FL Studio announces FL Studio Mobile 5 update, bringing a library of over two million samples to your pocketTen years ago, FL Studio went mobile, porting the power of the iconic DAW into a game-changing phone app. In that time, FL Studio Mobile has become a staple production tool, allowing musicians to edit and produce on the go – however, there has been the caveat of not being able to access FL’s Cloud Sounds sample library. But that changes today.
While FL Studio’s extensive FL Cloud Sounds library has previously been exclusive to desktop, FL Studio Mobile 5 finally bridges the gap. The update finally connects both free FL Mobile users and FL Cloud subscribers with the library’s massive collection; if you’re on a free plan, thousands of sounds will now be at your fingertips, while paid subscribers can take advantage of the library’s over two million royalty-free sounds and samples.

READ MORE: Why festivals are booking hi-fi sound systems on their lineups

But don’t worry – it’s not going to take up loads of space on your phone. Users can browse through sounds (with the added bonus of searching by genre, using tags, or curated collections) and listen to samples in high-quality on the cloud. Only sounds you choose to include in your tracks will be properly downloaded.
The massive update also introduces a new ‘portrait mode’, allowing users to edit vertically for the first time. And the update is totally free, even for those on a paid plan, as per FL Studio’s ‘Lifetime Free Updates’ promise to your device.
There are also a slew of quality updates across the board. This includes improved mouse and keyboard support, like adding the ability to stop and start a sample by hitting the spacebar, as well as added keyboard shortcuts. You can also now burn notes onto your track, allowing you to toy with real, editable notes on a select track.

“Ten years ago, we put a full music studio in people’s pockets,” Constantin Koehncke, CEO of Image-Line, explains. “With Version 5, we’re taking another big step by bringing FL Cloud sounds to mobile.”
“Thousands of sounds are now available for free to every FL Studio Mobile user, making it easier than ever to get started and make music wherever you are. And with portrait mode, one of our most requested features, we’re delivering something our community has been asking for for a long time.”
New users can also start a free FL Cloud trial, while FL Cloud Plus costs $99 a year, and the Pro tier costs $149 a year. For more information, head to FL Studio.
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“Do I really believe that at the end, I have a result that justifies the effort?” Inside the strict decision-making process of Ableton founder and Monolake musician Robert HenkeAs one of the founders of Ableton – and a successful solo artist in his own right under the moniker Monolake – German musician and pioneer Robert Henke has to be specific about where he spends his time and effort.
Growing up in a family of engineers and raised in the iconic Berlin club scene, Henke bleeds electronic music, and created Ableton in 1999 alongside current CEO Gerhard Behles and software engineer Bernd Roggendorf.
So as a musician with such a stacked resume, he has learned to scrutinise the decisions he makes when it comes to both building products and music composition.

READ MORE: My Forever Studio: Robert Henke’s forever DAW isn’t a DAW

“There is a quality in the decision-making process that is involved here,” he tells MusicTech in the latest episode of the My Forever Studio podcast.
“Every decision for something is a massive decision against a lot of other options because it takes time to build stuff. And that means I scrutinise my ideas a lot before I start building.
“I have a whole notebook full of ideas and sketches of things, but only a tiny fraction of those things I finally decide to throw my energy on, and that means I think a lot about, ‘Does this specific thing I’m attempting to do really help me? Do I really believe that at the end, I have a result that justifies the effort?’”
Elsewhere in the episode, Robert Henke takes us through his creative process when it comes to making his own sample packs, and goes deep on his love for expressive hardware and his fascination with sound technology.
MusicTech’s My Forever Studio podcast – created in partnership with Audient – finds artists, producers and engineers designing their fantasy Forever Studio, in which they can select six items with no regard for cost or limitation to build their dream creative environment.
However, hosts Chris Barker and Will Betts impose some strict rules: they must only choose six items for their studio, and must do so wisely. There will be nostalgia. There will be anecdotes. There may be gags. But there will be no bundles!
Subscribe to My Forever Studio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and check out all episodes so far via MusicTech.

The post “Do I really believe that at the end, I have a result that justifies the effort?” Inside the strict decision-making process of Ableton founder and Monolake musician Robert Henke appeared first on MusicTech.

fedDSP launch ECO delay plug-in The new delay effect from fedDSP combines 12 delay modes with modulation, saturation, ducking and five integrated reverb options.

Akai Pro release MPK Mini Plus II Akai's 37-key MIDI controller gains expanded performance features, deeper MPC integration and CV/Gate connectivity for hardware and modular setups.

Roland launch two new Boutique synths New compact instruments celebrate the JUPITER-8’s 45th anniversary and bring dual-layer wavetable synthesis to the Roland Boutique range.

