GetYourGrooveOn StarveSTARVE lives in the moment a fuzz pedal stops behaving. You know that sound when the battery is nearly gone, the circuit is hanging on by a thread, and a held note starts to sag, choke, and fray around the edges? That is where STARVE begins. It turns a dying power supply into part of the performance, giving you a fuzz that can sound worn out, wounded, unstable, or ready to fall apart completely. This is not a layer of random noise pasted over the guitar. The virtual power supply reacts to what you play. Dig in and the circuit pulls harder against the rail. Hold a bend and the note can slowly lose its footing beneath you. Leave space between phrases and the supply begins to recover. The distress moves with your hands, so it feels played rather than programmed. The large Power knob sweeps from 3V to 12V. At 9V, STARVE is fully fed and delivers a thick, direct transistor-style fuzz. Turn left and the battery starts giving up. The sound compresses, darkens, coughs, and fizzles as the voltage falls toward 3V. Turn right past 9V and the circuit becomes pushed and tightly compressed, with a little extra level but no unwanted jump in fuzz. Fuzz decides how hard the circuit gets hit. Keep it low for an open sound with just a hint of strain, or turn it up and make the virtual battery work for every note. The harder the fuzz stage pulls, the more the supply sags and the more dramatic the end of the phrase becomes. Mix lets you run the whole thing fully wet or bring the dry attack back underneath the damage. STARVE is at its best on the parts where feel matters: a bent note that starts strong and dies fighting, a single-note riff that coughs between hits, or a solo that sounds like the amp might not survive the take. It can also sit at a solid 9V for heavy, dependable fuzz or move above noon for a smoother pushed lead tone. The Starved, Fed, and Pushed LEDs follow the state of the circuit in real time. When the virtual battery is taking a beating, you can watch the Starved light weaken along with it. Six factory presets get you moving quickly: Starve Default, Dying Lead, Voltage Cough, Fed Fuzz, Pushed Solo, and Parallel Starve. Formats: AU for Logic Pro. Platform: macOS. Trial: 14-day full-function trial via GYGO Portal. Read More

Raye says ticket scalpers used AI bots to create ‘hundreds of thousands of fake registrations’ as 1.8M sign up for 5,000 Royal Albert Hall seatsPresale registration for the show ran through a sign-up page hosted by fan marketing platform co:brand.
Source

Helix Carbon says it can make iron cheaper by recycling blast furnace pollutionThe steel industry is a big polluter, but Helix Carbon can upcycle pollution from blast furnaces to drive down emissions and improve margins.

ESP-SDR Can Now TransmitWell, that was fast! Last week, we reported on two apparently simultaneous hacks using the 2.4 GHz radio inside many ESP32 variants that enabled raw access to the radio samples, turning it into a listen-only software defined radio (SDR) platform. Listen only? That’s only half of the SDR story.
Last weekend, [Murmel] got started fixing that, and released an early early version of ESP32 firmware that can also transmit, and got it working with gqrx. He demos it by communicating using a Hellschrieber mode of his own devising between an S3 and a C6. And he didn’t stop there, either. He’s working on 802.15.4 modulation at the moment, which means that maybe soon your ESP32 will speak ZigBee.
This is all in the roughly 2.4 GHz band, but Espressif’s API suggests that the radios will tune down as low as 100 MHz, although we can hardly imagine that the filters are tuned to make that particularly effective. Still, it’s clear that the boundaries on the ESP-SDR are just starting to get pushed.
If the early hacks on the RTL-SDR set off a wave of hacker SDR radio experimentation, and we can only hope that this is the beginning of the ESP-SDR era. Thanks then to [Murmel] – aka [Marble] – and the original hacks coming from the Espargos team for kicking this all off!

Sony Music Vision Presents Queen BudapestSony Music Vision presents Queen Budapest, the first Western stadium rock show to take place behind the Iron Curtain, and the final filmed Queen live performance. Queen Budapest was released globally in cinemas and IMAX the first week of October for a limited time only, in partnership with Trafalgar Releasing.

An announcement from Legacy/Sony Music Vision described Queen’s Budapest concert film and November products.    

“Filmed on July 27, 1986, at Budapest’s Népstadion during the band’s ‘The Magic Tour’, Queen Budapest captures the band's final filmed performance with Freddie Mercury at their live peak, just five shows before their final show. The film features hits such as We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, Under Pressure and BohemianRhapsody, along with an acoustic take on the traditional Hungarian folk song Tavaszi Szél Vizet Áraszt.

