LALAL.AI now detects six different stem types from audio or video sources – and works entirely offlineAI-powered stem extractor LALAL.AI has had a glow up. Now, the multi-stem separation plugin can detect up to six different types of stems from any audio or video you load into it – and it works entirely offline.
While the original version only offered vocal and ‘instrumental’ stems, the latest update allows users to pick out specific instrument stems and vocal tracks. The selection includes: vocals, bass, drums, and piano stems, as well as distinctive acoustic and electric guitar stem extraction. And this is ontop of the plugin’s noise cancellation, intelligent removal of background music and vocal cleaning abilities.

READ MORE: I’ve finally found a pair of closed-back headphones I don’t want to EQ straight away

In order to extract your stems, users simply need to drop an audio file into their DAW, load up the plugin and select which stems are desired. Then, the plugin is able to instantly provide you with high-quality stems, with no limit on how many stem extractions you can perform – and it’s all done locally without the need for an internet connection, to help minimise on latency.
Last year, LALAL.AI made it on to MusicTech’s round-up of best stem separation tools. While we particularly took a shining to the plugin’s vocal separation, the new, more specific selection of instrumental stem extraction options is a game changer. It’s also upgraded to operate on Lyra, another marker of the plugin’s nifty evolution.
“Local stem separation is the future of audio production,” Nik Pogorsky, Product Owner & Co-Founder of Lalal.ai, explains, “With the launch of our six-stem VST, we are proving that the calibre of our algorithms can now live entirely on the user’s machine. We specifically engineered the Lyra model to provide professionals with the perfect equilibrium between processing speed and isolation precision. This release reflects the mission of making sophisticated AI invisible and seamlessly integrated into the daily lives of engineers and producers.”
LALAL.AI is compatible with Ableton, FL Studio, Reaper, or any other VST3-compatible DAW, and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The plugin costs £15.99 a month, or £144 for a full year.
For more information, head to Lalal.ai.
The post LALAL.AI now detects six different stem types from audio or video sources – and works entirely offline appeared first on MusicTech.

Saelin Audio releases Shine, a FREE adaptive clarity plugin for vocals and acoustic guitar
Saelin Audio has released Shine, a free adaptive clarity plugin built for vocals and acoustic guitar. I love plugins that speed up my workflow, and this one fits that description perfectly. You drop Shine on your recording track, and it adjusts presence and air in real time based on how you’re performing, without any presets [...]
View post: Saelin Audio releases Shine, a FREE adaptive clarity plugin for vocals and acoustic guitar

