Steinberg says SpectraLayers 11 is a “breakthrough” in audio processing thanks to deeper AI integrationSteinberg’s SpectraLayers has had a makeover. With a bucketload of AI-driven improvements and powerful restoration and unmixing tools, SpectraLayers 11 vows to take audio editing and restoration to an entirely new level.

READ MORE: The best DAWs for music producers in all genres, styles and workflows

SpectraLayers 11 offers a range of features geared towards repairing and cleaning up live recordings. Users can take advantage of the Unmix Chorus module to separate lead and backing vocals, while the Unmix Crowd Noise module goes a step further, allowing you to fully remove crowd ambience from a live track.
Unmix technology also extends to instrumental isolation. Steinberg has improved its Unmix Song feature, allowing users to extract up to seven different instruments from any given track. The advanced technology will surely be useful for separating stems, making it simpler to re-imagine and remix any given project.
AI has also helped Steinberg produce a speech and vocal repair feature, Voice DeClip. Trained on hours of clips and non-clipped recordings, Steinberg insists the module has been extensively trained. As a result, Voice DeClip should be able to extract vocals from any given environment, no matter how loud or chaotic.

Alongisde the new unmixing technology, SpectraLayers’ new Transfer Brush tool should allow users to shift between source and destination layers in real time, while the Transient Pencil allows users the freedom to draw, sculpt and shape transients directly in the spectrogram.
Workflow has also been vastly improved for SpectraLayers’ 11th edition. Steinberg has introduced new dedicated panels for modules, as well as the option to chain modules and save your chains as presets.
SpectraLayers Elements 11 is currently available for £68, while the Pro edition is £254.
For more information, head to Steinberg’s website.

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5 creative ways to share music using QR codesHere are some innovative ways to share music and expand an audience with QR codes. Learn how these simple codes can make promoting your music more effective and engaging. by. Continue reading
The post 5 creative ways to share music using QR codes appeared first on Hypebot.

Mainstream is the new nicheFive years ago, we made the call that ‘niche is the new mainstream’. Today, this dynamic is so fundamental to music and culture that we are firmly in the stage of second order consequences. Superstars are getting smaller, the long tail is getting longer, and rightsholders are bringing in earnings thresholds to keep that growing long tail at bay. But it was a blog post by my colleague Tatiana – “Did Charli XCX go mainstream, or did the mainstream just go niche?” – that got me thinking whether, now five years in, the mainstreaming of niche has reached a tipping point.

The dynamics of Charli XCX’s career (e.g., 25,000 RSVPs in one hour for a 1,000-cap Boiler Room gig) feel very much like those of Taylor Swift. Of course, the sheer scale of the Swift fandom machine is the big difference – or is it? Is mainstream about actual numbers or reach, or perhaps both? In fact, it is best measured in three key ways:

Absolute scale: how big are the numbers?

Relative scale: how big are the numbers compared to others?

Active reach: what share of the total audience does an artist have?

Let’s use Taylor Swift, as today’s biggest mainstream music artist, to test each.

Absolute scale

There is no getting away from the fact that everything “big” has got smaller. Michael Jackson, arguably the equivalent of Taylor Swift for the peak-CD era, shifted half a billion units worldwide, when units actually meant units. By comparison, Taylor Swift has fewer than 200 million ‘album equivalent sales’ – which of course means this figure is increasingly made up of streams being converted into ‘sales’. Given that so much of streaming behaviour today is radio-like, we would really need to add an estimate of total individual radio listens to Jackson, which would result in a figure that would comfortably end up in the tens of billions in ‘equivalent sales’.Yes, Jackson’s career happened in a different era, when fewer artists were competing and linear broadcast platforms dominated. But that is the entire point of fragmenting fandom.

Relative scale

It is abundantly clear that Taylor Swift has more streams and ticket sales than pretty much everyone else. She is the biggest artist on the planet right now. She has mainstream awareness, but does that make her actual listenership mainstream? 