“The concert was a groundbreaking moment, as Queen became the first Western rock band to perform a stadium show behind the Iron Curtain during a period of profound cultural and political change. In addition to 80,000 tickets selling out, an estimated 45,000 people listened to the group outside, with some fans having travelled from as far away as Russia and Poland. The show was filmed on 35 mm film by Hungary’s best cameramen using 17 cameras and 25 miles of film. The Hungarian government approved the entire operation, which was a first for a Communist State.

“Queen Budapest will be released to mark the 40th anniversary of this pivotal moment in the band’s history, and the film has been meticulously restored in 4K from the original filmed 35mm footage by Sir Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production facility in New Zealand, with newly remixed audio from the original multitrack recordings.

Queen Budapest will also be released as a multi-format audio package via Legacy Recordings, the catalogue division of Sony Music, internationally, and Hollywood Records in the U.S. and Canada on November 6.

The soundtrack, newly remixed from the original multitrack by Queen’s studio team, will be released alongside the Blu-Ray, DVD, CD & Digital editions as a 3LP vinyl set for the very first time. 

Queen Budapest is directed by János Zsombolyai. Sony Music Vision is the distributor.”

Queen Budapest CD Track ListingCD 11. One Vision2. Tie Your Mother Down3. In The Lap Of The Gods… Revisited4. Seven Seas Of Rhye5. Tear It Up6. A Kind Of Magic7. Under Pressure8. Another One Bites The Dust9. Who Wants To Live Forever10. I Want To Break Free11. Looks Like It’s Gonna Be A Good Night – Improv12. Guitar Solo13. Now I’m Here

CD 21. Love Of My Life2. Tavaszi Szél Vizet Áraszt3. Is This The World We Created…?4. (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care5. Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart)6. Tutti Frutti7. Bohemian Rhapsody8. Hammer To Fall9. Crazy Little Thing Called Love10. Radio Ga Ga11. We Will Rock You12. Friends Will Be Friends13. We Are The Champions14. God Save The Queen

My public profile has been way more visible after being filmed along with Queen co-founders, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, in their 2012 Queen at 40 documentary, directed by Matt O’Casey for BBC Television and issued and expanded as Queen: Days Of Our Lives The Definitive Documentary of the World’s Greatest Rock Band as a 2014 DVD and Blu-Ray via Eagle Vision regularly broadcast on cable TV outlets.

I was subsequently quoted describing Queen on www.brianmay.com,  “As American journalist Harvey Kubernik put it, ‘it wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll, it was Broadway.’” 

As Freddie himself said, “A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It’s a theatrical event.”  

Queen’s 1976 stage repertoire included an encore of Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ song “Big Spender” initially done on the boards by Shirley MacLaine in the Broadway musical Sweet Charity.  Mercury first heard Shirley Bassey’s 1967 version of the tune on BBC Radio and then by Liza Minnelli. “Big Spender” is on Queen Live at Wembley ’86.  

I saw Queen perform three times during the seventies and interviewed Freddie Mercury twice-once in Beverly Hills for the now defunct Melody Maker and in London during 1975 and ‘76.   

Our first conversation was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It was a Special Melody Maker report Killer Queen Slay America!

Mercury regally waltzed into the room, stuck out his hands, and greeted fellow journalist Justin Pierce and me with “Hello darlings. What do you think of my black fingernail polish?” 

I replied to him, “Freddie, I grew up in Hollywood. I know what kind of paint color real stars wear. So, while in L.A., why don’t you go over to Ball Beauty on Fairfax Ave? My cousin Shelia Kaye and Cher get their makeup supplies at that shop. It’s near Norty’s Music Center. Ask one of the women at your Elektra Records label office on La Cienega Blvd. to drive you there.”           

Mercury poured a glass of champagne and announced, “Please put the tape machine on.” Freddie thoroughly enjoyed trumpeting Queen and discussing the machinations of their mid-seventies career. 

We must have spent the first 10 minutes talking about performers Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland.

I saw Judy sing in 1963 at her CBS-TV Judy Garland Show taping in Television City in a memorable duet with Barbra Streisand. In 1975 I sat next to Liza at a Rolling Stones 1975 Fabulous Forum concert. Freddie had seen Minelli at the London Palladium in the very early seventies.

Mercury was stunned. “If you come to London, do call my publicist Tony Brainsby. We must do this again.” And we did, but this time he was wearing green nail polish.  

Freddie had an air of confidence and mega-stardom destiny about him. The boy had a keen sense of the pop music process and about being a star on and off the stage.

I spoke with Freddie about a recording session he, Taylor, and May cut of “I Can Hear Music” b/w “Goin’ Back” under the pseudonym Larry Lurex. It was around the time of the recording of Queen’s debut album (for legal reasons, they couldn’t call it a “Queen” single). 

I had a delightful chat with Brian May after a Queen show at a party Elektra Records tossed in Hollywood, where Brian mentioned he saw the Jimi Hendrix Experience a few times.