“It’s still our quest to one day have Despacio here”: In Ibiza, Soulwax discuss the future of their famed sound systemSpeaking at International Music Summit Ibiza 2026, Soulwax revealed the history of Despacio, the sound system and event co-created by them and LCD Soundsystem‘s James Murphy, and the ambitions they have for its future.
READ MORE: Inside James Murphy and Soulwax’s Despacio – the world’s greatest sound system
“We’ve done it everywhere in the world, but it was made to be in Ibiza,” says Soulwax’s Stephen Dewaele, who is joined onstage by his brother and bandmate, David Dewaele, and interviewer Gabriel Szatan. “It’s still our quest to one day do Despacio here.”
The duo elaborated further on the Ibiza roots of Despacio during their interview at IMS Ibiza 2026, recalling how it all started from a recording session on the White Isle in the early 2010s. “When we came here to record, we brought James [Murphy] with us. And we got the idea of like, “Why don’t we make a sound system that’s really [focused on] playing music at a little slower tempo?” This idea, says David, was heavily inspired by the Balearic DJs Jean-Claude Maury and Alfredo Fiorito, and the iconic Ibiza club, Privilege.
Despacio launched at the Manchester International Festival in 2013, and quickly gained a cult following after appearances at major festivals including Sónar, Coachella, Glastonbury, Portola, and at venues such as London’s Roundhouse.
“It seemed fresh to us because it was a reaction to what we were seeing everywhere else in the world,” explains Stephen. “It was just like, a lot of big clubs with Funktion-One sound systems and seven people on the lineup — everyone would play an hour, or an hour and a half [DJ sets]. If you’re an 18-year-old kid now, and you hear about Despacio, you would say, ‘Ah, so it’s three middle-aged dudes playing vinyl back to back on an audiophile system!’ But for us, back in 2012, that was kind of the antithesis of what we were experiencing every week, and it’s amazing that there is much more awareness for [audiophile] sound and vinyl and all that stuff now.”
The impact it has now, 12 or 13 years on, is much bigger than it had in the beginning,” adds David. “When we do it now in the States, it’s a thing that people come up to us and they’ve had one of the biggest experiences of their lives, and it’s huge for them, whereas that wasn’t the case in 2012.”
Discussing the current setup for Despacio, the duo explains how Coachella and Portola, festivals run by California events brand Goldenvoice that have hosted Despacio in recent years, are now well-adapted to the sound system. “A big percentage of the people who come into Despacio end up staying for eight hours,” says Stephen, adding that the tent Goldenvoice provides is acoustically treated. “We know by now how to tune that tent to make it sound really good.”
When an audience member asked if the Despacio team are looking for a permanent place for the sound system, Soulwax expressed enthusiasm for the idea. “We would love it…I’m not going to speak for James [Murphy], but I think he would love that as well.”
Soulwax’s interview was a keynote speech at IMS Ibiza this year. The conference, which is owned by Beatport, also saw panels on the state of the electronic music business, workshops by AlphaTheta, and more interviews with artists such as Suzanne Ciani, Pete Tong, Vintage Culture and more.
The post “It’s still our quest to one day have Despacio here”: In Ibiza, Soulwax discuss the future of their famed sound system appeared first on MusicTech.

Techivation releases Tilt EQ, a FREE linear phase tilt equalizer with a Drive saturation control
Techivation has released Tilt EQ, a free linear phase tilt equalizer for macOS and Windows. Before we check out the plugin, a quick look at the download process. To get this into your DAW, you’ll need to create a free Techivation account (email and password), which also unlocks the rest of the developer’s freebies in [...]
View post: Techivation releases Tilt EQ, a FREE linear phase tilt equalizer with a Drive saturation control

Alience with Sol8music

ALIENCE may speak in a novel dialect, yet its' core is still perceived as the universal language, which is music.

https://explore.publme.com/post/11/alience-with-sol8music

#Upcoming #Artist @Sol8

Chris Slanton's ideas about the World around.

Chris Slanton is the electronic pop artist and producer. Around 7 years ago his official music video "That Was Never The Way..." was released at VEVO. We hope that wasn't a prediction.

https://explore.publme.com/post/52/chris-slantons-ideas-about-the-world-around

#Upcoming #Artist @letthe

Alice MassLove invites you to dance.

Childish fantasy and a catchy beat: Alice MassLove invites you to dance with her kitten in her new song.

Imagine uncontrollable children's laughter and the patter of feet accompanied by a cat's purr! Young Alice gives the world the pure magic of childhood in her dance single "Miliy Kotik (Sweet Kitten)."

