091Audio releases 091HPDoctor, a FREE precision high-pass filter plugin
091Audio has released 091HPDoctor, a free precision high-pass filter plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux. 091Audio is a small plugin project by Andy Leuckert, a software developer from Chemnitz, Germany, whose day job involves post-processing of measurement data. HPDoctor is his first release, and it’s a high-pass filter unlike any other plugin I’ve seen. Most [...]
View post: 091Audio releases 091HPDoctor, a FREE precision high-pass filter plugin

Get over 80% off this “ultimate toolkit” mastering bundle from Sonnox from Plugin BoutiquePlugin Boutique is currently offering 88 percent off a mastering essentials bundle from Sonnox, featuring three of its Oxford plugins for just £69.
The bundle forms part of Plugin Boutique’s Mastering Month promotion, which follows on from the Mixing Month deals it ran back in March and includes a number of other brands including Eventide, Solid State Logic, LANDR and more.

READ MORE: The best new music plugins this week, free and paid

Sonnox’s Oxford plugins “power creativity across music, broadcast, film, and gaming”, according to the brand itself, and are “trusted by pros to deliver exceptional sound in every mix, performance, and production.”
In this bundle deal, running until 31 May, you get the Oxford Inflator, Oxford Limiter, and Oxford Dynamic EQ. The inflator is described as a “secret weapon” for mixing and mastering engineers, and delivers sonic enhancements from subtle depth to intensity with warmth and oomph.

The Limiter helps you create masters that deliver “maximum loudness, density and presence”. Essentially, it lets you push things louder while preserving your mix’s detail. As for the Dynamic EQ, this tool offers five bands of the Type-3 EQ curve that can be overlapped to bring improved control and characteristic Sonnox transparency to your single sources, instrument groups and 2-bus.

Earlier this year, Sonnox released a fresh version of its Oxford Drum Gate plugin, six years on from the original’s release. The Oxford Drum Gate 2 brings improvements on sound quality, workflow and adds a range of new features to provide a “comprehensive” toolkit to clean up your drum recordings. Back in 2020, MusicTech awarded Sonnox’s original drum tidying plugin a 10/10.
To shop this deal and more, head over to Plugin Boutique.
The post Get over 80% off this “ultimate toolkit” mastering bundle from Sonnox from Plugin Boutique appeared first on MusicTech.

Darkstarz Technologies releases FREE DustBox lo-fi plugin for Windows
Darkstarz Technologies has released DustBox, a lo-fi grime processor for producers working with boom-bap drums and lo-fi drum sounds. It normally goes for $19.99, but it’s free for a limited time (the developer hasn’t announced an end date). DustBox is for fast shaping. It’s more than just a basic bitcrusher, and I think what they’re [...]
View post: Darkstarz Technologies releases FREE DustBox lo-fi plugin for Windows

Jack Antonoff speaks out against those using AI to make music: “To everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff” Jack Antonoff has aired his grievances on AI within music in a new post on social media, in which he says bad actors in the industry will reveal themselves by generating “slop”.
Antonoff has been sharing a number of letters on social media lately, and his post on AI is accompanied by several in-studio photographs of him looking well immersed in making music organically. As he points out in his letter, “we have never been looking for this work to become quicker or easier”.

READ MORE: “No one’s better than him at that”: Bartees Strange on where Jack Antonoff excels as a producer

He writes, “What we do has become an ancient ritual. You don’t have to write music anymore, you don’t have to record it and you don’t have to bring the band out and play it. And yet for us, the idea of optimising what we do is a complete miss of the entire point of what compels us in the first place.
“We (myself, the band and everyone I know) have never been looking for this work to become quicker or easier. We were never frustrated by the randomness and magic it takes. We do it for that exact reason – and without the process itself ::: nothingness. So to everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff. We’re genuinely happy to see you go.”
Antonoff continues, “Generations coming will be engaging in the ancient ritual of writing, recording and performing as it comes to us from God. As we embark on this strange detour where the bad actors will willingly reveal themselves through slop, and the struggling greats will be further spread thin to make an honest living doing what they were put on earth to do, we (myself, the band and frankly everyone I know) remain more dedicated than ever to reveal what comes from within.”
Interestingly, he also observes that most new artists he knows are uninterested in “anything that doesn’t come from within”, and feels it is only those who have become out of touch that are utilising AI tools. “Writing music, recording and performing it – that’s it. Nothing more embarrassing than considering there is a way to optimise that holy process. Godless whores,” he adds.