May recalled in 1967 he was on the entertainment committee at Imperial College in London who booked the trio for a cheap rate. Before Queen and Smile, Brian was in 1984, who opened a show for Hendrix or played at a venue with him.   

In my conversation with the visionary A&R man and former record label executive at UNI/MCA and later 20th Century Records, Russ Regan, he lamented that one failure in the music business was not acquiring Queen in 1973 for a North American deal, losing out in a bidding war to Jac Holzman at Elektra.

Regan gave The Beach Boys their name and at UNI inked Elton John to the company and Barry White to 20th Century. “I loved Queen’s songwriting, harmonies and the sound I heard on the tape sent to me.”     

I think it’s time again, after 50 years, to write about Queen and Freddie Mercury, utilizing my Stateside 1975 interview with him, reminding the world about this talented, charismatic performer, and truly charming character.     

Harvey Kubernik Freddie Mercury 1975 Interview    

It was mid-afternoon in Beverly Hills as Freddie Mercury peered over the spacious swimming pool of the Hilton Hotel and reflected on Queen’s latest tour of the States.

“The tour has been going just great. The only drawback has been the problems with my voice, which I’ve been over-taxing. But since I’ve been taking care of it and resting more, it’s been fine. The problem is that when you do a tour, you try to schedule the concerts as close as possible.

“Therefore, it’s like a constant workout. However, at this moment it’s raring to go and at the conclusion of this tour, we’re going to take a rest in Hawaii, which we really deserve. From there it’ll be on to Japan and Australia.”

The success story of Queen is remarkable when one considers the time in which they’ve become one of the world’s most popular bands. In Japan, they were recently voted one of the top three bands in the world, and that’s without even doing one date in the Orient.

What does Freddie see as being the key to their phenomenal following? “I can’t pinpoint it, but there’s something about our music that’s different and unlike anybody else’s.

“I believe that’s our major strong point. But there’s other ingredients. Besides the fact that our timing has helped, there is the fact that we take risks. We’re not one of those groups that go through every stage, for we skipped a few hurdles and we’re willing to take the chances that brought us to our level of acceptance.

“This American tour is a perfect example. To undertake this kind of massive tour is not unheard of, but it is a risk. People were constantly telling us about the American economy and how the biggest groups are having trouble filling venues.

“And for us to come on as strong as we are, headlining after only half a previous tour, shows how confident we are, or what you can put across unless you were a headliner.             

“And now we’ve proved we can do it. Here we are, the first time in L.A. and we’ve sold out two shows, and it’s simply an amazing feeling.”

That feeling is bound to be even greater on subsequent tours for Queen who are only now breaking into the American record charts with their single recording of “Killer Queen” from Sheer Heart Attack.

The gentleness and buoyancy of the tune is in marked contrast to the high level of energy that characterizes their first two albums.

It is only on the third album that the diversity really became apparent. However, Mercury really doesn’t look at it as a great change: “The thing I hate is trying to pinpoint everything for everybody.

“People always ask questions like, ‘Why did you write such and such a lyric and what does it mean? That’s now what it’s all about. The one thing the British press has been trying to do for years is to pinpoint and categorize. It really annoys us.

“We came out with ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ as a single, which is raunchy, and then we decided on ‘Killer Queen’ for a later release. The first thing they do is go up to you and ask ‘What are you up to?’ This is our music and it’s up to the individual to interpret it. It’s not up to us to come out with a product and label it.

“It would be boring if everything was laid out and everybody knew what it was all about all the time. I like people to make up their interpretation.

“They also want to categorize my stage image. I remember back in an interview where I said, ‘I play on the bisexual thing.’ Of course I play on it. It’s simply a matter of wherever my mood takes me. If people want to know and ask me if I’m gay, I tell them it’s up to themselves to find out. I’m just being my flamboyant self and having a good time,” he smiled.      

Even though Mercury prefers not to try and analyze Queen’s music, he discussed their cumulative work in a logical manner: The first LP was very raw and full of freshness.

“It was simply a reflection of what we’d been doing for so long and we just wanted to get it out of our system. On the second album we found out that even though we had a formula we didn’t necessarily have to keep it.

“Therefore, we dabbled at other things. Sheer Heart Attack was something different again. We wanted to make it interesting for ourselves as well as the listener. Hopefully, we succeeded on both counts. When we’re on stage we try to do the same thing.

“We’re perfectionists. Although all of us write, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every song composed will appear on an album.

“Having all the members write adds to our versatility, and that’s another strong point. On the last album we wanted to create a certain feel, and did. However, there were so many ideas and things that we wanted to do and have yet to carry out.