https://explore.publme.com/post/51/alice-masslove-invites-you-to-dance

#Upcoming #Artist @alicemasslove

Sound, science and structure: how Max Cooper unravels the cosmosIt’s a Tuesday night in April and the Royal Albert Hall is humming with quiet anticipation. The storied venue fills with concert-goers, and its famed crimson curtains begin closing around the circle.
A glance around the hall would give you little insight into Max Cooper, who’s about to emerge onto its 155-year-old stage. There are quiet university students in trios, parents in their 40s with their children, artsy couples in their retirement years, techno fashionistas in all-black, young couples, straight and queer, cosying up, lanky dudes wearing Aphex Twin t-shirts, and more besides.
Max Cooper on the MusicTech Cover. Image: Ed Miles for MusicTech
As the lights dim at 9pm, Cooper steps onto the stage between two projector screens. This concert hall has hosted iconic performances by Hans Zimmer, Jimi Hendrix, and the BBC Proms. Tonight, it witnesses a groundbreaking 360-degree immersive audiovisual performance that the esteemed venue is yet to see from an electronic music act. Standing solo onstage, Cooper is just barely visible behind a translucent screen and the haze of a smoke machine as he pilots a cockpit of laptops and synths, while hand-sketched animation of an infant’s first moments project onto the screen. Max Cooper’s cerebral, intense, challenging audiovisual phenomenon has begun.
“It’s funny. The more time has gone on, the more the audience has varied,” Cooper tells MusicTech a few days after the show. The Belfast-born producer and computational biology PhD released his debut EP in 2007, and has been bridging electronic music with scientific ideas from fields such as genetics and physiology ever since.
Cooper’s music is electronic by definition, but his show and oeuvre span various styles and genres. There are house-y, techno-esque moments that are impossible not to bop your head to, but Cooper also builds immense, sometimes dissonant arrangements of rich supersaw synthesizers that, depending on his intent, can be harsh and dissonant or warm and euphoric. “I came from years of going to parties — raving and being in that electronic scene — but I’ve ended up in this somewhat like techie-art scene, rather than straight-up dance music,” he explains, sitting on the sofa in his home studio.
Image: Ed Miles for MusicTech
Over the past decade, Cooper has played the likes of Berlin’s Berghain, London’s Barbican Centre, Carlisle Church in Belfast and at Amsterdam Dance Event, finessing his symphony of surround sound, live performance and projected visuals along the way. And at the Royal Albert Hall, his live show reached its most ambitious form yet.
“I did worry with some of the intense parts,” he says, smirking. “I worried about some of the audiences coming for a nice sit-down show at the Royal Albert Hall, expecting a classical concert, and getting this really brutal [sound]. But they seemed to deal with it, and presumably it’s interesting for them even though they’re not used to that sort of thing.”
What does a typical Max Cooper fan look like in 2026? Cooper isn’t sure at first, but offers that he appeals to “curious people”. In the coming months, he will be performing a modified version of the Royal Albert Hall show across Europe, playing tracks mostly from his upcoming album Feeling Is Structure and his 2025 record, On Being. Many more of these “curious people” who attend these sets will be awed by the convergence of intricate visuals, innovative custom-made tech, and immersive music. Above all, Cooper hopes the shows elicit deeper rumination on the human condition.
“It’s not just about going and having a dance and seeing some crazy visuals. Every chapter is full of ideas, and the whole show is built around ideas, and there’s a lot of storytelling in there,” he says. It’s food for thought intended for someone who’s “curious about who we are, and what we are and what we’re doing here, and how our experience of life relates to the systems we live in”.
“The stronger the feeling or the idea, the better chance that it’s actually going to turn into something”
Cooper’s grandiose ideas begin in his modest loft conversion in South London. When MusicTech first meets him in March, he’s putting the final touches on an upcoming track, Obsessive Compulsive Order, a highlight of the Royal Albert Hall show. The Ableton Live session is over 10 minutes long with over 250 channels of audio, an array of tiny samples scattered across the project. The thought process was “‘What happens if I just keep on editing and throwing more and more layers into the project?’” he explains.