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Antonoff’s thoughts on AI arrive just as Adam Neely, a musician and YouTuber, has also shared similar beliefs on an episode of the Within Reason podcast. Neely discussed the idea of “de-skilling”, and how AI firms focus on human taste being a remaining human pillar that AI can’t replace.
“To me, that is a horrifying future… 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 said.
“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.”
Jack Antonoff’s band Bleachers are touring, and you can find all their scheduled shows via the Bleachers official website.
The post Jack Antonoff speaks out against those using AI to make music: “To everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff”  appeared first on MusicTech.

How Neal Acree created Critical Role’s ‘The Mighty Nein’ electronic music soundtrack: “To truly embrace the idea, you have to think about how electronic music functions”Spoilers ahead for Critical Role, The Legend of Vox Machina, and The Mighty Nein
When Neal Acree was preparing to compose the music to The Mighty Nein, the second animated series from Critical Role, he received one clear edict: everything had to be electronic.
Acree composed the music for the first series, The Legend of Vox Machina, which featured a more traditional fantasy score. After all, the story includes classic fantasy adventures like searching for a series of mystic weapons and armor to have a fighting chance against a cabal of dragons.

READ MORE: Stranger Things composer Michael Stein gets hands-on with the Moog Messenger

The Mighty Nein has its own characters and stories, but since the show also comes from the Critical Role universe, the shared elements are substantial. They are both fantasy series that take place in the same fictional continent, Exandria. They are drawn by the same animation studio. Most importantly, they star the same cast of voice actors.
Critical Role started because those voice actors — Laura Bailey, Ashley Williams, Travis Willingham, Matthew Mercer, Marisha Ray, Taliesin Jaffe, and Sam Riegel — started live-streaming their Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) campaigns, in which they voiced their individually crafted characters.
Now, Critical Role has grown into Critical Role Productions. It has its own streaming service, Beacon, that features numerous original series. The Mighty Nein and The Legend of Vox Machina are the two animated series available to stream on Amazon Prime. The stories are based on the original Critical Role D&D campaigns, and the originating voice actors play their same characters.
[From top left clockwise: Travis Willingham, Phil Bourassa, Queen Ashley Jonson (the Queen is not part of her real name), Liam O’Brien, Taliesin Jaffe, Peter Habib, Sam Riegel, Neal Acree. Image: Michael SchmidtThe voice actors have also taken on leading roles in Critical Role Productions. So, when the order came down to make Mighty Nein electronic, it came from Willingham and Riegel (and the showrunner, Tasha Huo). Willingham and Riegel are more immersed in the Critical Role universe than anyone but their five other colleagues, and they sought to make sure this new show was not more of the same, in as many ways as possible.
“They wanted [Mighty Nein] to have its own voice. Music seemed like a good opportunity to give the show something that stood out,” Acree says. “At first, it seemed like a daunting task. It’s still a fantasy show. It has action, comedy, and all the normal beats that Vox Machina has. So, musically, it had to be able to follow everything that was happening dramatically, while simultaneously going against the expectations of what a fantasy score might normally do.”
Acree is always keen to take on new challenges with his compositions, though, and once he settled into leading with electronic music, the deep emotional differences between the two stories supported the shift in genre:
“You might think it’s the same approach: Just change the instruments to electronic versions of the same thing. But to truly embrace the idea of electronic music, you have to think about how electronic music functions,” Acree says. “[Electronic music] is beat-driven. It’s based on an evolving pulse — something that has an element that continues through a whole scene.”
Neal Acree. Image: Press
In Vox Machina, we meet the main characters when they’re already familiar friends, pounding pints at a local watering hole. By contrast, in Mighty Nein, everyone is slowly forced together. Some of them are running from danger. Others are investigating war crimes. Others still are searching for ways to restore their lost power. One loses his home because the others showed up and catalysed a brutal brawl. One character doesn’t encounter the rest of the team until the final scene of the season.
Needless to say, when they do collide, there is little to no trust between them. They all have their secrets, and by the end of the season, we’re still not sure if everything has been revealed or where some of their loyalties lie.
A narrative that relies on the gradual intensifying and easing of tension over long periods of time befits the structure of electronic genres, such as techno and ambient: using filters to attenuate frequencies or applying effects to introduce dissonance and discomfort without changing notes.
“I tried to score it as if an electronic artist had dropped in a track over the scene and then adapted it to character moments. There is an emotion here that needs to be amplified. There’s a change in tone that has to happen here,” Acree says. “I’ve tried to find a way to focus more on the overall emotion of what’s happening and create something that takes you there. The music is the usher that brings you into the experience.”
Acree’s composing method allows for maximum immersion because he was performing much of the music live to the scene. By using two pedals — a volume pedal and an effect pedal — he could play the parts and manipulate them against the emotion of the scene in the moment.
“If I play something in, then I have to add the dynamics afterwards, it’s just another step,” Acree says. “But if the entire musical idea can be recorded in one gesture, it saves a lot of time. It’s a lot more true to the idea.”
Neal Acree. Image: Press
His most trusted allies during this process are filters. No matter the synthesizer he’s using sound — some of his favourites are Omnisphere, the Moog Sub 37, the Dave Smith OB6, and the Prophet Rev2 — his first thought is whether or not to use a filter.
“That’s the easiest way for me to create an extra layer of expressiveness on a sound. If it’s a low pulse that sort of evolves over time, a filter’s a great way to have something start from the darkest depths of the emotion to being big, bright, and in-your-face,” Acree says. “You can take the same sound, change only the filter, and have it feel like real dynamics. Just like with orchestral instruments: As they play louder, a filter happens due to the physics of the instruments. The timbre gets brighter.”
By emphasising incremental changes in emotions, Acree shifted away from traditional narrative devices such as character themes, which, in the case of Critical Role, is a bolder choice in context. Unlike most other television and film series, The Mighty Nein and The Legend of Vox Machina are the creation of the actors playing the lead characters.
It would make sense to attach them to strong musical themes that represent how crucial they are to the show. Their voices are especially essential because the shared profession of voice acting brought them together to play D&D in the first place.