“You simply can’t do everything on one album. Lots of groups eventually burn themselves out due to lack of new ideas. But at this point, there’s no way we’re going to burn out. In fact, presently we’re stronger than ever.

“We do rock ‘n’ roll, and our presentation is just a way of putting across the music. We view albums and concerts as two spheres of work. There’s a different level in the studio as compared to when you’re on stage. But when we’re before an audience we let loose,” Freddie underscored.

Mercury was at the end of the US tour. It was interesting to know how he felt the English music market differs from the American.

“Even though singles may have been more important at one time in Britain, I feel that the stress on the singles and the albums is becoming pretty even. If you play too much on singles you can quite easily become a singles group.

“At that point it’s almost impossible to revert back to albums. I feel we’re in a fortunate position for we’ve only released four singles, including our new one. Therefore, we’ve achieved a balance. I think the same thing is true in America, though we’ve had to rely on response to our albums to carry us through. It wasn’t really till ‘Killer Queen’ that we received mass exposure on a commercial level.

“Back home, you have to be very careful of what you say or do because you’re in a position of immense responsibility. In fact, it can sometimes get ridiculous.

“We have this black-and-white theme that we carry out in England and it’s very strong. It has even got to the point where the audiences dress and look like me to a tee. They’re very faithful and it’s beautiful. On this tour, in Dallas, there was even a fan dressed with black makeup on one side of his face and white on the other, and it was marvelous.”

As for his own musical tastes Mercury says: “I listen to all kinds of music from Hendrix to Liza Minelli, all the way back to Mae West. I also enjoy Flo & Eddie when I hear them on the radio. They’re simply a riot.

“I also enjoy Joni Mitchell tremendously, and am constantly awed by her vocal phrasing as well as the amazing things she writes. She’s simply beautiful.”

Besides devoting the last few years to Queen, band members took time to record a single, “I Can Hear Music” and “Goin’ Back” pressed up under the name Larry Lurex.

In the early '70s, Robin Geoffrey Cable was a house engineer at Trident Studios in London, owned by Queen's initial manager Norman Sheffield. At one point, Cable was at work on his own musical project, but he enlisted Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor to add some parts. A pseudonym was devised for Mercury. "Robin liked the idea of spoofing Gary Glitter and the Glam Rock movement, so he came up with 'Larry Lurex!'" May recalled following Cable's passing in 2020. "So, in a sense our first ever release on vinyl was under the name 'Larry Lurex.'"

I’d never associate members of Queen with Brill Building songwriters Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, Phil Spector, Gerry Goffin and Carole King or expect cover versions of The Ronettes and The Byrds. I had to ask Freddie, how did this collaboration come about?

“It was simply a by-product. We’d already completed our first album [at Trident Studios], and a producer friend [Robin Cable] told us about this record he wanted to put out just for fun.

“He said he wanted us to do it, but we told him he couldn’t use our name. Actually there were quite a number of studio musicians on it besides ourselves. It was in the days of Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust.

“We never took it quite seriously since it didn’t have anything to do with Queen. It was only when we achieved popularity and people started figuring out that it was us that anybody was interested. It was just something rock stars dabble in once in a while, and I was quite pleased with the outcome.”    

(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 21 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.

Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In2021 they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.  Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters.

His writings are in several book anthologies, most notably The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski.   Harvey wrote liner notes to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.

During 2006, he spoke at the special hearings initiated by The Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017, Kubernik appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, as part of their Distinguished Speakers Series).

Photo by Denis O’ReganThe post Sony Music Vision Presents Queen Budapest first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Most tokenized stock trading on Solana, BNB Chain occurs outside US market hoursTokenized equities have reached nearly $3.3 billion in value as investors embrace round-the-clock access beyond Wall Street hours.

Get a free soft alto saxophone for Splice INSTRUMENT
Download our free alto saxophone for Splice INSTRUMENT—grab these presets during the drop window and they’re yours to keep forever.

Modbap release Fidelity Theory Described as a “character effect", Modbap’s first plug-in takes the hands-on approach behind their Eurorack modules and applies it to software.

Don’t be fooled by the bland looks of Lewitt LW6 wireless studio headphones£519/$699, lewitt-audio.com
When I recently reviewed the OneOdio Studio Max 2 DJ headphones, I wondered whether they were solving a problem that didn’t really exist. Did DJs really need to be free from being cable-bound to the equipment they use?

