Polarity releases Polarity-RES, a FREE resonator effect
Polarity is a name that many readers will be very familiar with. The developer has now released Polarity-RES (v0.1.0), a free resonator effect for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It wasn’t too long ago that we covered Polarity-MD, a free multiband dynamics processor (something like a four-band OTT). But many of you will know Polarity best [...]
View post: Polarity releases Polarity-RES, a FREE resonator effect

The 3 free plugin bundles I tell every beginner to install
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the only five free plugins a beginner actually needs, and the argument was simple. Stock plugins in modern DAWs are good enough for almost everything, so don’t drown yourself in 50 free downloads on day one. This is the follow-up to that piece. At some point, you do [...]
View post: The 3 free plugin bundles I tell every beginner to install

BLEASS’s new Spectral Resonator plugin turns audio into playable banks of up to 256 harmonicsBLEASS has launched a new plugin, the Spectral Resonator, which lets users transform vocals, synths, drums, guitars, and more into spectral layers with up to 256 playable harmonics.
The plugin works by converting your signal into the spectral domain, where it then applies creative effects. The spectrum can be shifted, blurred, and de-structured, with decaying tails and harmonic filtering. When blended with the source signal, this adds a controllable layer of pitch and timbre to your sound.

READ MORE: Teenage Engineering’s EP-136 K.O. Sidekick is a mixer, effects unit and sequencer all in one – and the “power companion” to your K.O. II

BLEASS says that the sound produced by Spectral Resonator is not dissimilar to a vocoder, but “extends beyond the confines of that classic effect into the realms of harmonic delays and tuned reverberations”.
Its internal generator can produce up-to four tunable voices, and can be used as the basis of the resonators’ frequencies. Alternatively, these pitches can be derived from incoming MIDI notes, so you can essentially play Spectral Resonator like a synth, with up to eight voice polyphony, glide and pitch-bend.
As with other BLEASS tools, the plugin champions an interface that is simple to use and allows for deep control. Users can experiment with principal resonator settings via rotary controls, while a rainbow spectrum analysis display doubles-up as a means of controlling the integrated filter.
The plugin also features a Freeze button, which holds the resonators in their current state, and a Kill button, that immediately stops any hanging resonances.

Looking for more plugins? Check out our weekly guide to the best free and paid-for plugins, featuring new launches from Native Instruments, Safari Audio, and more.
Head over to BLEASS to find out more, or purchase Spectral Resonator for a reduced price of $59.
The post BLEASS’s new Spectral Resonator plugin turns audio into playable banks of up to 256 harmonics appeared first on MusicTech.

“I don’t see how greatness can come from a tool like generative AI”: Adam Neely on AI replacing the craft of music and de-skillingAdam Neely, a jazz musician and music content creator, has discussed in-depth how AI within music can lead to de-skilling, and why its replacement of the craft of music could lead to an uninspiring musical landscape.
On the Within Reason podcast, hosted by Alex O’Connor, Neely dives into how the elimination of idea generation is removing the most inspiring element of music. The episode arrives three months after Neely made a video on his own channel titled Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future, which has reached over 900,000 views.

READ MORE: Generative AI’s threat to music sample libraries is existential — Splice thinks it has a solution

In his chat with O’Connor, Neely begins by sharing his fears for the future: “Disruption to the industry is very much at the forefront of my fears, but disruption to the industry has happened many times before in the music industry, like the invention of recorded music itself, the invention of the synthesiser,” he says.
“The art form itself is something that I am a bit fearful of. People talk all the time about de-skilling, which is the process by which we lose our skills because we’re automating them, like the case of the early 20th century [and] the assembly line; you had all these skilled manufacturers of cars but through the invention of the assembly line. They didn’t need to have those skills anymore… I’m worried that that’s going to happen.”
Neely eventually goes on to talk about the importance of “taste” in AI circles, and how this is seen to be the human element that remains when AI takes on the role of crafting, and is almost seen as a reasoning for using AI tools. To Neely, this is not necessarily a good thing.
“To me, that is a horrifying future. This is the bad future that I talk about in the Suno and AI video because there is very little inspiration to be had in another person’s taste, whereas there’s a lot of inspiration and a lot of direction that you can gain from another person’s craft,” he explains.

“The role models that I had when I grew up had amazing, beautiful musical crafts. And that was what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to develop the crafts like they had. I didn’t really care what their taste in music was. I cared what they could do. I wanted to see what they could do. I wanted greatness. I wanted greatness for myself because they were great. And I don’t see how greatness can come from a tool like generative AI. It might, but I don’t see the path.”
He later adds: “In some of my more controversial statements, I’ve said that AI music is not music, which I think is not necessarily true. Sure, you could define it as music, [but] musicality to me is defined by interactions with other people and your ability to communicate an emotional state from yourself to another person, which is a fundamentally human thing.”
You can check out the full podcast episode below:

The post “I don’t see how greatness can come from a tool like generative AI”: Adam Neely on AI replacing the craft of music and de-skilling appeared first on MusicTech.