For Acree, however, that was too easy.
“I try to avoid going for the easy approach of what you might assume about the character, and I try to bring something out that you might not see on screen, or hear in the voices,” Acree says. “The voices are doing so much on their own, and doing it so well. I don’t need to add on top of that.”
Acree has been familiar with these voice actors for many years. He worked with Laura Bailey on the World of Warcraft song Daughter of the Sea, and crossed paths with the other actors through his various exploits composing for video games. He even watched them play The Mighty Nein campaign on the web series.
He’s watched Critical Role grow into a global phenomenon, and now, being involved, he appreciates that the DIY nature of the project empowers everyone to make ambitious creative decisions…like switching the entire soundtrack of The Mighty Nein to electronic.
The post How Neal Acree created Critical Role’s ‘The Mighty Nein’ electronic music soundtrack: “To truly embrace the idea, you have to think about how electronic music functions” appeared first on MusicTech.

Mortiis Has L.A. Goblin Up His TunesAlmost exactly a month ago, Norwegian black metal titans Emperor performed at the Wiltern and tore L.A. a new one. At the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on a midweek spring evening, that band's former bassist Mortiis was co-headlining with Pacific Northwest band UADA.

A lot has happened in the 34 years since Mortiis, real name Håvard Ellefsen, left Emperor (he was in that band for a year between 1991-'92), most notably the fact that he fully took on the persona of a goblin for a while. In interviews, he would talk about how he lives in a cabin in the forest, surrounded by the howls of wolves and the wind. Strikingly, he wasn't seen without his goblin prosthetics for years. Much like Kiss, it was deep into his solo career before we got to see what he looked like under the pointy ears and pointier nose. He took the face off for a bit, and now he's back to the goblin look again.

Rubber aside, Mortiis has been through some stages, or "eras," over the years. Era I encompasses his early work--the one EP and six albums recorded in the '90s up to and including 1999's The Stargate. They were all recorded using synthesizers, and the artist described them as "dark dungeon music." Mostly instrumental, only The Stargate features vocals courtesy of Sarah Jezebel Deva.

At the Teragram, Mortiis was revisiting Era II, his dark wave/electropop period that essentially started and ended with the 2001 album The Smell of Rain. Mortiis's set leaned super-heavily on that album as a result. It's fascinating too; back in 2001, the album divided fans. The artist would divide them again when he entered into his industrial era III. Now though, The Smell of Rain is seen as a bit of a mini-classic, as it should be. The tunes are huge, Mortiis' vocals (a new thing at the time) were great, and the production is simultaneously pristine and gnarly.

Mortiis performed four songs at the Teragram that were not on The Smell of Rain, carefully picked out because they at least fit the era II mood. Two are from the brand new Ghosts of Europa (the title track, and "Tundra, Heart of Hell." "Demons are Back" is taken from 2016's era 0 album The Great Deceiver, as is "Doppleganger."

But again, Mortiis has cultivated a mood at these shows. Open-minded fans of black metal, of symphonic death metal, of goth, of industrial, of electropop and/or of dark wave should be able to enjoy the brilliance of these songs.

"Spirit in a Vacuum" and "Parasite God" were highlights, the crowd not knowing whether to mosh or sway as Mortiis simultaneously electrified and hypnotized all before him.