She certainly has more mainstream cultural clout than her peers, managing to become part of the mainstream media narrative – look no further than the Financial Times running pieces on ‘Swiftonomics’. This is thanks, in large part, to the fact she first built her fandom pre-fragmentation, when music was still much more a part of mainstream culture. It is an advantage enjoyed by other artists, such as Beyoncé, that came up pre-streaming’s peak, and therefore pre-fragmentation. But an FT subscriber reading a Swiftonomics story does not necessarily make them a listener (I’ll hazard a guess that particular conversion rate is not one to sing about). Having mainstream media reach is not the same as being a mainstream artist in terms of listenership, even though the two things did largely go hand-in-hand once upon a time.So, simply being bigger than the rest does not inherently equate to being mainstream. In the same way that the fastest kid at school could leave her classmates for dust but not even qualify for national heats, let alone compete with the fastest runners in the world.

Reach

Active reach is where the picture really comes into focus. The best-selling albums in US history (when sales were sales) were the Eagles ‘Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975’, with 38 million sales, and Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, with 34 million. Based on the respective populations of the year of release of those albums, the Eagles was bought by 17.4% of the US population, while Michael Jackson was bought by 15.9%. 

Taylor Swift’s best-selling US album was ‘1989’ (6.5 million) while ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ sold 2.9 million. As a share of the total US population, they represent 2.0% and 0.7%. 

Taylor Swift’s biggest selling release has 12 times less reach than the Eagles, while her latest release had less than 1% reach.NOTE: with modern ‘sales’ figures including streams, Swift’s total audience may have been bigger (as many different people’s streams could add up to one sale). But equally, it could be lower, as one person’s streams could add up to multiple units.

Of course, judging Swift’s reach only by album sales – an aging format, and an essentially extinct one for much of her listener base – is unfair. Yet interestingly, the c1% figure doesn’t just apply to Swift’s album sales. The record-breaking ‘Eras’ tour sold 4.5 million US tickets, which is just over 1% of the US population (and Swifties being Swifties, there was probably a decent number who saw the show more than once, meaning that percentage is likely a bit smaller). Meanwhile, Swift’s 26.1 billion Spotify streams in 2023 made her the most streamed artist of the year, yet that was just 1.4% of all global Spotify streams. Now, 1.4% of global streams for one artist is a massive achievement But in the analogue era so many more people would have listened to the biggest artist of the day because radio was the main consumption format, and on radio everyone listens to the same song, whether they like it or not.

None of this is a critique of Taylor Swift, but instead a reflection of the modern music world which she is part of. She is clearly a hugely successful artist at the top of her game. But the game is not the same as it once was. It is not that Taylor Swift is not huge — she is. But she is not mainstream, because mainstream itself is now niche. Charli XCX shows how successful you can be when you understand the power of niche. Niche does not inherently mean small, and its potential is huge. The simple, hard truth is that now everything is niche, even mainstream.

LVRN invests in Afro-Caribbean cultural platform Jerk X JollofThe investment 'underscores our commitment to empowering communities through music and culture,' LVRN says
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Serato promises “versatility and creativity” with new upgrades for DJ Pro 3.2.0DJ and production software company Serato has unveiled its latest upgrades for Serato DJ Pro 3.2.0 and Serato DJ Lite 3.2.0.
Boasting ample new effects, expanded parameters and enhanced control, Serato’s new suite is designed with versatility in mind. The development promises to transform the DJing experience, encouraging creative freedom with its expanded selection of sounds and customisable presents.