Purafied Audio Everything Bundle is FREE for a limited time
Purafied Audio is once again offering its Everything Bundle for free with the coupon code MYSHITWASFUCKED at checkout. The Everything Bundle includes every plugin Purafied Audio has released so far: LED Compressor, VU Compressor, Micro Limiter, SLP 538 EQ, The Panda Rooms, DEATHWESTERN Amp, and Liquid Death Snare. The regular price is $238 (down from [...]
View post: Purafied Audio Everything Bundle is FREE for a limited time

Notion just turned its workspace into a hub for AI agentsNotion’s new developer platform lets teams connect AI agents, external data sources, and custom code directly into their workspace as the company pushes deeper into agentic productivity software.

Dynamix Audio Sampling MasterSampling Master is an autosampling and sample library creation tool for recording and building multisampled instruments from hardware and software sources. It supports automatic key mapping using pitch detection, metadata, or file names, and provides tools for looping, normalization, leveling, and sample organization. The software is designed to streamline the process of capturing audio, mapping samples across the keyboard range, and exporting structured sample libraries for use in samplers and production workflows. Read More

The Return of Cabaret Voltaire at the Bellwether, L.A.There was something in the water in the county of Yorkshire, England in the early-to-mid '70s. In 1975, proto-industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle formed in Hull. But two years prior, 68 miles south in Sheffield, Cabaret Voltaire was born.

So the story goes that founding member Chris Watson, inspired by Brian Eno, was experimenting with making "music without musical instruments." He was a telephone engineer, and that work informed his creativity too. Watson soon joined forces with Richard H. Kirk, and the pair were joined by Stephen Mallinder.

The rest is history. The Mix-Up album dropped in '79; the last Cabaret Voltaire album, BN9Drone, was released in April 2021, though by that point Kirk was the sole remaining member out of the original three. Five months later, in September 2021, Kirk passed away.

So here we are in 2026. Cabaret Voltaire is Mallinder and Watson, through the latter struggles to travel so the touring lineup is Mallinder and friends. One of those friends is Tara Busch, aka opening act I Speak Machine, who performs Watson's parts with aplomb.

There were no songs performed from the first three albums at Cabaret Voltaire's Bellwether show (their return to Los Angeles after years away)--the set was weighted heavily towards 1983's The Crackdown and 1984's Micro-Phonies. CV kicked off with "24/24," "Animation," and 'Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself)" from the former, before diving further into the past with "The Set-Up" from 1978's Extended Play EP, and "Landslide" from 1981's Red Mecca.

"Crackdown" and then "Yashar" (the latter from 2X45) were set highlights, "Sex Money Freaks" betrays their early Berlin nightclub inspirations, and set closer "Do Right" was a crowd pleaser. Encores "Nag Nag Nag" and "Sensoria" proved to be the perfect way to end the night.

The Bellwether was packed for this one. CV seemed to bring out all of Los Angeles' beautiful freaks, from the goths to the cyberpunks and everyone in-between. They all will have left happy.

The post The Return of Cabaret Voltaire at the Bellwether, L.A. first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Custom Mainboard for PS2 PortableAs time marches on, the retro gaming community gets more and more access to older systems. This is partially a product of modern computing having much more power to emulate more demanding systems, but also because many in the community have spent more time with their favorite systems. Such is the case for [tschicki] who has spent considerable time and effort reverse engineering the Playstation 2 to come up with this custom mainboard for a handheld version that still uses some of the original chips from the console.
This Playstation 2 handheld console is designed almost completely from the ground up, not just including the impressive main board but also its modernized features, including USB power delivery handled by an RP2040, digital video output, support for modern storage media like SD cards, a customized boot ROM, and upgraded audio. The DualShock 2 controller is also implemented within the handheld, and the case itself is designed to be 3D printed. It’s an impressive effort which preserves the original feel of the console without relying too much on ancient hardware for everything.
Before jumping in to building one yourself, though, [tschicki] cautions that this project is not for the faint of heart, as it requires some specilized tools and a high degree of skill, but for those still wishing to attempt this build all of the instructions are available on the project site. For such a popular console it’s no surprise we’ve seen plenty of other handheld PS2s before, from this one which uses an original PS2 mainboard to this one we featured way back in 2010.
Thanks to [raz] for the tip!