The openers (Jerome Reuter's Rome and Wraith Knight) were very different, but both betrayed a penchant for neo-folk and medieval pageantry. The former has a few lyrics that are problematic at the very least, while the latter's instrumental tunes seem to be influenced by era I Mortiis. As a result, there was a mood over the whole event that, refreshingly, Mortiis was the one to change. This old goblin provided heaps of joy, fun, and dance-friendly tunes.

Intense and melodic, Mortiis continues to do things entirely on his own terms.The post Mortiis Has L.A. Goblin Up His Tunes first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

T.J. Martell Foundation to honor Red Light Management founder Coran Capshaw with Lifetime Music Industry AwardCapshaw has built Red Light into what the company says is the world's largest independent artist management firm, with a roster that includes Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Chris Stapleton, and The Strokes.
Source

Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI has been bleeding staff since its mergerMore than 50 employees have reportedly left Elon Musk’s newly merged SpaceXAI since February, raising questions about burnout, leadership changes, talent poaching, and whether liquidity events weakened retention incentives.

RS-485 Sprinkler Control: Scaling Irrigation Across the FarmBuilding your own sprinkler system controller isn’t that difficult on the face of it, but what happens when your system starts to grow, adding more distant areas? To tackle this, [Vinnie] leveraged the tried-and-true RS-485 differential pairs to communicate reliably with ever-more-spread-out valves on his farm’s irrigation system.

The system uses a Raspberry Pi to control when each valve turns on and for how long. It does this via a custom RS-485 valve master board, whose code and design files are on GitHub. The master board communicates with the Pi over I2C and issues RS-485 commands while controlling the 12V line to the valves. Toggling the 12V supply is a smart move it lets [Vinnie] save power by not keeping the valves energized when idle.
At the valves themselves lives a valve node board (also on the GitHub repo). Each node has a unique address so it knows when its name is called to open or close a valve. The valves are latching solenoids, ideal because they don’t require constant current during the watering cycle. The Valve Nodes also support their own protocol to report state, firmware version, and allow in-situ configuration.
Be sure to head over to [Vinnie]’s project page and check out all the work that went into this great DIY irrigation control system, along with the thoughtful boards and tools he made to help others set it up. This is a welcome addition to the sprinkler-related projects we’ve seen.

Ex-Celsius exec sentenced to time served after guilty pleaCelsius‘ former chief revenue officer received a lenient sentence after his 2023 guilty plea for fraud and conspiracy to commit price manipulation.

Growl Audio gFractorgFractor Multi-mode Spectrum Analyzer & Oscilloscope gFractor is a multi-mode spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope plugin for music producers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers who need an accurate picture of what's happening across the stereo field — not just left and right, but mid and side, and tonal versus transient content. Built on the JUCE framework in C++17, gFractor combines a configurable real-time FFT display with a tempo-synced oscilloscope, full stereo metering, and an A/B reference workflow in a single window. The audio path is fully realtime-safe: no allocations or locks occur on the audio thread. Three Channel Modes The same generic Primary / Secondary abstraction is used across three analysis modes, so the workflow stays consistent no matter what you're inspecting: Mid / Side — separate the mono centre from the stereo sides. Left / Right — traditional per-channel view. Tonal / Transient — split the signal by content type, with an adjustable transient time constant (0.1–10 ms). Spectrum Analyzer Configurable FFT order from 1024 up to 16384. Overlap from 2x to 8x. Adjustable decay and spectral slope. Infinite peak hold. Freeze. Loadable / savable target curves for spectrum comparison. Right-click-drag Audition Filter for precise bell-filter isolation of any frequency region. Oscilloscope View Tempo-synced time-domain display. Optional spectral colouring of the waveform. Reference Mode Sidechain-fed A/B comparison with ghost overlay. Momentary reference via held modifier key, for quick before/after checks while mixing. Stereo Metering Goniometer. Phase correlation meter. Width-per-octave display (10 bands), to see exactly where stereo width lives in the spectrum. Workflow Three themes: Dark, Light, and Balanced. Preset system with save, load, rename, and dirty-state tracking. Full keyboard control — every major feature has a shortcut, including channel-mode cycling (Tab), view toggling (V), reference (R / Ctrl), freeze (Z), peak hold (H), target curve (T), fullscreen (W), and one-key cycling through slope, decay, overlap, and FFT settings. Formats VST3 (Windows, macOS, Linux). AU (macOS). System Requirements MacOS 10.13 or later (Intel and Apple Silicon, universal binary). Windows 10 or later (64-bit). Linux (64-bit, VST3). Read More

FSK Audio release QRonicle  QRonicle is capable of generating a QR code that is then displayed in its GUI, and allows users to link to information stored on a cloud drive. 

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.