Google picks Base for Music for its Gemini Startup Forum – as $1.7M-backed French company says it uses AI to predict music marketing ROIMore than 100 startups taking part, from 17 countries, were selected from over 2,000 applications, according to Google
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‘As an industry, we’ve confused followers with community.’Monotone founder Ian Montone – manager of Jack White, Vampire Weekend, LCD Soundsystem, and more – on the flattening of culture, the catalog gold rush, the impact of AI, and what humankind is actually searching for...
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What is Gain Staging?Gain staging is the practice of optimising signal gain at each stage in the recording process. The goal is to maximise signal strength and quality while minimising unwanted distortion and noise. You’ll typically adjust the signal gain using a Gain knob.
Most stages in a recording chain contain amplifiers; in digital systems, these may be algorithms but should still be considered amplifiers. Whenever an amplifier adjusts the level of a signal, it will introduce some distortion and noise. Good gain staging, then, is all about minimising this distortion and noise when it isn’t wanted, and controlling it where it is wanted.
How do we apply proper gain staging?
The amount of boost (amplification) and reduction (attenuation) applied to a signal is determined by an amplifier’s gain control, but there will usually be a ‘unity gain’ position where no amplification or attenuation is applied. Whenever possible, a gain control should be set in this unity position.
If the signal arriving at an input stage is too strong or weak, it should be attenuated or amplified via the output gain stage of the previous processor/component in the chain. If there’s no previous processor/component, such as when setting up a preamp’s input gain, then go ahead and adjust the gain on the input amp.
Similarly, if the signal arriving at an output stage is too strong or weak, look to remedy this using that same device’s input gain stage. If that gain is set correctly, then go ahead and adjust the output gain stage as needed.
At all points, when adjusting the gain, we are aiming for a strong signal that does not cause digital clipping.
How does gain staging relate to DAW-based recording?
When working in a DAW, any external sounds you capture will arrive via your audio interface’s preamp and AD converters. Even if you’re using an external preamp or channel strip, the signal will still arrive at your interface’s converters sooner or later. However it gets there, it’s crucial to give the converters as strong a signal as possible without causing clipping.
Similarly, when working with sources generated from within the DAW, such as plugin instruments, you should set the instrument’s output level so that its signal is strong but not clipping or overloading. Also, the input signal fed to send effects should be strong, as should its output.
From here, the same rules apply as they do in analogue recording: The only thing you should be using to balance a signal within the overall mix is the channel’s output fader.
 Learn more music technology terms in our Glossary
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Distance Simulator by 194dB Audio is FREE for a limited time
Developer 194dB Audio has made its Distance Simulator plugin for macOS and Windows free for a limited time. Distance Simulator is an easy-to-use plugin that does exactly what the name suggests; it simulates distance. More specifically, it recreates the tonal balance of a faraway sound more realistically than simply turning the volume down. Distance Simulator [...]
View post: Distance Simulator by 194dB Audio is FREE for a limited time

SoundGhost release Orbit SoundGhost’s latest plug-in takes an interesting approach to auto-panning, dividing incoming signals into three frequency bands that each come equipped with their own set of modulation tools. 

Making a Digital Music Player for Cassette DecksIn the cross-over between the era of tapes into that of MP3s, you’d see quite a few of those special cassette tapes that were actually digital music players inside. Some simply provided a 3.5 mm input, while others were complete MP3 players or Bluetooth receivers that just happened to also output to the magnetic read head of a cassette player. Recently [Jonathan Rowny] decided to make his own version of the latter.
Although getting the actual audio signal into the read head is easy enough – requiring little more than its equivalent being used as a write head on the cassette side – actually interfacing with the player’s mechanisms like auto-stop, reverse and so on requires the use of some gearing that detect motion on what would be the tape spools, as well as transfer the motion from the take-up spool to the other spool so that features like the auto-stop mechanism don’t get triggered.
A lot of inspiration here can be found in e.g. the videos made by [Clint] of [Lazy Game Reviews] who looked at a number of examples – including their internals – over the years, with various levels of functionality. For this particular implementation an ESP32-S3 module is used for the brains, along with a microSD card reader for music and a PCM5102 I2S audio codec to create the analog audio signal.
The gears were printed using an SLA printer and seem to work all right. Unfortunately he didn’t realize the importance of the capstan as the mechanism that actually transports the tape, so its motion was not measured as is done in the better cassette adapters. This will likely be corrected in a future iteration, however.

From Universal suing DistroKid (for the first time) to UMG and Sony suing Suno (again)… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe biggest headlines from the past few days...
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“It’s so important”: Nick Hakim explains why every producer should learn their DAW’s key commands 
As a producer, you’re going to drastically supercharge your workflow if you spend some time learning the key commands of your chosen DAW. 
It might seem like a boring task to sit down and learn them, but knowing how to navigate the grid, move the playhead, and quickly select crucial tools without manually trying to find them within busy dropdown menus can speed up your creative process by several orders of magnitude.
And kicking off the brand-new season of MusicTech’s My Forever Studio podcast – made in partnership with Audient – producer, songwriter and Anderson Paak and Mac DeMarco collaborator Nick Hakim discusses the importance of learning key commands, and explains how doing so improved his workflow.

