with the same level of the noise between 0 and 20 kHz at every sample rate. - From 88.2 kHz up the noise falls above 20 kHz with 12 dB per octave, so it does not fill the ultrasonic range. - Low processor load. Read More

Binance.US seeks $1B valuation in potential $100M funding round: ReportThe crypto exchange was reportedly looking to use the additional funding to regain market share following Binance’s 2023 settlement with US authorities.

Linux Kernel Drops AI Tag Requirement, Uses Meta AI For Code ReviewsSince we last covered the way that the Linux Kernel project has been dealing with the influx of code created using LLM-based coding assistants, all the way back in April, things have changed a lot, with most recently the Linux maintainers deciding to fully drop the requirement to mark LLM-assisted commits with the Assisted-by tag.
While not a fully uncontroversial decision – as also reported by Phoronix – with key maintainers already having made this decision it seems certain to proceed. This is not the only change made fairly recently, with a ‘Sashiko’ bot introduced that is supposed to handle code reviews.
In a July LKML post [Linus Torvalds] defends this decision, with a follow-up post in August by [Jakub Kicinski] it being stated that budget has been secured for using Meta’s LLMs, using said LLM-based resources for reviewing patches, as well as creating and editing commit messages. As noted by [Jakub] they’re running multiple frontier models on each patch to try and weed out confabulations.
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen. Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will be.