Whale shorts $70M in crypto and tech: Should Bitcoin traders worry?Despite short-term bearish bets from a successful Hyperliquid whale, a growing US Fed balance sheet and rising inflation support Bitcoin in the long term.

Sony Music Publishing wins Pop Publisher of the Year at 2026 BMI Awards… as Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Luther’ takes Song of the YearSMP landed the title for representing 24 of the previous year's most-performed songs.
Source

Hyperfocus DSP releases Niner, a FREE open-source 909-style kick drum synth
Hyperfocus DSP has released Niner, a free open-source kick drum synth with a parallel 909-style clap voice for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It’s been a while since I last covered a free drum synth specifically focused on kicks. I recently wrote about Sender Spike’s DR.89, which goes for the full 909 kit experience. Niner is [...]
View post: Hyperfocus DSP releases Niner, a FREE open-source 909-style kick drum synth

Nugen Audio update DialogCheck Set to debut at the 2026 Media Production & Technology Show, DialogCheck 1.1 adds a selection of new features and functions that make it quicker and easier to use, as well as extending its immersive audio support. 

Pür Recording & Residence Pür Recording & Residence have announced their official opening, introducing a new world-class residential recording complex on Cunda Island along Türkiye’s North Aegean coast.

Generative AI’s threat to music sample libraries is existential — Splice thinks it has a solutionRecently, a music tech company asked Ms Mavy, a notable Afrohouse DJ/producer, if she would appear in an ad for their new AI product. There was a problem, though: the product was an Amapiano music plugin that would directly compete with Mavy’s own sample library business, Afroplug.
“It was crazy,” says Mavy. “It was like I was a child – you want my face, and you’re taking my business.”

READ MORE: Study shows “78% of musicians are now using AI” – but is everything really as it seems?