READ MORE: OneOdio Studio Max 2 review: the same ultra-low latency as the big brands without the hefty price

That review quickly proved otherwise. DJing has changed; the way we work has changed. Producers, engineers, content creators and musicians increasingly move between multiple roles throughout the day, and the idea of owning a single pair of headphones that can comfortably handle all of them suddenly makes a lot of sense.
Lewitt’s new LW6 wireless studio headphones are built around that exact premise. Whether you’re setting up microphones, tracking instruments, tweaking hardware synths or moving between different parts of the studio, the freedom of wireless monitoring is massively appealing. The problem, historically, has been that wireless audio means compromises. Bluetooth introduces latency, data compression and, in many cases, a noticeable drop in fidelity. The LW6 aims to eliminate those compromises entirely.
At the heart of this solution is Lewitt’s RealSound wireless technology, which delivers uncompressed PCM audio at 1,728kbps, with latency quoted at under six milliseconds. In practical terms, that means you can comfortably track, mix and monitor at an uncompressed 24-bit, 48 kHz without feeling disconnected from the source. It’s a wireless system that genuinely feels capable of replacing a wired studio setup. Connect via a wired USB-C, and you’ll get the ability to work up to 96 kHz too.
Image: Press
Connectivity done right
The first thing that stands out is just how flexible the system is. The included wireless transmitter is powered via USB-C, but can receive audio either digitally over USB-C or through a traditional 3.5 mm analogue input. There’s also a 3.5 mm analogue output on the transmitter if you want to stack multiple units and more than one set on the same analogue headphone output. There is also Bluetooth 5.3 with standard lossy SBC and AAC codecs for casual listening and roles not requiring uncompressed audio and ultra-low latency.
When it comes to that flagship wireless mode, because the Lewitt RealSound tech operates in the Ultra-Wideband spectrum, it does require a direct line of sight to the transmitter and has roughly a five-metre range. That means you can connect the output of an audio interface, mixer, synth, sampler or any device with a headphone output and instantly transmit uncompressed wireless audio to the headphones. It’s a simple solution, but one that opens up plenty of possibilities in the studio and is great for a home studio setup where you might have to move around to twiddle with synths, drum machines or guitars etc. It’s worth noting that if you have thick walls to walk behind or other things that break the line of sight to the receiver, you may run into problems.
It’s obvious that Lewitt has spent time considering real-world workflows here and users wanting a set of headphones for music listening too. There are multiple ways to integrate the LW6 into a setup, and the system handles edge cases that many manufacturers simply overlook.
Image: Press
Lewitt LW6 sound quality
The sound is where Lewitt has focused its attention, the LW6 is tuned in collaboration with acoustics engineers on actual human test subjects. The LW6 delivers a flat, detailed and reassuringly high-end sound. You’re presented with a balanced, honest listening experience that feels entirely appropriate for studio work. They are on the brighter side, which I find perfect and familiar to my taste, but of course you can tweak them if needed in the app.
Stereo imaging is excellent, transient detail is clear, and mixes translate well. I don’t notice any discernible noise floor even at extremely high or low volumes. Perhaps most importantly, you forget that you’re listening wirelessly. That’s one of the biggest compliments you can pay these headphones, and I am constantly taking them off to get up from a chair out of habit.
Image: Press
Smart software
The hardware itself is, of course, only part of the story. The companion software and mobile app add a significant amount of flexibility, including access to a customisable five-band parametric EQ and a range of listening profiles. Switching to the Virtual Studio mode creates a noticeably more spacious presentation that can be particularly comfortable during longer sessions, using DSP to mimic listening in front of a set of speakers. It’s genuinely useful for checking how a mix responds to different listening environments without having to swap headphones or monitors.
On the headphones themselves, Lewitt has included a thoughtfully designed control scheme. The integrated volume control works brilliantly, while assignable buttons provide quick access to power, EQ presets and other functions without needing to dive back into the app. Also, on registering the product, you are able to claim a copy of the brand’s Space Replicator Essential software. Here, like the included Virtual Studio, you can switch between models of real spaces on your headphones as if you were there. Again, this is perfect for checking mixes, and weirdly, also quite fun!
Image: Press
Lewitt LW6 comfort and isolation
Design is perhaps the least exciting aspect of the LW6. They look perfectly respectable, but they don’t exactly scream premium luxury. Build quality feels solid, although the rubberised adjustable headband gives me some concern about long-term durability. That said, the lightweight construction pays dividends during extended sessions, and in daily use they’re extremely comfortable.
The ear pads deserve particular praise. They’re comfortable, and the isolation is excellent, with surprisingly little bleed reaching nearby microphones even at relatively high monitoring levels. That’s a huge advantage when recording vocals, acoustic instruments or other sensitive sources where backing-track and click bleed can be problematic. Because of their brilliant and unique design, it does mean that replacing ear pads with other styles might not be as simple as on more standard headphone shapes.
These headphones also go exceptionally loud when required, making them well suited to performers who need strong monitoring during tracking sessions or when working with dynamic sources. Reassuringly, Lewitt has included a configurable Loudness Guard feature within the app, allowing users to limit peaks above a chosen SPL threshold. It’s a thoughtful addition for anyone conscious of hearing health, and for that surprise feedback, buzzes or pops when recording, although it can be disabled entirely if preferred.
Image: Press
Battery life
One thing worth noting is that the LW6 cannot be used passively, even though you can use a 3.5 mm wired connection from the headphones if the headphones are powered up. If the battery is dead, then so are the headphones.
Battery life is rated at 21 hours though, and this feels more than adequate in practice, so a dead set of headphones is unlikely and isn’t something I experience in use. In any case, fast charging can deliver three hours of listening time on just a 15-minute top-up charge.
Should I buy Lewitt LW6 wireless headphones?
The LW6’s only foible is aesthetics. They look pretty bland, and the amazing sound and technology inside feel deserving of something a little more alluring. Imagine this amazing headphone tech wrapped in aluminium, wood or some other premium finish, and you’d have something truly special. Time will tell whether the ear pads end up like some other headphone brands, flaking and eroding over time. With the attention to detail in every other design choice, I find this unlikely.
Noise cancellation would have been a welcome addition for those leisurely listening sessions, provided there was a method of implementing it without compromising the excellent audio quality, as would a built-in mic for calls. Still, those are relatively minor criticisms. The reality is, I like these headphones a LOT and those extra features might justify adding another set of expensive headphones to my collection. What Lewitt has achieved here is genuinely impressive. The LW6 successfully combines studio-grade sound quality with the convenience of wireless operation, while avoiding the compromises that have traditionally made engineers wary of cutting the cord.
At over £500, these aren’t an impulse purchase. But for producers, engineers and musicians who spend countless hours wearing headphones, the LW6 offers something few rivals can match: a single pair of headphones capable of handling virtually every aspect of modern music production and casual listening. When you consider the competition, the price is extremely attractive.
The Lewitt LW6 proves that wireless studio headphones have finally grown up.