READ MORE: My Forever Studio: Nick Hakim has your gear on long-term loan

“I learned Pro Tools when I was in college – I kind of fooled around with many of them to start with to understand them and to see what felt right,” he explains of his early experience with DAWs. “I started using Ableton in 2018. I had a cracked version. Sorry! But I was always like, ‘I wanna learn how to use Ableton.’” 
Hakim explains how a friend who was well-versed in Ableton took the time to show him the programme’s basic key commands.
“He literally sat down with me for an hour and showed me how to set my own key commands, little shortcuts,” he says. “Once he showed me that, and just having somebody show me that, it changed [things].
“To me the boring stuff is the fundamental fun – the stuff that’s so important. Being able to cut and stretch, and how to zoom out. Every DAW is slightly different. When I was first in Ableton I’d be doing Logic key commands, pressing X to go to the mixer [laughs].”
My Forever Studio is back, a series which sees the MusicTech team quiz artists, producers and engineers on their favourite gear, asking them to put together their fantasy Forever Studio using whatever musical items their hearts desire.
While it’s an environment for freedom, there are some strict rules in the Forever Studio. Guests are permitted a limited number of items in their creative space, so they have to choose carefully. There will be nostalgia. There will be anecdotes. There may be gags. But there will be no bundles!
Subscribe to My Forever Studio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and check out all episodes so far via MusicTech.
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Atlantic Records to release Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album, featuring Travis Scott, PinkPantheress, Morgan Wallen, and Keith RichardsThe LP contains 34 original tracks, six of which were issued as singles on Thursday (September 17).
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What is LUFS in music production?LUFS is an acronym for Loudness Units Full Scale and is a standardised way to measure audio loudness. It’s most commonly referred to in the mastering phase of music production.
In this context, ‘loudness’ is not the same as ‘volume level’, but rather a measure of how we perceive the loudness of a sound. The maximum possible loudness a system can reproduce is referred to as 0 LUFS, and measurements are expressed in terms of how many LU (Loudness Units) they are below this full scale point. For example, -12 LUFS is 12 LU below the 0 LUFS maximum.
Why do we need LUFS?
Our hearing isn’t sensitive to short, sudden transients, and so peak level meters don’t match our perception. Instead, we perceive loudness from a more averaged-out volume level, and that perception varies across the (roughly) 20Hz to 20kHz frequency range that we can hear.
LUFS takes all of this into account in order to create a system that closely tallies with our aural perception, and which therefore allows the loudness of completely different recordings to be compared and standardised in a meaningful and consistent way.
iZotope RX 12’s LUFS Metering
Why are there different types of LUFS measurement?
A single loudness measurement cannot tell the entire story of how loud a recording is. Many songs, for example, contain quieter and louder passages, and even the most aggressive death metal track may contain areas of serenity. We therefore measure four different types of loudness.
Momentary Loudness: Averages the measured loudness over a 400ms window, showing what the loudness is at any given moment. Similar to RMS volume level measurement.
Short-Term Loudness: Averages the measured loudness over a 3s window. This is generally the most helpful readout for meaningfully judging and comparing loudness, and when aiming for a target LUFS during mixing.
Integrated Loudness: Averages the measured loudness over an entire mix or passage of audio. This is the measurement used by streaming platforms, etc., when checking your audio matches their standards.
True Peak Level: The peak reconstructed signal level, in decibels, this being the peak level once the digital stream has been converted to an analogue signal.
Working with streaming platform loudness specifications
In order to present content at a consistent loudness, streaming platforms set standards for integrated loudness and true peak level, and will apply normalisation processing to any audio that does not match those standards. If you wish to avoid such processing from wrecking your carefully crafted mixes, ensure the audio you submit matches the platform’s specifications.
Loudness meters and tools
Your DAW: Many DAWs have built-in loudness metering, and this is often all you need to get a reliable readout.
Steinberg WaveLab 12: Steinberg’s audio editing and mastering suite features an intuitive loudness meter. It can also analyse passages of audio and overlay the resulting loudness measurement traces.
iZotope RX 12: iZotope RX 12’s Loudness Control and Loudness Optimise modules can provide detailed readouts of your audio’s loudness. The Streaming Preview module can then be used to preview and apply different platforms’ requirements to your audio.
Process Audio Decibel: This loudness and level meter runs standalone or as a plugin in your DAW, and can be linked to an app running on your phone or tablet to display loudness readouts wherever you need them.

Learn more audio and music production terms in our Glossary
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