Cooper’s desk is cluttered with effects pedals, MIDI controllers, and even an unreleased synth, the volcanic Genki Katla. He stands in the corner of the room in front of his analogue synths — a Moog One, Arturia PolyBrute and Roland Juno-106 — as the visuals from his live show project onto him, MusicTech’s photographer snapping away. In the opposite corner of the room is a chessboard and a bookcase stacked with titles on math, music, sound and science (Robert Macfarlane’s Is A River Alive? and Tom Mustill’s How To Speak Whale seem to be on rotation right now).
Image: Ed Miles for MusicTech
Despite the enviable gear, Cooper’s home studio isn’t so different from that of a hobbyist or amateur music producer. What’s clear, however, is that he thinks very deeply in this room, conjuring heady ideas and mapping out stories long before he even opens his desktop.
“I spend a lot of time reading and trying to learn about scientific ideas and natural aesthetics, like the forest floor and, I don’t know, the structure of the digits of pi,” says Cooper. “Thinking about those things and how I can tell a story with those sorts of ideas, and how I can bring scientific ideas into the work.”
The producer doesn’t start making music for any album or project until he has an idea. It’s not always as highbrow as the digits of pi — it could simply be a desire to express the emotions Cooper feels after watching a particularly moving film, he says. But he’s adamant that he doesn’t begin noodling on a synth or in a DAW until he’s inspired by a goal. “I need to have some idea of what I’m aiming for, some sort of strong feeling. The stronger the feeling or the idea, the better chance that it’s actually going to turn into something.”
Image: Ed Miles for MusicTech
Pattern Index, another track in the upcoming album Feeling Is Structure, was less about a feeling and more about exploring tools. “I was like, ‘Okay, I want to use loads of different pattern generators,’” he says, referencing Alexander Randon’s iOS app, Fugue Machine, as his original inspiration. “I wanted to throw patterns on top of patterns on top of patterns and see what happens.”
Meanwhile, Crystallis, a complex track riddled with layers of synth parts, was made with the Royal Albert Hall show in mind. “Crystallis is this metamorphosis idea,” Cooper says, describing visuals that center on the network of a cell – “all these growing pieces and reorganising” – as he plays the synths live. “They’re all a bit chaotic, but then it all comes together into this coherent harmonic structure.”
Structures are a running theme throughout both the new album and audiovisual show. Cooper says that the two main ideas he tries to convey in his work are how scientific structures enter our everyday lives in nature and in architecture, and “the hard problem of consciousness; the human perspective of looking at these [natural] structures”.
“There are a lot of brutal things going on. But then there’s also hope”
Cooper also says his music is “always a reflection of what’s happening” in the world. “There are a lot of brutal things going on,” he adds. “But then there’s also hope… I always want to try and present a positive message, despite tackling some of these negative ideas as part of the process.”
Translating all of this into a travelling live show is no small feat, particularly at the scale that Cooper has devised, with seamless transitions between chapters, themes and genres as mesmerising visuals, created in collaboration with independent animators and designers, play in sync with the music. Cooper’s controlling it all live, triggering sounds and video, a triple-laptop setup, MIDI controllers, and a few effects pedals. Although much of the material is premade, there’s ample room for error. He lets on that, on the night of the Albert Hall show, not everything went to plan — but he seems to be the only one who knows what.
Image: Ed Miles for MusicTech
“With shows like that, there’s so much new software, custom systems, and you test everything as much as you can, but it’s never quite the same as being in the actual venue on the day,” he says. “Nine different visual feeds were flying around the room, lots of signals going to front of house for the lights… A lot is going on, and you never know which bit is gonna fail or something.” Still, he’s relieved that the show, arguably the biggest of his career, went off without a hitch.
Watching the show, I noticed that Cooper’s explorations of nature and consciousness are almost a cheat code to inspiration. Instead of hoping to stumble upon motivation or wait for an idea to strike, we can look at seemingly mundane things a little deeper to stimulate creativity. Leaving the Royal Albert Hall, I heard Max Cooper fans talking about his music, but also life and the universe. This eclectic mix of people, bonding over Cooper’s musical structures, fleetingly became a structure unto themselves.
Max Cooper’s album Feeling Is Structure is out May 8. His UK live album tour begins May 14.
Words: Sam Willings
Photography: Ed Miles
The post Sound, science and structure: how Max Cooper unravels the cosmos appeared first on MusicTech.