READ MORE: Best DJ Gear 2024: 11 best DJ software for mixing and playlisting in 2024

The main appeal of Serato’s upgrade is its new selection of high-quality effects. Among the improved effects, users can take advantage of Infinity Tone, Spiral Echo, Stretch, Vast Reverb, and Infinity Flanger. There’s also the grand return of Rollout, the much beloved effect from Serato’s classic Scratch Live software.
Alongside a full suite of new effects, Serato has also redesigned its effects panel. The fresh look is set to enhance user control, allowing users more flexibility when shaping their tracks.
Serato has also added a new Channel FX option that can be assigned to the filter knob for users without built-in hardware effects. Users can also have an unlimited amount of custom presets, as well as having the option to save up to four favourite effects banks for easy access.
The upgrade will also see Serato DJ Pro 3.2.0 and Serato DJ Lite 3.2.0 gaining native Apple Silicon support. This optimisation will result in the smoothest software performance to date.
Serato DJ Pro 3.2.0 will officially release in July, but for now users can access a free public beta.
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Tunneling TCP By File ServerYou want to pass TCP traffic from one computer to another, but there’s a doggone firewall in the way. Can they both see a shared file? Turns out, that’s all you need. Well, that and some software from [fiddyschmitt].
If you think about it, it makes sense. Unix treats most things as a file, so it is pretty easy to listen on a local TCP port and dump the data into a shared file. The other side reads the file and dumps the same data to the desired TCP port on its side. Another file handles data in the other direction. Of course, the details are a bit more than that, but that’s the basic idea.
Performance isn’t going to be wonderful, and the files keep growing until the program detects that they are bigger than 10 megabytes. When that happens, the program purges the file.
The code is written in C# and there are binaries for Windows and Linux on the release page. The examples show using shared files via Windows share and RDP, but we imagine any sort of filesystem that both computers can see would work. Having your traffic stuffed into a shared file is probably not great for security but, you know, you are already jumping a firewall, so…
Of course, no firewall can beat an air gap. Unless you can control the fans or an LED.

Droplets: Physics-based sequencer plug-in Droplets is an innovative sequencer application/plug-in equipped with a built-in synth engine that boasts a rather unusual interface. 

A Look At 3D Printed Shoes: Hybrid, Fully Printed and Plain WeirdIn the eternal quest to find more things to do with 3D printers, shoes have been in the spotlight for a while now. But how practical is additive manufacturing in this field really?
Adidas Ultra 4D running shoes with 3D printed midsole.
This is where [Joel Telling] of the 3D Printing Nerd YouTube channel puts in his two cents, with a look at a range of commercial and hobbyist ideas and products. Naturally, the first thing that likely comes to mind at the words ‘3D printed shoes’ is something akin to the plastic version of wooden clogs, or a more plastic-y version of the closed-cell resin of Crocs.
First on the list are the white & spiky Kaiju Gojira shoes from Fused Footwear, printed from TPE filament to order. TPE is softer to the touch and more flexible than TPU, but less durable. In contrast the Adidas Ultra 4D running shoes (from their 4D range) are a hybrid solution, with a standard rubber outsole, 3D printed midsole with complex structures and mostly fabric top part. Effectively a Nike Air in initial impression, perhaps.
Meanwhile ‘3D printed’ shoes ordered off Chinese store Shein turned out to be not 3D printed at all, while [Joel] seems to be really into fully 3D printed shoes from Zellerfeld, who appear to be using TPU. While it’s hard to argue about taste, the Adidas shoes might appeal to most people. Especially since they’d likely let your feet breathe much better, a fact appreciated not only by yourself, but also family members, roommates and significant others. So which of these (partially) 3D printed shoes would you pick, or do you have some other favorite?

Get Firestarter Cinematic SFX for only $9 until May 26th!
Flame Sound offers the Firestarter SFX ($59 value) cinematic sound effects library for only $9 until May 26th, 2024. Regular BPB readers already know about Flame Sound – it’s my sound design label that offers free cinematic sound effects and premium SFX collections. Firestarter SFX, one of the best-selling premium packs, is currently available at [...]
View post: Get Firestarter Cinematic SFX for only $9 until May 26th!

New version of Juicy Loops brings FL Studio’s step sequencer into Ableton LiveYRAKI’s original Juicy Loops M4L device was a game changer for FL Studio lovers shifting over to Ableton Live. The emulation allowed users to feel more at home, dragging FL features over to their new DAW of choice.
Now, YRAKI has worked on a new version of its helpful M4L device. Juicy Loops 2 recreates yet another much loved FL features for Ableton Live – FL’s nifty, intuitive step sequencer.

