Piruz Labs The ElyssicaThe Elyssica is a celestial serenity synth with a built-in relaxation player. Press play and it performs gentle, evolving ambient pieces on its own, warm chords drifting through celestial pads, so you can fill a room with calm without touching a key. Or play it yourself: six blendable layers (celestial pad, angel strings, heavenly bells, air, sparkle and dream), eight macros, and 30 designed (not sampled) presets ranging from bone dry and intimate to cathedral vast. There is no sample library and nothing extra to download. Everything is pure synthesis, about 3% CPU on an Apple M1, 64-bit float internally. Runs standalone with no DAW at all, or as VST3/AU inside your DAW. Lite is free forever. Pro is a one-time purchase at $29 launch (normally $49) with a 7-day full Pro trial, no subscription and no iLok. Read More

Embattled hedge fund Situational Awareness invests $400M in chip startup Source FoundryThe AI-focused hedge fund is still making some big bets.

The Stages of Grief in Repairing a Trinitron Found in the TrashSometimes you see a project just staring at you with proverbial puppy dog eyes and you just cannot look away. In the case of a once rather nice Sony TV it was the smooth 32″ Trinitron CRT that gave [Happychoice] that look when he came across it along the side of the road. Naturally he had to beg the owner of the junkyard to please let him adopt the pupp^Wjunked TV and attempted an ill-advised repair.
Some later sleuthing revealed that this poor TV had been sitting on the side of that road for at least six years, exposed to the worst that the Italian weather and local fauna could do to it, so it was no surprise that all he got out of it even after cleaning and some repairs was a sad triple-blink of the power LED. This indicated that something on the control board was very unhappy about the status of the power supply.
Over the course of a few months this project went correspondingly from careful optimism down to the depths of depression, through the fields of bargaining and into the blue skies of acceptance of a likely far more involved repair session than originally assumed. That said, the CRT itself looks to be in pretty good nick, as do the PCBs barring the few sketchy resistors that already got replaced.
We would like to congratulate [Happychoice] on the acquisition of a fun new repair project and wish him all the luck on bringing this beast of a TV back to life.

Reflector is a FREE open-source sample discovery workstation for macOS
Composer and software engineer Austin Rockman has released Reflector, a free open-source interactive audio workstation for sample discovery. Austin contacted me about the project, and I liked the idea even before testing it. Machine learning gets thrown into a lot of music tools now, but I find it interesting when it helps us interact with [...]
View post: Reflector is a FREE open-source sample discovery workstation for macOS

Dreamtonics tease upcoming release Vocal synthesis experts Dreamtonics have just released a mysterious video that hints to what's in store for their next product release. 

BIP-110 Bitcoin branch stalls after two blocks as gap widensThe enforcing fork remains stuck at Bitcoin’s full mining difficulty as mandatory signaling proceeds with little hashpower support.

reFX introduce Rippler Offering a combination of physical modelling and subtractive synthesis, Rippler is capable of emulating acoustic instruments both real and imagined, and comes packed with an array of modulation capabilities and built-in effects. 

Planned Amazon data center could become the biggest climate polluter in the U.S.As part of a planned Texas data center, Amazon is investing in an on-site power plant that could reportedly become the largest source of climate pollution in the United States.

Bitcoin’s BIP-110 enters mandatory signaling with miner support below 3%The deployment milestone tests whether enforcing nodes can sustain the change amid limited miner signaling and discussion of a hard-fork fallback.

Grading Tomatoes with an ESP32 and MLIf you’ve ever worked with produce, you might know about grading. In addition to deciding if, say, a strawberry is good or not, they also have to sort them by color. Turns out, you don’t care if one package of berries is a bit redder than another, but you do care if one package has too much color variation. [Pmalfa31] applied an ESP32 and machine learning to grading tomatoes.
The system knows in advance if you are processing standard tomatoes or cherry tomatoes and uses two different sets of learned data depending on which you select. The program receives raw data from an optical sensor and then processes it to remove empty belt images, compute statistical information, and group readings for a single fruit together.

One thing we liked was the program’s heuristic checking of validity. It knows the approximate size of the tomato, so the code notes if the fruit seems too big for a cherry tomato or too small for a standard tomato. This reduces, but doesn’t eliminate, miscategorizations.
The code is a stack hog, so the program has to request a much larger stack. If you want to try it yourself, there is a simulator on the web available, so you don’t even need any hardware or tomatoes to try it.
Computers have lots of uses on a modern farm.