Amazon’s new podcast strategy: Monetize everythingAmazon's podcasting business seems to have transformed over the past six months.

Strategy's Michael Saylor again hints at impending BTC purchaseThe biggest Bitcoin treasury company's data shows holdings are profitable, having gained about 3.3% amid Bitcoin's rally to about $78,000.

Freeze Moving Tools with a Stroboscopic Camera
If you take a video of a spinning wheel, you’ll probably notice that the spokes appear to turn more slowly than the wheel is actually rotating, and sometimes in the wrong direction. This is caused by a near match in the frame rate of the camera and the rate of rotation of the wheel – each time the camera captures a frame, the wheel has rotated a spoke into nearly the same position as in the last frame. If you time the exposures carefully, as [Excessive Overkill] did in his latest video, this effect can seemingly freeze moving objects, such as a fan or saw blade.
Most cameras only allow relatively coarse, fixed adjustments to frame rate, making it difficult to synchronize the shutter to an object’s motion. To get around this, [Excessive Overkill] used an industrial camera (previously used in this aimbot), which has fine frame rate control and external triggering. He connected the external trigger to a laser sensor, which detects a piece of retroreflective tape every time it passes by (for example, on one blade of a fan). When the laser sensor sends a signal, it also triggers a powerful LED flash. The flash is so powerful that dark materials create a hum when exposed to it, as pulses quickly heat the material, but each pulse is also so brief that the flash board doesn’t require any cooling.

Even to the naked eye, these stroboscopic pulses make rotating objects seem to stand still – an effect which made [Excessive Overkill] extra cautious when working around a lathe. When using a suitably long exposure time to avoid rolling-shutter distortion, the effect worked even using a normal camera without frame-rate matching. [Excessive Overkill] took videos of debris flying away from a seemingly motionless bandsaw, milling machine, chop saw, and jigsaw, though it was harder to freeze the rotation of a weed trimmer and a drone.
We’ve seen this effect used to freeze motion a few times before, both for art and for entertainment. If you’d like to recreate it, check out this high-speed LED flash.

Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip!

Jun Murakami TestToneTestTone is a very simple test signal generator plugin that lets you quickly send out the signal you need — sine waves and pink noise — with adjustable frequency and level. It is handy for setting up gear, calibrating monitoring systems, and various audio checks. Available in VST3, AU, AAX, LV2 and CLAP formats for macOS, Windows and Linux. Free and open source (MIT License). I have created a demo site as a web application that runs in your browser, so please feel free to try it out. https://testtone-demo.web.app/ Read More

Anthropic created a test marketplace for agent-on-agent commerceIn a recent experiment, Anthropic created a classified marketplace where AI agents represented both buyers and sellers, striking real deals for real goods and real money.

2026 Green Powered Challenge: Ventilate Your Way To Power!Have you ever looked out across the rooftops of a city and idly gazed at the infrastructure that remains unseen from the street? It seems [varunsontakke80] has, because here’s their project, harvesting energy from the rotation of a rooftop ventilator.
The build is a relatively straightforward one, with a pair of disks with magnets attached being mounted on the ventilator shaft inside its dome. A third disk sits between them and is stationary, with a set of coils in which the magnets induce current as they move. A rectifier and charge circuit completes the picture.
This appears to be part of a college project, but despite searching, we can’t find any measure of how much power this thing generates. We’d be concerned that it might reduce the efficiency of the ventilator somewhat. There will be an inevitable tradeoff as power is harvested. Still, it’s a neat use of a ubiquitous piece of hardware, and we like it for that.
This hack is part of our 2026 Green Powered Challenge. You’ve got time to get your own entry in, so get a move on!

Bitcoiners cast doubt on the US military's understanding of the networkBitcoin advocate Matthew Kratter said US Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo's Senate testimony on Tuesday sounded like it was written by an "intern."