READ MORE: Ableton launches Ableton Live 12 – here’s what’s new

FL Studio’s versatile step sequencer is famously simple to use. With its six tracks, each with individual settings, the DAW makes it simple to create polyrhythms and carve out interesting sonic patterns. Thankfully, YRAKI has entirely recreated the familiar UI – as well as adding a few extra perks.
The polymetric Juicy Loops 2 MIDI sequencer also allows users to toy with the velocity of each track, as well as tweak velocity deviations with percentage dials. Track length can also be varied individually, while the direction of play can also be reversed.
YRAKI have also made it so Juicy Loops patterns can be directly exported as MIDI clips, allowing users to drop them into Ableton channels, meaning you wont lose your pattern in the process.

A few reviews are already in, with one reading: “Love this! It’s like a magic box packed with infinite sequencing ideas. Glad I can finally program beats this way on Ableton.”
Another reviewer suggests a potential way of making the sequencer even more useful than the FL original. “Adding a chance per step feature and BPM sync/free mode would make it even better,” they write.
Juicy Loops is currently available for £20 on Gumroad.
The post New version of Juicy Loops brings FL Studio’s step sequencer into Ableton Live appeared first on MusicTech.

“No matter where I lived, I was still an insecure, anxious little weirdo”: Moby says money from Play success did little to change his personalityElectronic music legend Richard Melville Hall aka Moby has reflected on the unexpected success of his breakthrough album Play and the effects (or lack thereof) of all that money on his personality.

READ MORE: Steve Albini’s four-hour Mix with the Masters lesson is now available to watch for free

With the release of Play in 1999, Moby’s life was forever changed — along with the public’s consciousness of a genre referred to at the time as “electronica”. Despite its slow commercial start, Play would go on to become the biggest-selling electronica album of all time, with over 12 million copies sold globally, and all 18 tracks licensed for commercial use.
Asked about how the windfall from the record had changed things for him at the time, Moby tells Billboard: “When I started licensing music and making money from it — and it’s tricky because it might sound self-serving or even self-aggrandising — the deal I made with myself was, ‘Make money so you can do something good with the money.’”
“So It seemed creepy to draw too much attention to that, so I’m very hesitant to mention it. But my idea was, ‘if I have money, I can try and use it to a good effect.’”
The musician credits his upbringing for his relationship with money, having grown up in “in the world of hardcore punk rock in and around New York in the early ’80s”, where one of his favourite bands, “like everybody’s”, was Minor Threat.

“One of my musical and spiritual heroes was Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat who famously would only charge $5 for a show,” he explains. “As you know, the straight edge punk rock scene of the early ’80s was aggressively non-capitalistic.”
That said, Moby concedes that there were some “very selfish, stupid things” that he’d spent money on, though he soon realised that “no matter where I lived, I was still an insecure, anxious little weirdo.”
“So I was quickly disabused of the idea that buying a giant house was going to fix any of my problems,” he says. “Rather, I said, okay, I’ve made some money. Let me figure out how to live a comfortable, simple, life then ideally use the money to sort of move the needle away from this current, terrible status quo, this current terrible system regarding food production, environmental destruction, attacks on democracy, voter suppression. In my way, I’ve been trying to stay true to that.”
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Warm Audio’s WA-44 expertly revives a vocal microphone design from the 1930s£999, warmaudio.com
With a portfolio of over 40 products, mostly recreations of classic microphones, analogue preamps and processors from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, we wondered where Warm Audio chief Bryce Young would go next. The answer is, of course, even further back in time…to the 1930s!