Delos DSP Vocal LabsNote : VOCAL LABS remains under active development. The current build is a free public demo rather than a final commercial release, with engine optimization, balancing and workflow refinements plus new modules and interface pages planned across upcoming versions. If you like this version, reach out to us through our website for full access — we'll send you a serial key for free. https://delosdsp.com/contact As an independent development studio, we regularly need support across a wide range of disciplines. Whatever your field, you're welcome to contact us if you're interested in joining our testing community or collaborating on project-based work. https://delosdsp.com/jobs Overview VOCAL LABS is a modular vocal channel strip built around two independent five-module racks and a shared output stage, rather than one fixed signal chain. Gate, EQ, De-Ess, Comp, Warmth, Bitcrusher, Reverb and Delay are available as separate modules — drag only the ones a given vocal needs into either rack, in whatever order the chain calls for, instead of managing eight separate plugin instances. Gate is a stereo-linked downward expander with its own sidechain key filters. EQ covers five bands — HP, Low Shelf, two sweepable Bells and High Shelf — sized for channel-strip work rather than corrective surgery. De-Ess drives its detector from a band-passed copy of the input, so reduction stays confined to the sibilant range instead of ducking the whole signal. Comp is a single feed-forward VCA circuit with a split waveform display. Warmth applies symmetric tanh saturation blended by amount, and Bitcrusher — the one module built to make a vocal sound worse on purpose — combines bit-depth crush, sample-and-hold downsampling and a narrowing band-pass for lo-fi character presets. Reverb runs true stereo convolution from 19 curated impulse responses across Plate, Chamber, Room, Hall, Ambience and Space categories, rather than an algorithmic model. Delay runs tempo-synced or free-running, with tap tempo, ping-pong cross-feed and a damped feedback path that darkens with every repeat. A final Main Output stage — vintage VU meter and trim gain — sits after both racks, ahead of the host's own fader. Twenty genre-built factory presets configure a complete chain, not just one module, and the whole rack — every module, every setting — saves and recalls as a single user preset. VOCAL LABS also runs as a standalone application, independent of a DAW, for processing a vocal chain live through an audio interface rather than only inside a session. Key features: Two independent five-module racks plus a final Main Output stage. Eight modules: Gate, EQ, De-Ess, Comp, Warmth, Bitcrusher, Reverb and Delay. True stereo convolution reverb — 19 curated spaces across six categories. Tempo-synced delay with tap tempo and ping-pong cross-feed. 20 genre-built factory presets, plus whole-chain user preset save/recall. Standalone application for DAW-free, live vocal processing. Vintage VU metering and final trim gain at the output stage. Formats Stereo signal path throughout · Host-negotiated stereo bus configuration · AU · VST3 · Standalone · Unity · macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Windows. More Info & User Manual https://delosdsp.com/manuals/delos-vocal-labs-manual.pdf Read More

OA-Labs releases Phosphor-1, a FREE unstable analog-style synth for macOS
OA-Labs has released OA-Phosphor-1, a free virtual analog synthesizer plugin for macOS. The developer describes it as a synth for “controllable instability,” and I think it’s a good fit. Phosphor-1 can deliver the typical subtractive type of stuff too, but the fun, for me at least, starts when you make it drift, sag, wobble, and [...]
View post: OA-Labs releases Phosphor-1, a FREE unstable analog-style synth for macOS

SynthEdit 1.6 adds native macOS support after decades on Windows
Jeff McClintock has released SynthEdit 1.6, a major update to the modular plugin development environment. The big headline here is that SynthEdit now finally runs natively on macOS. After decades as a Windows-first tool, it can now export 64-bit VST3 plugins for Windows and macOS, plus Audio Unit plugins for macOS. When I started making [...]
View post: SynthEdit 1.6 adds native macOS support after decades on Windows

Roland celebrate 808 Day For this year's 808 Day, Roland are partnering with global radio platform NTS, bringing back their award-winning The Rhythm Creators series and continuing a worldwide celebration of the 808’s enduring legacy and cultural impact.

IK Multimedia launch Tonex 2.0 beta Available now to all current users, the Tonex 2.0 beta introduces deeper ToneNET integration, an expanded library of up to 220 new Premium V2 Tone Models and a completely redesigned interface that makes it easier than ever to find, edit and organise sounds.