Key features

Closed-back, high-isolation design
Ultra-low latency RealSound wireless audio
USB-C and 3.5 mm connectivity on both transmitter and headphones
Companion desktop and mobile apps
5-band parametric EQ
Virtual Studio listening mode
Loudness Guard hearing protection
Up to 21 hours of battery life and fast charging
Assignable on-ear buttons
Includes Space Replicator Essential software

The post Don’t be fooled by the bland looks of Lewitt LW6 wireless studio headphones appeared first on MusicTech.

Penombra Celli & Viole from Sonora Cinematic The Founders Locker line-up has just gained two new libraries began life as source recordings for the Sonora Cinematic's popular Movimento Strings series.

Beat Magazine #250 includes Super VHS and Cubase LE 15 for €4.99
The November 2026 issue of Beat Magazine includes Baby Audio Super VHS and Steinberg Cubase LE 15 alongside its usual collection of sounds and production software. The English digital issue costs €4.99 from the publisher. This is issue #250, and its main focus is on microphones, room treatment, recording chains, and getting a vocal from [...]
View post: Beat Magazine #250 includes Super VHS and Cubase LE 15 for €4.99

My Forever Studio: Caesar Edmunds already has a Forever StudioIn this episode of the My Forever Studio podcast, brought to you in partnership with Audient, we welcome Grammy-winning mixer, engineer, and producer Caesar Edmunds.
Caesar’s production credits span from Ozzy Osbourne and Queens of the Stone Age to Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party. From a music teacher in Singapore telling him he had “no chance” of making it as a musician, to his breakthrough in the UK engineering scene, Caesar Edmunds shares his incredible journey: from spending two years in national service as a police officer, to studying at Liverpool’s LIPA, hustling for work experience with revered British producer Alan Moulder, and his eventual rise to his own Atmos studio at the legendary Battery Studios in London.
In this episode, we get into Caesar Edmunds’s “Forever Studio” picks, his enviable guitar pedal collection, the art of creating a homely studio vibe, and the ongoing fight to save iconic studio spaces from the threat of redevelopment. Expect banter, airhorns, and rule-bending.

The My Forever Studio podcast – created in partnership with Audient – sees artists, producers, and engineers create their dream fantasy Forever Studio, wherever they want in the universe. However, hosts Chris Barker and Will Betts impose some strict rules in the Forever Studio. Our guests are permitted a limited number of items in their creative space, so they must 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.
The post My Forever Studio: Caesar Edmunds already has a Forever Studio appeared first on MusicTech.

The 10 Kurt Cobain Songs That Never Got the Attention They DeservedBeyond Nirvana’s biggest hits, discover 10 underrated Kurt Cobain songs that showcase the band’s raw energy, hidden gems, and overlooked musical brilliance.