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

The WA-44 is an authentic replica of a classic figure-8 ribbon mic from the mid-30s, once (and still) used by professionals in the recording, broadcasting and film industries.
The original RCA 44 BX can be seen in iconic photos of a young Elvis Presley, who used the mic to record many of his classic early rock ‘n’ roll recordings, regarded as the foundation on which modern pop music is built. There’s no denying this is one seriously cool-looking microphone.
As usual, Warm Audio has cut no corners recreating this ancient design, with the WA-44 weighing almost 3 kg. It’s a large beast for sure yet, by nature, ribbon mics are extremely delicate so the sturdy, foam-lined case the company has designed for it should be used for protection when not in use.
Inside the hefty metal casing is the ribbon itself, a ‘true-to-length’ 60 mm design manufactured in Japan from 99.1% pure aluminium. This ribbon is bigger than those found in most other designs and is crucial to the lush, larger-than-life sound it delivers.
WA-44 with case
While this new 44-style microphone is authentic to the vintage design in most ways, it embraces modern technology with the choice of magnet in which the ribbon is suspended. Original RCA 44s used AlNiCo (aluminium, nickel and cobalt), however, the WA-44 employs a Neodymium magnet, which is more efficient, stronger and durable than the ancient type.
A custom, American-made CineMag output transformer is used (these transformers are premium designs as found in several Warm Audio products), which helps the WA-44 partner with modern mic preamps as well as providing a degree of protection against the accidental use of phantom power. Usually, the application of phantom power will destroy or badly damage a ribbon instantaneously, however, this circuit design offers protection for the delicate ribbon. Even so, the use of phantom power is best avoided.
The fragile nature of the ribbon should also be considered when subjecting it to large gusts of moving air. A thick, protective ‘sock’ is provided for transportation yet it’s also advisable to use a windshield or pop filter (not provided) when using the mic to record, say, close-mic’d horns or kick drum.
Like all ribbon mics, the WA-44 is relatively insensitive in comparison with other types of dynamic microphone and condenser designs, which means it requires a liberal amount – at least 65 dB – of amplification. Most decent outboard mic preamps will deliver adequate gain, however plugging directly into an interface will not provide enough juice to enable the mic’s true tonal quality to be appreciated. With that in mind, Warm Audio has created the WarmLifter, an inline active preamp that can be inserted between mic and interface to provide an additional 26 dB of gain. This is sold separately for £159, which could be a cost-effective way of providing gain without the expense of buying an outboard mic preamp.
WarmLifter
Also common to ribbon mics is the figure-8 polar pattern, meaning the back of the microphone captures audio as much as the front. This means care has to be taken when positioning the mic in a room. If it’s placed close to a boundary with a reflective surface, with a vocalist addressing the front for example, the mic will pick up reflections from the rear surface; this may even cause problems with phase cancellations. Placing the mic more towards the centre of your recording room will eliminate these problems but, if space is tight, some absorbent material (such as portable vocal booths) can help.
The figure-8 pattern is excellent at rejecting sound from the sides, though, so judicious positioning can eliminate unwanted spillage better than cardioid designs.
The sonic signature of the WA-44 is unmistakably vintage in character. Acoustic guitar is captured with plenty of mid-focused resonance and weighty low-end heft albeit without the top-end sparkle you get with many condenser designs. The mic has no onboard filters of any kind so a high-pass filter on a mic preamp (or the WarmLifter) would be useful for this and many other applications.
Many potential customers will want to use the mic for lead vocals and, here, a certain amount of mic technique comes into play. More than most, the WA-44 has a pronounced proximity effect, so the closer the sound source, the more low end will be captured. This can work particularly well when all the warmth and smoothness of an intimate, close-mic’d performance is desired, however for punchy rock and pop vocals, a little more distance than usual between performer and mic will give a brighter balance.
WA-44 in use
While the WA-44 lacks the super-top response characteristics of many condenser vocal mics, the ribbon provides a degree of midrange detail and transparency few others can attain. What’s more, it responds extremely well to a liberal boost of high-end EQ; a 16kHz boost from a Pultec-style equaliser sounds sublime, adding a halo of air to a full-bodied recording.
Despite the delicate nature of its ribbon, the WA-44 is capable of handling SPLs of up to 140 dB, so louder sources such as drums and amplified instruments can be recorded without fear of damage.
Amplified electric bass cabinets benefit from the inherently fulsome bottom-end response, while the WA-44’s use on double bass is a no-brainer. Smaller stringed instruments such as violins, which can often sound shrill and sharp, benefit from the smoother, slightly muted top-end response to bring out the body and phrasing of notes without the scratchiness of leading edges.
Warm Audio’s WA-44 is a world-class ribbon microphone offering warmth, detail and dynamic expression few can equal. Driven with sufficient good-quality gain, it delivers clarity and mid-range transparency as good as, or better than many more costly, boutique designs. While it doesn’t boast anything in the way of cutting-edge DAW-friendly technology, it expresses a rich, vintage vibe in a truly sumptuous package.
Key features