Mavy is calling from Belgium, where she lives; she has just dropped one of her sons off at school and is sitting in her car in a parking lot with her other son, who’s snacking in the back seat. Born in France and with roots in Cameroon and Guadeloupe, Mavy (born Maëva Nkouwap) built Afroplug after seeing that sample marketplaces weren’t keeping up with the exploding interest in genres like Afrobeats, Amapiano and Afrohouse. She now has a six-figure business selling samples on her own site, as well as on other sample marketplaces such as Splice.
As a businessperson, Mavy sees opportunities in building AI tools — Afroplug has released an AI music agreements generator, and has plans for other AI products. But it’s also an existential threat. Mavy’s entire business is based on her deep knowledge and contacts with music makers from across Africa and the Caribbean.
For now, that knowledge is her business’ “moat” against AI tools. “I know I have a treasure with my niche,” she says. The attempts she’s heard from AI full-song generators to create Amapiano and other music from the African diaspora “don’t sound authentic,” she says. “It’s harder for AI to replicate” the dozens and dozens of genres and subgenres (she estimates around 100).
But when they do get better at it, it could be all over for Afroplug. It’s for that reason that Mavy doesn’t listen to tools like Suno; she says she needs to protect her mental health, and doesn’t want to spend too much time obsessing over them. “I cannot lie, I’m very shocked [with them]…. It’s easy to fall into a toxic mindset.”
Ms Mavy. Image: Adèle Boterf
Trust issues
“We have a trust and a tooling problem,” says BT, the electronic artist and film composer, about full-song AI tools. He’s no AI sceptic; he’s been experimenting with music and technology for decades and runs an AI music start-up called Sound Labs. But he sees a lot of “righteous anger” from fellow artists and producers about the copyright and attribution questions with full-song AI tools. In this case, he says, the classic Silicon Valley saying “‘move fast and break things’ has become ‘move fast and break musicians’.”
Generative tools now do something that many producers usually want to do themselves – build an entire song — with ingredients they might not have chosen. Writing a prompt to generate a song is “a really unnatural interface for a musician,” says BT. “We’re not conditioned on language.”
And while some full-song tools now offer advanced features such as stem separation, they still don’t provide the granular control that experienced producers demand. A single sound can “show me what’s missing” when BT’s making a song, he says. “Some little Rhodes piano loop — I hear it and I go, ‘Oh, shit, I know what that’s supposed to be carved into.’” If those ingredients are off, Mavy can tell right away: the song doesn’t “sound like my husband,” she says; “the guy making reggae music on my island.”
BT. Image: Lacy Transeau
With AI song generators, “the output is more important than the input,” says Ale Koretzky, Splice’s head of AI. Despite their limitations, AI song generators pose a deep challenge to companies like Splice, which are built on a catalogue of fixed sounds.
“Static catalogues are now under existential threat,” says Koretzky. “When you can create what you want on the fly, and it’s unique to you, that is a very compelling value proposition.”
Variations, which Splice launched in April after two years of internal development, is the company’s wager on a way through. Rather than building a full-song generator, Koretzky and team built a tool that can take any sample in Splice’s catalogue and generate new versions of it. Most important, it preserves what Koretzky calls the sound’s “DNA” — its timbre and close-to-undefinable character — while giving producers the ability to change the melody and structure. A producer who loves a flute sample’s tone but needs a different melody can now generate alternatives that match its tone, with each licensed variation triggering a payout to the original creator.
Trying to compete with full-song generators directly, Koretzy says, is “a lost battle starting from the data.” Splice isn’t scraping terabytes of data from YouTube and other sources for its model. The bet is that producers will value something different. BT says he does: “If I can play one guitar part and repurpose that guitar part as a marimba part — these are tools that would be so useful for me personally.”
“What we are proposing,” says Koretzky, “is that input is just as important as output.”
Ale Koretzky. Image: Press
Liquid sampling
A musician and electrical engineer from Argentina, Koretzky was part of the University of Southern California team that pioneered techniques for stem separation, the technology that lets you pull individual instruments out of a finished mix; he’s been at Splice for eight years.
A couple of years ago, Koretzky proposed what he describes as a moonshot: make the Splice catalogue “liquid.” Instead of a fixed library you browse, he wanted to build a system where any sound could be reshaped, extended and made your own.
The core technical challenge was one that researchers have wrestled with for decades: how do you capture the essence of a sound? The qualities that make one flute recording distinguishable from another — the room it was played in, the timbre, the player’s breath and articulation, the microphone and signal chain — have resisted measurement for decades. “This is literally an impossible problem in the field of psychoacoustics and signal processing,” Koretzky says. “I’m crazy enough to think that we can solve these problems, and we sort of did.”
The breakthrough came when his team trained a model to learn a sound’s identity (its DNA) by telling the model to analyse everything except measurable aspects, such as the melody and structure. The result is a system that can extract the indefinable parts of a recording — the attack of a musician’s playing, room acoustics — and then inject that fingerprint into a generative model to create new variations.
Koretzky describes it as “the world’s first universal synthesizer, able to reproduce any sound in the universe.” A cello variation can capture the air of the bow, along with reverberation and compression, which are elements that would take a sound designer hours to approximate manually, if they could approximate them at all. The same model can blend two samples into a new hybrid; Koretzky calls this “semantic sound design.” A producer can specify a ratio (30% of one sound, 70% of another), and the model synthesizes something new that carries the DNA of both. Crucially, both original creators are credited and paid.
Andy Thompson. Image: Press
The philosophical risk
Many Splice staffers are musicians, so internal debates around AI and music during the development of Variations reflected the outside world. Andy Thompson, Splice’s product lead for the project, describes spending hours one weekend playing with a full song generator and an AI vocal persona he’d built, generating roughly 40 versions of a track with “Maggie Rogers energy.” When he finally tried to pick up his bass to play, for the first time in two months, he couldn’t. “I just was stuck in that moment,” he says.
“After hearing the final output so many times, I didn’t know how to put myself back into it.” That experience, he says, crystallised what Splice was up against. Thompson calls it a “philosophical risk” alongside the obvious competitive one: that “the value of making music would be eroded, and the struggle that people go through to become really good at their craft would be diminished.”
The same anxiety surfaced inside Splice’s own testing process. Thompson runs an internal program called Soundcheck, in which over 80 producers, vocalists and artists give unfiltered feedback during the development process. On consecutive days during one round of testing, two creators — one from Splice’s content team, one of them an external producer — heard outputs from an early version of the model and gave Thompson nearly identical reactions: “This is really cool,” followed by, in his paraphrase, “What’s my role? What happens to me in the future?”
Mavy, who played with Variations before the public launch, had a different reaction. “I love that you can play with it but it doesn’t distort the original samples or loops,” she says. She also sees a practical advantage for creators who’ve heard the complaint that too many producers use the same Splice packs — something that Julian Bunetta, producer for Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, heard when other Splice customers noticed he was using samples from Power Tools: Sample Pack III, made by veteran producer Vaughn Oliver. “Now you don’t have that excuse anymore,” says Mavy. “You can take the loops and make another variation.”
Mavy is optimistic about where AI music tools eventually land. “I think the real artists and real creators will have more value,” she says. “People want authenticity.”
BT, for his part, ends with the same diagnosis he started with. The industry, he says, is in “an awkward moment” that it will eventually move through — but only by working across two conversations at once. “You really can’t have one without the other,” he says. “The trust problem is still there. The tooling problem is still there. This is one of the most exciting times to be alive as a musician. We just need to fix the ethics piece of it.”
The post Generative AI’s threat to music sample libraries is existential — Splice thinks it has a solution appeared first on MusicTech.