A Song That Changed My Life: Son Lux on Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place”The Band Members: Ryan Lott, keyboards, vocals; Rafiq Bhatia, guitars; Ian Chang, drums

The Storyteller: Ian Chang

The Song: An unnerving, compressed warmth emanates from the first keystrokes of the detuned Sequential Prophet-5 synth in Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place.” These thick, muted analog tones reverberate until vocal glitches give way to Thom Yorke’s disembodied fantômatique vocals, which ultimately bleed through, leaving the listener suspended within a jarring, dissociative state.

This deceptive cadence of unresolved hypnotic sonics sends shivers up the spine; like static, these tones are left fritzing and ungrounded, unable to connect to the mind — a subtle signal, a psychic warning that things are very much out of line. It is a chilling soundscape, an environment where emotions are gridlocked and detached worldly observations serve as a brilliant way of introducing the chthonic internal atmosphere heard throughout Kid A. 

A sharp departure from their earlier alt-rock anthems — including the iconic, violent guitar chuck that ignites the guttural operatic cries in “Creep” or the orchestral melancholy of “Karma Police” — this solemn stylistic deviation heralded the arrival of a starker, more introspective electro-ambient chapter for the revered art-rock titans. The band’s experimental production process of constructing sound worlds through structural deconstruction creates a dazzling audio labyrinth where a suspended sonic space is as unsettling and haunting as it is gorgeous and sublime.

The Background: Viewing songwriting as a massive auditory puzzle, composer-producer Ryan Lott launched Son Lux as a solo experimental electronic-meets-classical endeavor — a musical canvas where scattered pieces of sounds found everywhere are captured, meticulously assembled through synthesizers and software, and eventually reworked and painted into live compositions of pretty anxious post-rock.

This solo sonic dissectologist journey eventually reached outward — reverberating and resonating with the chameleonic guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and super fluid sensory drummer Ian Chang. Brought together on the road, the two musicians permanently integrated into the project, expanding Son Lux into an unconventional trio dedicated to seizing and recording fractured auditory bits and found sound of all musical sorts. By augmenting these intricate layers on stage, they transformed their studio creations into an immersive, living performance.

This boundary-pushing chemistry culminated in mammoth amounts of material, spawning sprawling multi-album conceptual arcs and hours of dense aural world-building. Throughout these expansions, Son Lux’s work maintained a distinctly eerie, uncanny quality that touched the synapses of neuroscience—experimenting with how sound loops and acoustic shifts register in the brain before cognition even kicks in. By 2022, their uniquely chaotic yet cohesive arrangements garnered the attention of directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (The Daniels), tasking the band with the otherworldly, Oscar-nominated score and song for Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Following a few more years of expanding their sonic palette—a stretch that included scoring additional films both individually and collectively, alongside various other side releases—the band capped off this prolific stretch with the intricately crafted songs of their recent 2026 release, Out Into. For drummer Ian Chang, this new assemblage of boundary-eliminating tracks marks yet another evolution in a career dedicated to cataloging sounds. It is an artistic pathway that can be mapped back to a specific, formative encounter: a quiet retreat within a music store filled with aisles stacked with jewel cases and vinyl.

The Story: Prior to creating music by analyzing the variant frequencies of sound, or having constructed entire cinematic multiverses, Ian Chang’s relationship with music began as a means of escapism. During the twilight era of massive music storefronts, Chang embraced the lovely moments of solitude, wandering through endless aisles of records and CDs, waiting for an arresting visual to disrupt his drift. For him, it was a striking album cover featuring a landscape of stark white icebergs outlined in blood-blackened red that ultimately pulled Chang toward a headphone listening rack. He recalls how that visual became his gateway to other universes:

“It was a very different time in music consumption! I was 12 or 13 the first time I heard "Everything in Its Right Place" by Radiohead. I was living in Hong Kong at the time, and one of my favorite things to do was to go to HMV to learn about music by spending time at the listening stations. I loved checking out the artwork, reading about the artist, and diving into the sound world.”

This immersive ritual highlights a cornerstone of musicology—the multimodal perception of the visual-to-auditory experience. It is the way an arresting optic can act as a psychological trigger to intensify a connection with heard melodies and harmonies, binding the event into an interconnected sensory awakening, a memory:

“I remember the artwork for Kid A caught my eye, prompting me to give the album a spin. This was my first introduction to Radiohead, which in retrospect was a bit of a strange introduction to them, but it was a formative experience for sure. I remember listening to this opening track multiple times before moving on to the rest of the album.”