99.1% aluminium, 2.5 micron-thick ribbon
Custom CineMag USA transformers
Powerful Neodymium magnet
Pigtail XLR Gotham cable with Star Quad shielding
Polar pattern: figure-8
Frequency response 20 Hz – 20k Hz (+/- 12dB)
Max SPL: 140dB

The post Warm Audio’s WA-44 expertly revives a vocal microphone design from the 1930s appeared first on MusicTech.

“I’m just a puppet when it comes to comping her vocal”: FINNEAS taught Billie Eilish how to comp vocals so she could record alone in new album Hit Me Hard and SoftIn a new interview, Billie Eilish takes us behind the scenes of the making of Hit Me Hard and Soft, and the evolving musical partnership she shares with her brother FINNEAS.
Diving into the album’s recording process, FINNEAS – Eilish’s longtime production partner – tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that he actually taught his sister how to comp her own vocals this time so she could record alone in the studio.

READ MORE: Steve Albini’s four-hour Mix with the Masters lesson is now available to watch for free

“She has such a good ear and I’m just a puppet when it comes to comping her vocals because she’s so meticulous,” says FINNEAS. “And I can comp a vocal, no prob, I’m doing it forever. But she got better and better at knowing like, ‘I like this take and I like this word from this, taking like this word’.”
“And so I was just like, well, let me teach you how to do this. It’s not that hard. And so I taught her how to record herself and how to comp herself.”
“[Sometimes] I’d get a call to come downstairs, she’s like ‘something’s wrong come downstairs and fix it’,” he continues, “but one of the reasons I did it is because I’ve always recorded alone and there’s stuff that I am just not brave enough to do in front of somebody else. It’s like I know I’m her brother but…”
It’s a sentiment Eilish shares in. Highlighting a vocal moment near the end of the track Birds Of A Feather, the singer says that she “could never have done that” had FINNEAS been in the room.

“This is the most I’ve ever written and contributed,” says Eilish. “I did some production stuff, even. And I did all my own vocals.”
Watch the full interview below.

In other news, Billie Eilish has released an isolated vocals version of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT for producers to get creative with. Fans are invited to remix the album via BandLab and the winner will get to “take home an exclusive merch pack with a HIT ME HARD AND SOFT vinyl autographed by Billie, and a pair of tickets to her upcoming tour.”
The post “I’m just a puppet when it comes to comping her vocal”: FINNEAS taught Billie Eilish how to comp vocals so she could record alone in new album Hit Me Hard and Soft appeared first on MusicTech.

How AI Large Language Models Work, Explained Without MathLarge Language Models (LLMs ) are everywhere, but how exactly do they work under the hood? [Miguel Grinberg] provides a great explanation of the inner workings of LLMs in simple (but not simplistic) terms that eschews the low-level mathematics of how they work in favor of laying bare what it is they do.
At their heart, LLMs are prediction machines that work on tokens (small groups of letters and punctuation) and are as a result capable of great feats of human-seeming communication. Most technical-minded people understand that LLMs have no idea what they are saying, and this peek at their inner workings will make that abundantly clear.
Be sure to also review an illustrated guide to how image-generating AIs work. And if a peek under the hood of LLMs left you hungry for more low-level details, check out our coverage of training a GPT-2 LLM using pure C code.

iZotope launch major updates in RX 11 The latest iteration of iZotope's audio repair suite features innovative machine learning capabilities and tools tailored for music streaming.