Stepping into that unfamiliar audio universe without predictable melodies was a crash course in hearing a sort of strangeness in music, a realization of how songs can tap into adjacent, parallel, and at times scary realities. This emotional upheaval was so tantalizing it encouraged Chang to play the opening track on a continuous loop, as he recalls:

“I felt completely bewildered at first! At that point in my life, I was pretty musically omnivorous, but I hadn’t heard anything like this at all; it was borderline uncomfortable. I admit that there were a number of songs on the album that I couldn’t get into at the time, but "Everything in Its Right Place" really hit me right away.  It’s maybe the first song I heard where I experienced the feeling of something haunted and otherworldly.”

As Chang leaned further into that unsettling atmosphere, the macro-shock of what exists out there in the world through a song gave way to an acute curiosity; he began trying to isolate the exact sonic elements that made him realize these strange audio worlds could be real.

“The first thing that really grabbed my attention was all the mangled babbling vocal textures at the beginning.  It was maybe my first introduction to how production can create a surreal listening experience,” Chang recalls.  “The combination of all the elements really impacted me emotionally. The lyrics, harmony, soundworld, and Thom’s voice hit me just at the point in my life when the veil on the ills of society was being lifted. In a way, it soundtracked my transition out of innocence. It provided a lot of new and uncomfortable thoughts and emotions… a sonic space for them to steep in.” 

This insightful awakening stayed with him as an enduring memory — one that weirdly put focus on how much of the world, both musically and existentially, remained unresolved. A few years later, that lasting impression led Chang into a sharp micro-analysis of its production — a creative fascination with engineering alien sounds that would ultimately define his future identity in Son Lux. He explains:

“It wasn’t until I was 15 or so that I went back and figured out what was going on under the hood of this song. I learned about the KAOSS pad that they used to create the vocal effect at the beginning, and the interesting, changing meter of the song, as well as the haunting chord movements.”

By demystifying the technical machinery, Chang expanded his unique way of composing — an exhaustive foray into analyzing these atmospheric landscapes that completely reshaped his artistic worldview.

“There is an incredible minimalism to the arrangement of this song that was very inspiring to me. Up until encountering this song and album, I mostly thought of music in terms of melody, harmony, and lyrics,” says Chang.  But as he adds, “this really blew my mind and got me to think more deeply about the power of arrangement and production, and how it can be as impactful to the feeling of a recording as any of the other elements I mentioned before.”

Moreover, this revelation connected directly back to that initial spark — the sudden awareness that there was something so much more going on in what he was hearing, and parallel to that, the world outside.

“As a band, Son Lux often comes at songwriting first through sculpting sound and production, rather than harmony, melody and lyrics, so this lightbulb moment marked a shift in my perspective on music that influences how I make music to this day.”

For Chang, that shift became an ongoing artistic pursuit to capture the same elusive, emotional visual-meets-auditory memory that struck him so profoundly in Hong Kong decades ago.  And now, laying out that master puzzle piece is part of his auditory ethos:

“I would say that a lot of Son Lux’s music is indebted to this song and to Radiohead in general. The feeling of haunting beauty that this song gives is something that we are often chasing.”

Photo Credit. Anna Powell Denton

The post A Song That Changed My Life: Son Lux on Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Skynr Labs StemquillStemquill is a free, open-source standalone application that converts audio stems into MIDI files. It writes one MIDI file per stem, ready to drag onto a track in any DAW, so drum, bass, keys and vocal parts can be replayed with different instruments, edited or rearranged. Drums Drum stems are split into kick, snare, closed hi-hat, open hi-hat, high, mid and low toms, crash and ride, each written to its own note. Drum maps are included for General MIDI kits (MT Power Drumkit, EZdrummer, Addictive Drums, Superior Drummer) and for pad samplers (FL Studio FPC, Ableton Drum Rack, MPC-style pads), and custom note numbers can be entered. Melodic stems Bass and vocal stems are transcribed as single-note lines. Guitar, keys and synth stems are transcribed as chords. An optional chord-detection add-on based on Spotify's basic-pitch, selectable in the installer, improves polyphonic accuracy. Features Tempo detection from any stem. Optional snap to grid: 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 or triplets, or the original timing. Preview of each stem with built-in sounds before saving, with the original audio mixed in to check timing. Humanize control for timing and velocity variation. Per-stem sensitivity, humanize and drum selection, with an Apply to all option. Drag and drop of files or whole folders. Status for each stem showing when its MIDI is saved and when its settings have changed since. History of each conversion, with the drum hits or note range found. Command-line interface for scripting and batch use. Runs fully offline; audio is never uploaded. Input formats WAV, MP3, FLAC, AIFF, OGG and M4A. System requirements Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), using the installer. macOS and Linux: Python 3.10 or newer, installed with pipx. Pricing Free, with an optional pay-what-you-want donation. Released under the MIT license; source code is available on GitHub. Read More